TNT Travels

The journey to Sao Paolo

Leaving Paraty was the start of the 4hr drive to return the hire car at the airport before getting a taxi into the centre. This plan was to negate the need for a divorce given ET wouldn’t need to drive through the city centre on a Friday afternoon.

Immediately after leaving Paraty you enter the rain forests with a road that bends and winds sharply getting up to some impressive heights. You don’t get the views because of the dense forest around you. There are loads of road signs to say watch out for animals. Each sign has a different animal silhouette. Big rodents, snakes, anteaters, large cats and toads. Fortunately, we saw none.

After the rainforest the scenery totally changes, rolling hills and views where you can see for miles and miles.

We stopped at a cafe in the middle of nowhere which was also a chocolatiers. We were the only people there. Slightly unnerving when there is no one else about. We took in the amazing views from the cafe whilst listening to background tunes courtesy of bonnie Tyler, Tina and Richard Marx. There was a little church down in the valley that looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie.

I wrote the 1st sentence in the 1st para above before we left. It actually took 5 1/2 hrs thanks to a broken down car on a dual carriage way. One of the scariest few hours of my life for some stretches closer to Sao Paolo. My leg muscles ached from the amount of virtual braking I was doing. Lorries just pull out into your lane with no notice, motorbikes whizz up between the lanes. My nerves were shot by the time we got there.

Sao Paolo has a 22 million population. It’s the largest city in Brazil. 4th largest city in the world. As you would expect from a city this densely populated, it’s full of high rises, lots of rubbish strewn in the streets, graffiti nearly everywhere, some cracking murals and homeless people living in little communities under the flyovers and sleeping in doorways around the tourist areas.

Apparently it’s meant to have a great food scene but this was less obvious to us versus other cities we’ve visited. You get some glimmers of charming old buildings but they are mainly dwarfed by the high rises around them. Really easy to get Uber and unlike Rio, they don’t repeatedly cancel on you. All in all we were not lovers of Sao Paolo, it has an undercurrent you can feel that heightens your spidey senses.

On the first night we headed to Bela Vista, an Italian quarter that ET had read about. It’s apparently full of bars and restaurants with a busy, energetic vibe. We got there and it was dead! Probably due to the fact of the torrential downpour that had just happened. We jumped into Uber and headed to another part of town, Pinheiros, to the Guarita Bar, classed as a ‘good time bar’. The place was buzzing, you order drinks and bar snacks from where you’re sat and pay at a little kiosk as you leave. The music was pretty much 80s rock and loads of British foot tapping classics.

Municipal Market

One highlight of the 3 days here was the Municipal market. They sell all types of food and the stalls are some of the most impressive we’ve seen. Particularly the fruit stalls.

However, the people that work here are passive aggressive. They try and lure you in with sampling a piece of fruit and then charge you a small fortune to buy it. Fortunately ET had read about this in advance so we gave them a swerve.

There are loads of places to buy some of the biggest sandwiches you have ever seen. They would have had Desperate Dan quaking. There is also a fab wine bar. When you ask for a wine list they basically take you to a vault of wine and tell you to take your pick.

Slightly overwhelming but I gave it a go. They needed to get more stools for us to sit down so ask you to move to the side whilst they throw them down from the roof of the stall. Love the complete lack of health and safety it’s pretty liberating.

Apparently, the more Brazilians drink the more passionate they get judging by some of the full on PDAs.

It rained a lot in first couple of days. Torrential downpours, then a 15min reprise then it rained again. Day 3 was dry and exceptionally hot. This was the day we chose to visit the Japanese quarter and swelter with thousands of others.

Japanese quarter

OMG, it was mobbed, you could barely move on a Sunday. Markets fill the streets and the square. I can’t describe the uncomfortable feeling caused by the combo of heat and loads of people crammed into the same space.

You can buy anything from street food, samurai swords, tasers, light shades, tea pots, cat statues with the waving arm, and saki based slush puppies. We stopped for a beer (obviously) to cool down and for 2 fortune cookies. Mine contained 3 pearls of wisdom, ET just had one. They clearly felt I needed more guidance!

We couldn’t face queuing outside any of the restaurants in the heat waiting for a table so headed for a popular Korean bbq place away from the Japanese Quarter. We (I) decided to walk the 45mins to get there. We literally shade hopped all the way there and had to have a beer break on route to cool down (again). Fortunately selling beer in 600ml bottles in their own chillers, seems to be common throughout Brazil (or at least everywhere we have been too).

In hindsight, having lunch a Korean bbq in 34 degrees was a pretty stooopid idea. sweat was running down us reaching places we didn’t know it was even possible to get to.

We had a 50:50 success rate with our meal. The beef was chewy as hell but the duck was lovely. Even if it was 100% bang on, nothing would entice us again to sit in front of a bbq, with limited air con in that heat.

Brazilian rodizio

This is where you keep being brought meat until you tell them to stop. We went to one of the best ones in SP, Itiam Bobi (or autism Bobi if predictive text takes over), because apparently it’s where the locals go to. To be honest, the meat was great but the salad bar was the show stopper.

El Tel excelled himself at breakfast. Apparently there is international sign language for scrambled egg. If you want to try this yourself, it’s a bit like miming a fat person with an overactive knife and fork. It worked. Unlike 3 hrs later when I ordered the bill in Portuguese and got another beer.

Augusta

On our last day, we decided to head for Augusta, a busy area with lots of atmosphere. This time, the area fit the description we had read. What we hadn’t appreciated was that there was a football match on. The area was full of helicopters, police, fans wearing the national strip, flag waving, horn beeping. The place was just full. Fortunately after kick off it calmed down a bit but there were still loads of fans about but bizarrely they weren’t watching the game on the TV screens. It was here that ET decided to order a beer. He pointed to a group of lads with 3 x 600ml beer on a bucket and asked for that beer. That’s exactly what he got. He hasn’t realised it was a promo offer and obviously was too ‘polite’ to send it back.

Our next stop after SP was Iguazu falls. When booking the flight from SP, I hadn’t appreciated there were 4 airports. Obviously, I picked the one that was 1.5hrs from the city centre. Just want you want for an 8.30am flight!

In summary, if we were to plan this trip again, we would skip Sao Paolo. Happy to chalk it down to experience but not enough here to recommend it from our perspective. There is obviously a lot we didn’t seen during 3 days but we got a lot more enjoyment from Bogota (even with a dodgy tummy) vs Sao Paolo.