Sao Paulo

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After finally managing to make someone at Curitiba bus station understand where we wanted to go, we were off to Sao Paulo, but not without some apprehension. This is a city whose reputation definitely preceeds it and our guidebook had some pretty alarming facts and figures (including a murder rate of approximately 700 a month at the end of the 1990s) that clearly put a lot of visitors off going altogether. It´s also one of the world´s most expensive cities, and so for both those reasons, we made this stop a brief one, just two nights. And while I wouldn´t claim to be an expert in such a short time, I have to say that as a tourist taking the usual precautions in any big city and sticking to the nicer areas of town, there´s little to suggest that Sao Paulo is regarded as one of the world´s most dangerous cities. In fact, we thought the area we stayed in was quite like a more compact, pedestrian friendly Beverly Hills, with incredible designer shopping, art galleries (we actually saw Marilyn Manson on the opening night of his exhibition in one of them), really trendy bars and restaurants, and a great cafe culture.

However, there were a few indications that things weren´t quite normal ... the security in the apartment buildings, for example; all with at least two levels of gates to pass through to get in, some with three, others with electric fencing. There´s also a huge, if discreet, police presence, and little manned police booths (almost like lifeguard huts on a beach) are dotted along the streets. Cash machines stop dispensing between 10pm and 6am, as this was a peak time for muggers to force their victims to withdraw cash, particularly around midnight, when they could get them to withdraw their daily limit twice: just before 12pm, and again after. And in a continent where there´s such a flagrant disregard for any rules of the road anyway, for once, when you see people run red lights at night, they´re not breaking the law - it´s deemed too unsafe to stop after dark (unless there is oncoming traffic) and it´s perfectly legal, and in fact advised, to carry on. Although the particularly rich don´t bother travelling by road at all, deeming the risk of carjacking and kidnapping to be too high, and get about by helicopter instead - the amount of helicopters in the skies above this city is unbelievable.

Despite the problems, with the right budget, Sao Paulo seems like it would be a fantastic place for a city break - eating, drinking and shopping... Neil in particular fell in love with the place, and he assures me it´s not *just* because it´s one of only 3 cities in S America with a Starbucks!

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