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Published: October 25th 2007
Our next stop was Florianopolis, 15 hours south on the coast and the most expensive bus journey we have been on for 30 pound. To top it off the bus was shit and as Michelle said must have been made for Eskimo midgets! No leg room and the bus was freezing! Lucky for us the bus changed after about 10 hours and we managed to get some sleep for the last 5.
We finally arrived but still a bit half a sleep so was very grateful when a local came over offering us an apartment on Santa Catalina for 12 pound a night. It turned out to be a right bargain and just reminded me of something you would get on one of the Greek Islands on your 2 weeks holidays! It had a great kitchen with a blender which we used about 3-4 times a day! The beach was about 20 seconds away, fruit shop for the blender 5 seconds away and all the fruit was very cheap so what more did we need!
The beach was a 14km long at Barra de Lagoa of gorgeous white powder sand and Michelle was in heaven, it was beautiful, and
the only drawback was the water was freezing so we wouldn’t be swimming much. We also got to watch some kite surfers which was the first time I have seen this, it looks a crazy sport and would be good to try it some day! Looking back we should have stayed longer but because the bus station was an hour’s drive away before we left on the day we arrived we bought our onward ticket to Sao Paulo. Oh well shit happens!
Our next stop was Sao Paulo, the 3rd largest city in the world with around 17 million residents. It was a place it would be very difficult to grasp the size of but lucky enough the hotel was central enough to the main attractions. We arrived on the bus very early after another long journey and got a bit of breakfast in the station to prepare ourselves for an early morning tube ride! We had thrown ourselves in the deep end and jumped on the busy tube which is not easy with our backpacks and just hoped we were heading in the right direction!
Like I said the hotel was central but the area looked a
bit of a shit hole and when your hotel is in the middle of a porn cinema and a tittie bar you don’t expect good things! It turned out to be o.k. but the area turned out worse than we initially thought! During the day things looked a bit rough with most of the nice buildings covered in graffiti including the churches. It was reminding us of Oaxaca in Mexico when the riots were on! At night in didn’t get better. First night we went out about 7 for some food and then started to head back about 10 so still fairly early, and the streets were full of beggars setting up there beds for the night in any place they could find, we were getting some strange looks and headed back to the hotel sharpish before we ended up being robbed, the place was scary! After seeing this I am not surprised that Sao Paulo was the first city to introduce the law when driving at night you no longer have to stop at red lights just slow down as it’s so dangerous to stop because of car jacking!
Whilst here we didn’t do much and the only
highlight, and I use the term loosely was we went to the top of a replica building of the Empire State and looked at the view of the city from above and it was huge and you could see for miles. We only stayed 2 nights and was glad to leave as for me Sao Paulo just had too much of a shit hole feeling!
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Florianapolis
