Sao Paulo and the border

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Sorry i couldnt put up photos, i dont know whether its me being a technophob, or whether its the internet. But Sao Paulo was pretty intense. When we got there our taxi driver didnt know where our hostel was. After asking various locals and other taxi drivers, we finally got to our hostel and crashed out. the next day we explored the city with our Australian friends, Kirtsy, Amy and Shana. We went to a municipal market and saw lots of colourful fruit, sharp smelling meat, salted fish and lots of nuts. We walked around the market and all the vendors kindly let us taste their produce, it was so nice, the fruit was amazing and we also tasted brazilian cheese which was quite almost spicey. hen we went up the Santander tower and got a good view of sao paulo. it is such a big city, the buildings went all the way to the horizon and the woman in the hostel said that 22 million people live in sao paulo. we then took a walk to praca de se and saw a city church then me and stacey saw theatro municipal. we couldnt go in due to work being done, but it looked grand from the outside. then it started to storm down with rain and there was lots of loud crackling thunder and sharp flashes of lightening. it rained for almost 2 hours, then cleared up and then the sun came out. it was crazy.

the next day we went to a city park and had a walk around, then said goodbye to the australian girls, which was sad as we had spent a few days with them. me and stace had a siesta and then went for food in the villa madelena district. we got the metro and got a bit lost, the roads arent always clear and neither are the maps. After some help by a friendly local called vitor he directed us to the nice areas for food and we had a pizza. Sao Paulo is meant to be famous for its pizzas and it was nice. We then met up with Vitor and his friend who took us to a bar and we tried fruity caiprinhas which were nicer than normal ones and much easier to drink.

We ended up staying out late, and the next day was so hungover. the city was sooo busy and hot that it wasnt helping, and we battled through and went to avenue paulista. This was where the business district was and was a major street really wide with lots of traffic. We decided to move on to Liberdade a japanese district which was nicer, less busy with shops and cheap restaurants. We bought some brazilian goodies and had some japanese spring rolls and then went back to the hostel to get our bags and leave for the bus.

the bus journey went much faster than expected, we took an over night bus so the 13 hours journey only felt like 4 hours. then we got 3 buses with difficulty as we had all our bags, and got to the hostel. in the afternoon, we took the bus to the infamous foz do iguacu. We saw the waterfalls from the Brazilian side, it was absolutely amazing. the falls were really long and high, and the sun decided to come out, it was beautiful. tomorrow we cross the border and go to the argentinian side to look at the falls. im excited.

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