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Published: September 6th 2007
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As cool as Bolivia was, after freezing in the salt flats and then exhausting ourselves riding down the death road we were gagging for some sun, sea, sand and relaxation. Time for Brazil!
As some of you have already heard, our flight from Bolivia to Sao Paulo didn´t exactly go to plan... We were supposed to fly from La Paz, Bolivia to Lima, Peru; change there and fly to Sao Paulo. Unfortunately all did not go according to plan and after about an hour or so the captain got on the radio to tell us there was an electrical failure and that we had to land immediately (and with that, the plane plunged about 5,000 feet)... needless to say we were pretty terrified (Im not ashamed to say I sat there sobbing thinking we were going to die!... and I think James was just about as petrified).
Anyway, thankfully our emergency landing went safely, although it was so cloudy we couldn´t see the ground at all, and when we did land we could just see four fire engines racing after us... scary! But by this time we were in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. If you look on a map of
South America, you´ll see that La Paz is on the western border of Bolivia, Peru is west of Bolivia, with Lima being on the west coast.... and Santa Cruz is south-east Bolivia. So we basically flew one way and then back the other and past where we started! We spent about two hours at Santa Cruz airport and then were told that it was an "air conditioning malfunction" - whether that was true or they didn´t want to tell us our oxygen supply was going to run out, I don´t know! Anyway, they had apparently fixed the problem so we (reluctantly) got back on and headed off to Sao Paulo.
We arrived rather late but in one piece, so we were quite relieved! This might all sound a bit overdramatic, and I think if we were on a British Airways flight we probably wouldn´t have worried, but South America has I think the highest number of plane crashes of any continent, and if anybody saw the Sao Paulo crash the month before you can imagine what was going through our minds...
Well enough with the drama!
We found ourselves a hostel in Sao Paulo and then had the
realisation... Brazil is so expensive! Of course, we knew it was going to cost more than our $2 a night hostels in Bolivia, but as we have gone on to find out, the cost of everything in Brazil is pretty much the same as back home. So we may be waving goodbye to our overdraft 😞
The four days we spent in Sao Paulo weren´t as great as we hoped, mainly as the weather was pretty cold and cloudy (it´s winter here, remember) But we had a good look around the city, which is very cosmopolitan and affluent compared to the rest of South America. We also had a couple of nights out with people from our hostel and James was delighted to find house music clubs after three months of Reggaeton and pan pipes!
It seems that most travellers only stop a little while in Sao Paulo as it´s so expensive, even compared to the rest of Brazil, so we decided to start to travel towards Rio de Janeiro along the coastal roads and stop in Paraty, a coastal town with supposedly some of the best beaches in Brazil. Bring on the sun!
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