Blogs from São Paulo, Brazil, South America - page 3

After travelling on what should have been a 10.5hr flight we flew over the shore of South America and into a massive thunderstorm. So big a storm that Guarulhos airport was closed due to the Lightning and 100km/h winds. We were circling and running low on fuel so got diverted to Campos. Finally we got the all clear and flew the 85km to São Paulo. We are here and so far so good........ read more

Hi Friends, So we woke in our new hostel: Global backpackers, its clean and best of all not too noisy at night!!! The plan was to go on the free walking tour of SP with this couple we had met; they were a Spanish girl called Maria and her French boyfriend Seb. We got the metro to Republica, where the free walking tour commenced. It’s free, however the guide will keep going on about giving a tip!! Not free then-but the going rate is approximately £3-4 each. We stayed with the 3 and a half hour tour for 30 mins as all we saw were buildings and the information was not that interesting, Vick, the couple and myself ditched the tour and managed to get a tour of the theater (Theatro municipal de Sao Paulo), so ... read more

Thursday 18th June 2015 The problem with long-distance bus journeys in a country where sunsets come early, is that one arrives in unknown territory in the dark. Our bus yesterday from Sao Sebastiao brought us to Santos at dusk, so by the time we had got a taxi to our hotel, it was dark. The receptionist spoke just a few words of English, no Spanish at all and we failed to discover where we could find any tourist information so that we could see the sights today. Therefore, this morning, after breakfast, we headed for the beach and just walked along the promenade for two or three kilometres and then we found an old streetcar converted into a Tourist Information Centre. The beach is enormous; seven kilometres of wide golden sands fringed by palms and five ... read more

SAO PAULO After a 3 hour flight from Tucson to Atlanta we boarded a second flight of 9 hours to Sao Paulo Brazil. We've spent the past 2 days touring the city of 22+ million people with our great local guide Gil ?? One of the first things we realized is that this is a HUGE city. Sao Paulo garnered national headlines last year during the World Cup Soccer matches. Many locals do not have much good to say about the whole experience with the typical government and "capitalistic" involvement. Our biggest barrier was the fact that no one in our group speaks Portuguese (aside from Gil) and unlike most of the European countries as well as Central American ones, English is not considered an "important" language therefore most adults do not speak it. Thankfully Lisa's ... read more

We awoke at 9 am and had the wonderful breakfast that our Airbnb host provided. We then just sat around until about 1 pm. Our flight to Sao Paulo was not until 2:35 pm. We flew to Sao Paulo on GOL flight 1385 which was a 737-800 aircraft. I was in seat 21F and it was a routine flight. Our connection to Santiago was not until 8:50 pm so we just waited and had some dinner. The next flight was GOL 7662 which was another 737-800 and it was a smooth and routine flight of just under 4 hours. I was in seat 26F and slept mostly. We arrived into Santiago at 1:05 am and went straight to the hotel to get a good nights sleep. We were staying with someone from Airbnb, but chose to ... read more