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TAM Airlines are no Ryanair! They welcome you with a sweet, feed you twice, keep you well hydrated and don't try to persude you to buy a single thing on the plane. It was a novel and pleasant experience to actually get value for our €70 per ticket.
We almost didn't make the flight though, but this was mostly my fault. Having arrived at Salvador airport in good time, we presented ourselves at the GOL ticket desk. The guy behind the counter looked at us quizzically and fired off some rapid Portuguese in our direction. We responded with our favourite phrase "Nao fala Portuguese" (I don't speak Portuguese) and smiled sweetly. To this he yelled at his colleague who dryly informed us that we were at the wrong company desk. Our flight is with TAM. Right then. Sorry about that. We cringed and did an about-turn, walking red-faced directly to the TAM check in desk.
We had bought some paintings late the previous day. I have a master plan for these paintings once we get back, and had convinced myself (and Philippe) that I could manage a Portuguese encounter in the Post Office on my own. Leaving Philippe in
a café guarding the bags, I queued up in the Post Office to try to post the small package home to Dublin. The lady behind the counter didn't speak a word of English. Using Philippe
esque sign language I indicated that I needed to purchase an envelope for my package. To my delight a small box duly arrived. I then needed to label and construct the box and return to the back of the queue. No major problem, but time was pressing on. When I eventually got back to the front of the queue the lady had a mini-freak out over the fact that there are no post codes in Ireland. I managed to assure her that it was normal and once she got it to Ireland, they would take care of the rest. When she realised that I had no return address (eh we're travelling!) she nearly booted me out of the Post Office. She was set to send me to the back of the queue again when I decided to make up a return address just to shut her up. In the end she came out the victor of our little stand-off, as our dual ended with her charging
me 40R$ - which is nearly twice what I paid for the paintings in the first place!
I emerged confused and stressed to face an equally stressed Philippe. They had called our plane for boarding and we weren't even through security! Thankfully there were no issues with the bags and we arrived at our gate in time to see the passengers coming off the plane before us. As we boarded the plane we were greeted by smiling air-stewards and had a very pleasant flight. After a quick stop over in Porto Seguro we landed 3 hours later in Guarulhos Airport, Sao Paolo.
Following a brief MSN Messenger chat a week ago, Flavia Bernacchi had kindly offered to collect us from the airport and put us up in her house for the night. We hadn't seen or really heard from Flavia since before we became a couple. Have we changed much in 6 years? Has she? Would we walk straight by her? We need not have worried though as when we walked through the arrival gate we immediated spotted Flavia and were reunited like long-lost pals. On the way to her house in the car we had a lot
to catch up on and plenty of Annecy gossip to share.
We pulled up to the Bernacchi Residence at 3.30 that afternoon. We were gobsmacked by their beautiful home, hidden away in the middle of a residential compound not too far from the main road. We had just enough time to briefly meet her mother and to dump the bags before Flavia whisked us off to see a nice town not far from her home. First we had a quick pet stop to see an exotic animal shop where we would have happily bought 20 animals if given half a chance. Then on to Itu. Itu is famous for two things: antiques and for having "the biggest..." everything! We saw big traffic lights, big public telephones, huge slingshots, big chairs and massive ice-creams. I know I'm a little person, but these made me look like a dwarf!
It was dark when we returned to the compound. Flavia's boyfriend, Joao, had come to make a nice
churrasco (BBQ) for us and we were introduced to her father. The family had prepared a spread of many Brazilian foods for us and we set about discovering the contents of each bowl
and the ingredients of each recipe. We ate like royalty and were honoured to be treated like extended family by these people who barely knew us! As each new wave of meat and cheese was cooked on the barbeque we salivated and learned about what we were munching. We ate twice what we would normally each as everything was so tasty. After we retired to the dining room for dessert, Renzo disappeared into his study. He returned 20minutes later with some A4 paper. "Do you like walking?", he asked with a smile. He proceeded to show us a route he had chosen for us to see the best of Sao Paolo and talked us through
seven pages of google maps. While we were nervous at the distance it seemed to cover, we were delighted that we had some guidance on what to see. The
Lonely Planet and
Rough Guide to Brazil all seem to describe Sao Paolo as a grey place that you'd almost be as well off by-passing, but from what Renzo was showing us there seemed to be plenty to see.
We rose the next morning at 7am to hitch a ride into Sao Paolo with Flavia's
dad. He dropped us at the metro station and we made our way to page 1 of the maps. We tackled the maps like a scavenger hunt. Beginning at Liberdade, the Japanese quarter, we made our way to the central square of Praca da Sé walking through the financial area to get to the market area. Here we negotiated a new pair of knock-off sunglasses each and a top quality shoulder bag (which ripped within 20minutes!). The market area is made up of streets of each trade. You have the DIY shops, the bags and shoes shops (heaven...if only my bag was bigger!), the clothes shops, the sunglasses shops, the wool & material shops, the bridal shops and then the T-Shirt shops. How they compete with each other is beyond me, because they were basically replicas of each other. Then you see street vendors selling sweets, TV dinners, small kids toys, scarfs and anything you might be looking for! It all added together to create a great buzz, and despite the hundreds of people milling about we never once felt unsafe.
After a thoroughly Brazilian lunch of fish balls and Antartica Guarana for me and a massive
Americana sandwich
for Philippe, we moved on from the market area to walk to see some nice buildings near the Luz train station. The buildings in Sao Paolo are a mis-mash of charming old buildings reflected in shiny new sky-scrapers. Because of the various nationalities that emigrated here over the years, there are influences from all over the world. We hopped on the metro to take us north to Paraiso station where we walked for a bit to find the Ibirapuera Park. This is an oasis of tranquility in the middle of the busy city. Time was running out, and we were only on page 6 of 7, but we decided to call it a day and forgo the shopping centre on page 7. We phoned Renzo to arrange a pick-up and we found ourselves returning home to the Bernacchi's in rush hour traffic, Sao Paolo. Now I drove the M50 every day for a year. It is a trickle of traffic in comparison to this! You basically shove your car into whatever hole you can find in the traffic ahead of you. When we got back to the ranch, there was another lovely dinner waiting for us. As we enjoyed coffee
with the family we bid farewell and thanks to Renzo, as we planned the next day with Carmen and Flavia.
Thursday was pouring rain, Irish-style. We finally got to use our rain gear as we ran through the rain to put our backpacks in the car. Carmen drove us around the residential compound and we saw some massive houses with swimming pools and tennis courts. She then drove us to Flavia's office. Flavia is a lawyer now and had to work the morning, but kindly took the afternoon off to show us around the neighbourhood in Sao Paolo where she grew up. After swapping cars with Carmen, and thanking her for her fantasic hospitality, we again tackled the Sao Paolo traffic. Some time later we arrived in the Morumbi district.
Morumbi used to be a
fazenda (farm) on the outskirts of Sao Paolo. A lot has changed since then. Now it contains the remains of one tea farm and a church, and the rest has been developed with large houses and a
favela in the valley. It was a lovely area. After a lunch of all-you-can each meat (Philippe's turn for heaven) we went to find Aryton Senna's
gravestone in Morumbi graveyard. We then picked up Joao and were driven to the Morumbi Shopping Centre. This was more of a commercial complex and was more upmarket than any shopping centre I have seen in Ireland or Holland but after a quick peak I noticed that it had European prices! It had an Armani store, a Gucci store, a Chanel Store, all next to the Adidas store or the Lacoste store etc.. I was a completely different set up to Europe, and all the better for it. We enjoyed a leisurely beer upstairs and then headed back to the car to head into traffic again to make our way to the hotel near the airport, via the car shopping avenue.
We were sad to leave Flavia and Brazil in general, but intrigued about how Peru would be as we settled ourselves in the hotel to update our diaries and grab a little shut-eye before getting up for our 6am flight.
Goodbye Brazil!
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Derek
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master plan paintings
The said paintings arrived today the 7th of July - not exactly a 3rd world service! Keep the blogs coming and enjoy Peru.