Friday and Saturday, I spent 2 nice relaxing days on Ilhabela, another island on the coast between Rio and Sao Paulo, but very different from Ilha Grande. The island is much closer to the mainland (only 15 minutes by ferry, which is free for pedestrians!) and it has a much bigger town which stretches all the way along the Western coast of Ilhabela. There are cars and buses here and the place is less touristy (and less expensive ;-)). I had not actually planned on going there, but it was recommended to me by a few people, so I was happy I was flexible and just decided to go see the island.
Ilhabela has around 40 beaches and the ones I saw were all really beautiful! So I spent a lot of time at the beach and caught up with some sleep. I did however leave the beach the second afternoon to go to Cachoeira da Toca, a waterfall in the forest with waterslides etc. This has been turned into a kind of park and there is a restaurant and, of course, a place where you can try and buy Cachaça. It was a nice place, but I’m not sure it was worth the hassle to get there and back (not many buses and after getting off the bus you still have to walk 1 km up the hill) and the many insect bites you get there. The waterfalls in Paraty were more exciting.
Ilhabela 1
Ilhabela 2
In the hostel on Ilhabela I was this time really the only non South American! That was a bit strange, but not a bad thing because there were some nice Brazilians who I went for a drink with the second night. OK, we went to an Irish Pub (why am I in Brazil?), but at least we drank Brazilian beer ;-). There was a really good rock cover band playing too, so it was a good night.
After another short night, I left the coast. Bye bye beautiful Brazilian beaches! I travelled on to São Paulo where I spent the last 2 ½ days.
The first thing I wondered when I arrived in São Paulo was: Where have all the short dresses and flip flops gone?? People there dress very differently than at the coast. Everybody in São Paulo seems to be wearing jeans (although it’s far too hot!), sometimes shorts, very few skirts or dresses, while in the other places I rarely saw any jeans.
Visiting to São Paulo involves a lot of walking! (My feet are hurting!!) The metro is quite good, but there are not very many stops and the buses seem to be difficult and I heard they can be dangerous. So you just walk, or get a metro and then walk. I enjoyed walking around the city though. I saw a lot of the city this way. Yesterday, it was mostly the Centro I walked around in. It is filled with shops, but there are also some nice squares/parks; unfortunately these are filled with rather dodgy looking people, but also with a lot of police. I then went to the market and looked around at all the fruits and foods I had never seen or heard of. I wanted to buy everything and try it! Too bad that I couldn’t. Upstairs in the market are a few restaurants on a sort of balcony. I was told you have to go up there and eat one of their mortadella sandwiches, they seem to be very famous in São Paulo (thanks Monica for the tip!). So that is what I did, I sat down in one of the restaurants and ordered a mortadella sandwich. When I saw the sandwich I wished there was somebody there who I should share it with. This thing was massive! Well, the sandwich was a normal size, or even quite small, but the amount of meat they pack into it is incredible. I admit I didn’t eat all of it, I took some of the meat out; it was just too much!
Massive mortadella sandwich
Stuffed and happy, I continued my walk through the city - although I cheated by getting a metro to get a bit closer to where I was going – and went to the Avenida Paulista. It’s a big street with big buildings and it feels like you could be in any big city in the world. Am I really still in Brazil? But it being so different from what I had seen so far in Brazil was also what made it interesting.
Yesterday, I did some more walking of course. I walked around the area I was staying in, Vila Madalena. It is a very nice area with streets dedicated to certain things, e.g. there’s a street with antiques shops, one with stores where you can buy musical instruments, one with artists’ studios. What I liked most were the streets which were full with graffiti. Some of it was really amazing! It reminded me quite a lot of Granada.
Graffiti 1
Graffiti 2
After the hunt for graffiti I went to the MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, one of the main art museums in the city. It had an interesting collection of art, but the big surprise was waiting in the last part I visited: there were 2 paintings by Michel Majerus, a Luxembourgish painter! I’m in the middle of Brazil and I see art from a Luxembourger, how funny!
While there are not that many things to see in São Paulo during the day, except for museums and galleries, there is a lot to do at night and the nightlife is very busy.
On Sunday I went to a street near our hostel where there are many Samba bars and clubs with an English couple I had met. The street was crazy. Everybody was outside on the street drinking and partying. After we couldn’t find the place we wanted to go to to see some Samba because the guy from the hostel gave us the wrong directions (again!), we chose a nice bar to sit in to escape from the busyness outside. Here we discovered strange beer drinking habits: We order 3 beers. What do we get? 1 big bottle of beer with 3 tiny glasses (we’d use them as water glasses at home, you know the mustard glass type, at least for the Luxembourgers and Germans among you). This bottle is empty quite quickly of course with the 3 of us. So we order some more and this time specify that we would like 3 bottles. They bring us 3 bottles in a bucket with ice. Good. But then they only open 1 of them. Apparently, we are supposed to drink 1 bottle after the other and are not allowed to each have our own bottle ;-) Oh well, I guess we have to adapt to the local habits, sip our beer out of our tiny glasses and call someone to open the next bottle for us every time we finish one, and at least the beer stays cold this way.
Our tiny beer glasses
On Monday, Lucas, who I met in Buzios with his brother and girlfriend, picked me up at the hostel and together with some friends of his we went for some food (amazing beef!) and drinks (same beer drinking experienced as described above) and after this to a nightclub. It was a fun night and it is obviously a much better experience to go out with a bunch of local people than to hang out with the other ‘tourists’ all the time.
Night out in Sao Paulo
While I am writing this, I am having my first long bus travel experience in South America (there’s many more to come). I am sitting on the bus from São Paulo to Foz to Iguaçu. It will be a 15-hour bus ride. I’m driving over night though, so I will spend most time sleeping. In fact, I’m starting to feel tired now, so I will recline my seat soon and see how well you can really sleep in these buses. The seats are wide and quite comfortable and you can recline them a lot, so it should be fine. I’ll let you know soon.
25 °C
25 °C
