Day 89 - Sao Paulo

Now, to put the record straight, Sao Paulo doesn't have the best reputation. Police are armed and very ready to use their weapons. The city is huge (the biggest in south america) and is loaded with high-rise blocks and dark, shadowy streets. And they recently passed a law to let people drive through red traffic lights to reduce the amount of car-jackings as people stop their cars at night. Killer. Was it as bad as the hype made out? not at all.

We arrived after a 4 hour bus, hopped in a cab to a hostel about 10 tube stops from town (safer that way, ain't it) and checked in. Still just me, sam and dave. Sam got seperated from us, cos she had to sleep in an all-girls dorm (her worst nightmare) so we decided to head into town to grab a drink. I'm a bit nervous about going "into town" at night, in a big city that we have just arrived in, but dave talked us into it, and we rounded up another dude and went for a drink. 20 minutes later, we were on the main street of bars and restaurants, lapping up the atmosphere and tucking into steak. Our first of two nights passed without problem. Only one left.



In the morning we headed into town on the subway - which across the city is a flat characterless series of concrete rooms and tunnels underground - and spent the day exploring the city. There's almost nothing to do here from what we found - shops yes, market stalls selling tat from poundland yes - but nothing much in terms of parks, architecture or beauty. The most exciting event of the morning was when the market sellers in the streets start whistling to each other because the police are approaching, and throw all their stuff into bags or wrap them in blankets and pretend they aren't breaking the law for five minutes until the police leave. That stuff was wicked.

We bombed around the cathedral too, where I spotted a women kissing a statue of some monk holding a curtain. I love catholics.



   

We'd heard you can go to the top of the highest building in Sao Paulo, but only if you are staying at the hotel, so we snuck into reception, pretending to be residents, and took the wrong lift to a residential floor. Despite being stupidly obvious that we didn't stay there, they let us climb the 42 floors anyway and the views, whilst pretty dull, were the highlight of Sao Paulo.



   

We'd heard that Mark, from Paraty, was headed to sao paulo, so we gave him a call and met him that night for a drink. He was staying with two wicked paulenese girls, Maria and Shakira (no really, Shakira), and we sank some beers and chatted to some passing locals who took a shine to sam. A tube ride later and a fond farewell to Sam's beau Dave, we grabbed 4 hours sleep before our flight to Buenos Aires.

Day 87 - Ilhabella

Since we were working our way to Sao Paulo, and the place is known for gun-crime against tourists, we didn't want to head there IMMEDIATELY, so decided to stop off for a couple of days in the island paradise of Ilhabella. Island paradise? whatever.

For starters, the ferry drops you an hour from the town centre, which isn't even really a town centre, more just 4 restaurants next to a plaza. The weather was grim, the place was dirty, building sites were everywhere, and we had to spend about 2 hours walking around just to find a hotel to stay in. I have no idea WHO thought it was a good idea to go here, but the place was RUBBISH. We checked in, went for dinner, and went to bed.



And to make it worse, when you want to go to a beach, you have to walk for SIX HOURS to get to one. This place is properly rubbish. After an hour on the bus, we started walking the 2 hours of rough terrain towards a waterfall, which despite sam's constant discontent, she handled quite well. It was perhaps the ONLY saving grace of the island.



The water was STONE COLD. Properly cold. But clean, and fresh. I nearly slipped and cracked my head open, but instead just cut my arm open. But putting the pain aside, dave and I skimmed our way down the natural slides and shivvered our way back to the top of the falls.



In fact, the strenuous walk was kinda fun. Mostly because there were hints of Sam and Dave falling in love, which was nice. He laughs at everything she says. She laughs at him constantly. They were like kids. I have no idea if he's like that with everyone, but our little sam certainly isn't. And she looked properly happy the whole time. Its a shame, because I reckon they'd make a good match. Although he is a bit of a knob most of the time.





And after having a back-row of mormons try to convert me on the bus (we believe in the same thing, you idiots), we got packed up and ready for Sao Paulo. Scary stuff.

Day 84 - Paraty

Paraty was the place to be in Brasil this weekend. The place was rammed, the hostels were booked up, the streets were full and the plaza was overrun with massive papier-maché figures from nursery rhymes. This weekend is FLIC, the internation literary festival that turns this sleepy cobbled village into a haven for publishers, authors and poets for one long weekend of partying.



We spent the first day aboard a little boat that the nine of us from the hostel hired. I've been quite rubbish lately, thinking too much about stuff back home and generally making myself an unsociable insomniac mute. But I perked up when we started diving off the roof of the boat, drinking beer in the sun and jetting away to an island the size of my old flat which had a restaurant on it. That was special.





That night, we hit the town. Drinking in the street while the rest of the boys chatted up Brasilian women (yeah, thanks lads, that was fun). I reckon one of them had the hots for me though. The prettiest one, of course. The place was heaving, and we were very much in other peoples' ways for most of it. But it was electric. A quick skip around the plaza and we headed to a Brasilian "Farah" (I have no idea how to spell it, so if you know, email me). Its basically a completely insane, drunken barn dance, where you change partners every two minutes, and snog pretty much anyone you are remotely interested in (the brasilians are not reserved when it comes to kissing). I didn't get a snog, but I reckon I could have (yeah yeah).



The next day, a few of us headed down to the apparently world-famous beach, Trindade, which was *alright*, but nothing special. Lazed in the sun, as per usual. Walked along the beach, as per usual. This whole beach life seems a little boring for my liking, but its hard to complain when everyone else is stuck at work. So I won't. Excitingly, I managed to lose 50 reals (that's about a tenner) in the sea. Had a good old whinge about it to sam about 15 minutes later, and as I was saying it, she FOUND one of the notes brushing past her leg. We thought they'd be long gone, but then we managed to recover almost all the money. It was truely special. Stuff like that NEVER happens.



We spent the evening drinking in the street again. I spent about an hour on the phone to tristan (on my mobile, yeah, good one dunc), then headed out for a quick one before leaving the others to get drunk and rock up at the hostel at 5am. The next day, Sam Dave and I decided to head to ANOTHER island paradise, this time called Ilhabella. Tough life.

Day 82 - Laguna Azul & Dois Rios

Still on Ilha Grande (which is wicked, by the way), we had a few more days of sun to soak up, so did the only thing you can do on an island with no cars - walk to the beach, or walk to the jetty. So, since sam doesn't hike, we jumped on a huge boat and sailed around the north of the island. It wasn't AMAZING. But it was good. The sun shone hard, the fish danced around the boat, and we stopped at this cute church before having some lunch.



   



The next day, Sam stayed in bed all day (she spent the next 48 hours on the toilet), while Mark and I took some advice from the horrendous Lonely Planet. Described as an amazing hike, past waterfalls, river pools and jungle paths, we were supposed to reach an oppresive and abandoned prison in the jungle. In fact, the walk was easy, took half as long as they said, didn't have any waterfalls worth mentioning, and was barely passable as a jungle route.



But to top it all off, the prison was NOT in the jungle, was only abandoned about 10 years ago, and barely seems oppressive, except that it looks a lot like a german concentration camp. That said, rooting around the overgrown ruins and peering into locked cells made for quite an interesting day. Which we finished off on the beach. again.



   





After a night in watching fight club, Mark and I headed off again to hike 4 hours to the first beach we went to, Mendes Lopes, where we managed to see some monkeys and squirrels. A hour on the sands and we hopped on a boat back, where we started the 4 hour journey to Paraty.