Sao Paulo

I can safely say that I knew nothing about Sao Paulo before going there. I've never seen a picture of it, I don't anybody who has traveled there, and I didn't know what it had to offer. Due to our excellent hosts, I was incredibly impressed with this mega-opolis.

First, you must understand how BIG Sao Paulo is. It is the third, or seventh, largest city in the world, depending on how you count. Seventeen million people call "Sampa" home, with over 250 movie theaters, 100 performance theaters, and 90 museums. Sao Paulo is the leader in South America in almost any aspect: largest hospital complex, largest shopping mall, most air passengers, most billionaires and so on. It is the 10th richest city, has the 3rd most buildings and has the most helicopters of any city in the world. Yes, it's about as big as they come.

Honestly, nothing made me think that we would like Sao Paulo, but we felt that we should see it anyways as part of our education.

Luckily, out of the 17 million people, we stayed with the two guys who were the most amazing hosts. Paulo and Thiago, kids of my mom's colleague, introduced us to everything great about Sao Paulo. Through their eyes, we gained a greater appreciation of this gigantic city. Paulo took us on a running tour, Thiago took us to a free concert. They both took us out for beers and a traditional dish of the poor people. Together we explored a bazaar/fair/flea market, listened to records, watched the Hurt Locker, went to a birthday party, and walked half way across the city in search of toilet paper at three in the morning.

Thank you Paulo and Thiago and all of your friends for showing us the city that you love.


Soooo many skyscrapers and it seems like they are all adorned with massive towers on top. This is a few blocks from where we stayed.


Down the road is this monstrosity. The architecture reminds me of the horrors of Soviet buildings. This is an art museum and is free on Tuesdays. Guess when we went?


A few blocks in the other direction leads us to the 9th richest street in the world. This is where wealthy people shop for shoes.


Thiago is a musician and knows where all of the free concerts are. Every Tuesday there is a free performance at this culture house. The night we attended, we were amazed by an instrumental acoustic band playing a combination of modern jazz and Brazilian music.


Paulo traveled to Russia earlier this year and brought back several souvenirs. On our last night there, I taught them the proper way to take vodka shots and we finished off the bottles.


I still regret the yellowness.


Thiago took us to a $8 vegetarian buffet. We went two days in a row. Then he told us about this vegan buffet, also only $8, and we asked why he was holding out.

Maybe Gross

Kristin asked: how many pictures of my toes can I post? Well, here are three more to add to the count.

We hiked up a creek to this natural pool tucked away above Rio. Little fishies in the pool loved to nibble at our skin.Here, they hoard after my foot, which is the last body part remaining in the pool. 

Playing in the ocean for several days (ie soaking my skin in salt water), plus the constant push/pull of the waves, and magically my toenail came off. It was a relatively painless end to my toe injury.

A picture of my toe today, sans toenail. Looking good!

Paraty

Paraty is a colonial town dating back to the mid 17th Century. The old part of town is about 5 blocks big and borders the water. There are many well-worn churches, which were interestingly segregated between rich women, blacks, landowners, and workers.

Colonial towns are a big tourist attraction throughout South America. They were built in the 16th and 17th Centuries by Spanish and Portugeuse colonizers. We've seen a few, starting with our very first city of Antigua, Guatemala. The difference there was that the colonial part of town is still used. Normal business like bakeries, laundry mats and banks occupy buildings that are hundreds of years old. Rules are in place to keep up the historic buildings and limit traffic. In Paraty, however, the buildings are only used for restaurants and tourism offices. This gives the town a generic, touristy feel, even though the churches have a much more fascinating history. It was well worth the two day visit, but lacked anything beyond standard site-seeing to entice us to stay longer.

We also noticed that the Brazilian coast attracts a lot of British and Australian travelers. They aren't quite as budget-minded as we've seen elsewhere in South America. Furthermore, they tend to smoke, drink and party a lot. We didn't enjoy our stay at the hostel in Paraty due to this. Even the hostel workers were smoking inside and nonstop. It's hit or miss with hostels. That's one of the things we get to put up with while traveling.

One of the five main churches. This one was right on the waterfront and it's entrance is completely flooded. It rained both days we were in Paraty.

A typical building in the old part of town. No buildings are more than two-stories tall.

This building has obviously been well maintained. It now functions as a very pricey hotel.

Ilha Grande

We left Rio on Sunday, amidst confusion of clocks and buses. You see, every single worker at our hostel neglected to tell us that daylight savings time changed. Additionally, when asking for directions to the bus station, they failed to tell us that there were multiple bus terminals in Rio. Our first surprise was arriving at super sketchy bus station with only local buses. Nobody spoke Spanish, let alone English, German or Russian. Somehow, we found a caring bus driver who put us on his bus and then took us straight-away to the central station, even though I don't think it was on his route. A little travel magic, if you please.

Upon arrival at the correct bus station (also super sketchy) we met our second surprise: our watches were an hour off. Somehow we still made our bus. Hours later and with a few minutes to spare, we barely made our ferry to Ilha Grande. Each day brings its own surprises.

Ilha Grande (pronounced Eelya Granje) is an island that is world-renown for it's beaches and wilderness. Two thoughts went through my head as we started the long boat ride. First, my brother Chris advised us to visit this island, but also warned of trouble with bus and ferry connections. I laughed inside that we too scrambled to make that connection, despite having heard his tale of woe.

Second, I felt an odd connection on the ferry, knowing that that my brother had taken that exact ferry many years before. While it isn't the most remote place in the world, I still found it deeply special that I was sharing this same experience. Here I am, years later and in a much different life and under different conditions, but doing the same thing he did.

Our first camping experience in the main port-town was rather horrible in the sense that we had hoped to camp in the park, which is not allowed. Then we hoped at least for some natural foliage. I don't know why, but all the camping in town was on hard dirt with few trees around and lots of concrete walls. Through exhaustive research, I found one campground that was an hour's hike away and was supposed to be more natural. Our information was not certain though, as we had also been told it was a two-hour hike, it didn't have lights, and it was twice as expensive. We went for it anyways.

Not only was it right on the beach and covered by trees, but we were the only ones camped there!! I guess the hour-hike put people off? It was one of the best "organized" campsite experiences I've had. So serene, peaceful, beautiful and quiet.

Now, about the island itself. Most of it is protected as national park. Sometime in the mid-90's, it was decided that no new buildings would be constructed. So, while there are buildings and houses and small towns on most of the beaches, it's still relatively untrammeled. We camped, hiked, swam, read and watched monkeys playing in the trees. Overall, we had an excellent time.

Though this island is touted as a pristine paradise, I do have some beef about accuracy of tourism advertisements. The tourist bureau likes to brag that there are few buildings, no roads and it's a pristine natural environment. This is a flat-out lie. There are numerous roads in the port town. There is a 9km road leading across the island to another town, which is home to a partially-destroyed prison. Along the road there is a trash dump. There are houses at every beach. There are dozens of cars, motorbikes, ATVs and decrepit old trucks and they are ALL used regularly. Additionally, while hiking trails cover most of the island, most travelers prefer to hire out a motor boat to whisk them away to these "pristine" beaches rather than exert oneself on the trails. Instead of roads, the waterways are directly polluted. Perhaps worst of all is that guide books and travel writes relay this myth of a perfect, roadless paradise. They should have more integrity than that. The island is protected and still worth visiting, but don't lie to tourists. Most of us are smart enough to see through it. Still, you can see from the photos that the trip was well worth-it.


The island's main town, Abraoa. The peak in the background is a hair under 1000 meters.


Coming back from a swim, we found this "guard" dog protecting our stuff. We overheard another traveler proclaim that this beach is one of the ten best beaches in the world. How do you prove that? I didn't know that there is a rating system for beaches!


The decaying facade of the century-old prison that was decommissioned in 1994. The prison might not have been dreamy, but the location couldn't be any better.


Another lovely beach, another great day.

No Earthquake Here

Hey Everybody - we are in Sao Paulo, safely on the other side of the continent from Chile. Thank you for your concern voiced via Facebook and emails. We do have several friends from Chile though, so please keep them in your thoughts. We are still waiting to hear from them all. It seems that Facebook has become the best way to communicate en masse.

I still owe you a post about Ilha Grande and another about Paraty, both to be accompanied by more envy-invoking photos. I apologize in advance.

Rio Time

As soon as we got to Rio, our internal clocks adjusted to the, well, lack of clock. We didn't have a plan or a schedule and yet things worked out for the week. We hung out at the beach quite a lot. We partied at Carnaval and then again at a post-carnaval party. We hiked through Tijuca forest, "climbed" Sugarloaf, rode the train to Santa Teresa, and saw the many diverse churches of Rio. Despite having done so much, it all seemed very relaxed and easy. And then when we tried to leave, Rio's clocks didn't align with ours but we couldn't figure out why.

It turns out that Saturday night was the end of day-light savings time and nobody told us. Luckily we arrived at the bus station in time to catch our ride to our next destination - Ilha Grande. More about that later.

We were sad to say goodbye to Rio as we really enjoyed our time here, particularly when staying with my friend Gabe in Ipanema. Rio is a huge city and really is quite different depending on the barrio (neighborhood) that you are in. Ipa, as the locals call it, is relaxed. The streets are full of trees, a 8km lagoon lies behind it, the botanical gardens are within biking distance, and their are smoothie stands everywhere. It truly is a beach culture full of young, healthy, active people.

Staying with Gabe gave us a good inside into the local culture. Moreover, it was good to see this dear friend again. The last time we hung out was his surprise visit to Davis in March of 2008. During our time in Rio, we were also joined by another Davisite, our friend Nihan. This was quite a reunion, which seems to be an often reoccurring theme of our travels: friends, mountains and food. Thank you Gabe, Philipe and Mickael for hosting us and being so wonderful!


Getting swamped by the waves at Copacabana beach.


Friends united from all over the world.

From Rio de Janeiro

Wherever we travel, we try to find the local farmers markets. One morning, after a run, we came upon this on in Ipanema. We splurged on some exotic fruits from the Amazon. They were strange but delicious and fun to eat!


A unusually bright interior to one of the many, many churches in Rio.


An even more unusual (read: bizarre) church in Rio's center. This open-aired concrete behemoth was unique in every aspect. The stained-glass windows are 70meters tall.


A splurge on our last day in Rio - taking the tram up Sugarloaf Mountain.


View from Sugarloaf as sun sets behind the clouds, yet Christ the Redeemer stands tall over the city.