Feeling the gravitational pull of São Paulo

I'm in Porto Alegre, after a very long bus ride from São Paulo.

It feels a little out-of-place to be back in the more developed part of the country after several months in the Northeast and North. (Brasília doesn't count. Brasília is Tomorrowland at Disneyland. My friend Bernardo has a good post on the subject, and I think he's pretty much right: Brasília is the dream of upper class Brazil and its chosen self-image: clean, ordered, hierarchical, and proper. Everything in its place, and the poor out of sight and out of mind. For the record, as the bus left Brasília, it stopped in the towns on the periphery, which were very much cities of the interior in the Centro-Oeste. Not poor, but not gleaming and ordered either. The staff who clean, serve food in, stand guard in, and bring people to the shiny Ministérios live there. Brasília is Tomorrowland - with respect to social ills here - like Alagoas is Realityland.)

In any case, I've been to Porto Alegre before, and I'm glad to be back. It's a nice, compact, walkable town with crisp, cool weather and friendly people. I don't stand out as an exceptional gringo, which means only that fewer people watch me pass.

In the land of red meat, I'm back to eating mountains of vegetables and fruits. Hooray for buffet restaurants that have mango, papaya, pineapple, bananas, caquis, and tangerines!

Two observations led me to write this post:

1. Greece right now looks like Argentina in 2000. In a previous life (read: when I was in Brazil three years ago), I was interested in currency crises, and what politicians do to speed them up or prevent them. A post on how austerity measures are just a temporary stop-gap measure without real economic recovery - which means that they usually fail - and how bondholders are trying desperately to avoid paying the consequences for their actions, is here. (Warning: poor writing.)

2. As I mentioned above, I stopped in São Paulo to go apartment hunting. I stayed almost exactly thirty-six hours in the city, but I must say that I'm excited to be moving there. Frankly, I'm excited to be finished with road trips and a new city each week. São Paulo, however, has a big city vibe, a host of things to see and do, and Korean restaurants! I'm not a terribly big fan of Korean restaurants; I just mention them to illustrate the wide variety of cuisines that await. Such a variety of cuisines is not found in other, smaller towns like, say, Rio de Janeiro.

To celebrate the impending move to São Paulo, in homage to a travel series for dumb people with more money than sense, I present


36 Hours in São Paulo

São Paulo is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way from Staten Island to the Bronx, but that's just peanuts to São Paulo.

Friday

8:00 a.m.
1) BARRA FUNDA.
Arrive at the western bus terminal in the city, after a thirteen-hour bus ride from Campo Grande. Feel glad that no one sat next to you and that making another guest appearance at an English language school in Campo Grande on Thursday afternoon didn't make you miss the bus.

Barra Funda is one of three (four?) long-distance bus terminals in the city. You can't buy a ticket for Porto Alegre because those lines are run out of another bus terminal in the city. Barra Funda mainly covers trips to areas west and northwest of São Paulo.

9:00 a.m.
2) JARDINS IS PRICEY.
Get to your hotel (Formule 1 Jardins) and have them tell you that you can't check-in until noon, and that it will cost you extra to stow your luggage for four hours. Immediately regret not booking at another hotel. Put in a text message to the real estate agent recommended by a friend, informing her that you're in São Paulo.

10:30 a.m.
3) SÃO PAULO IS BIG.
Decide to meet the real estate agent at the apartment visit by walking from Jardins to Moema. Arrive late, sweating despite the temperature around 55 F. It takes a long time to walk anywhere in this city, which may explain why few try. Note the bus lines, supermarkets, and Burger King nearby. Resolve to continue to not eat at Burger King.

Balk at how pricey short-term rentals in São Paulo are.

4:00 p.m.
4) WORLD CUP.
Watch the World Cup in your room, after a late R$9.90 all-you-can-eat lunch. Be glad that São Paulo restaurants seem to be cheaper than restaurants in Rio de Janeiro.

Do laundry in the hotel sink. Think about how you have a well-developed, if not perfect, system for hotel room laundry. Buy dinner at Carrefour next door, along with a chip for a São Paulo cell phone number.

Saturday

6:30 a.m.
5) IBIRAPUERA.
Thankfully, the apartment will be near the large Parque de Ibirapuera in São Paulo that has a 6 km dirt trail loop. It feels like an escape from the city in the same way that Central Park does. In both cases, some parts of the park run right along busy streets while other parts are quietly hidden behind trees and next to lakes. Both parks also have museums inside their boundaries.

Go running there.

3:00 p.m.
6) USA-ENGLAND.
Watch the World Cup match in the hotel restaurant with another hotel guest from Ghana who once lived in London. Chat about how cold this part of the country is.

6:00 p.m.
7) TIETÊ.
São Paulo's main long-distance bus terminal is the largest in Latin America. It is remarked that you can get from Tietê to any other city in Brazil by a more-or-less direct route. Buy a ticket for the eighteen-hour ride to Porto Alegre.

8:00 p.m.
8) POA.
Chat with a teacher from Porto Alegre and his family. Board the bus, where there's a copy of Estado de São Paulo in every seat, and remember how much nicer bus rides are in the Southeast than they are in other parts of the country.

Arrive in Porto Alegre at 3 PM on Sunday. The bus had delays because the anti-lock brakes were causing problems. The Serra Gaúcha is winding, green and looks like central California in the springtime, after the rains.

Oh, and that image at top is a planetarium at the Centro Cultural Dragão do Mar in Fortaleza.

UPDATE: Or if you like over-paying for shit in order to feel like an insider, there's always the original guide.

Passing back around: Cuiabá, MT

I'm back in Cuiabá, a city I have previously described as "ugly" where "aesthetics are not necessarily a high priority." I stand by that assessment.

I'm back to see if I can't conduct follow-up interviews and round out my knowledge of these cases. So far, I've been only mildly successful. At this point in the trip, however, I'm satisfied with mild success.

It has been cooler here than it was during my last visit. That time in Cuiabá was probably the hottest visit "on the road," second only to the time around Christmas in Rio when it hit the low 40s. Cooler weather, which failed to last until Friday and won't endure through the weekend, can't disguise the fact that this is still not a pretty city.

That being said, the people are wonderful. I regret that I didn't get in touch with more of them, but my time here is limited. (Thursday was also Corpus Christi, which meant that many people have taken a four-day weekend.)

In any case, I encountered two notable sights.

First, I went running, and found my way up to a track open to the public but maintained by the Brazilian Army, and to Parque Mãe Bonifácia, a shaded park with a few kilometers of running paths. These two great running destinations are only about two hundred meters from each other, in the same neighborhood. I have to run one kilometer to get there.

On my way to and from the park, however, I noticed the following street sign:



This choice of colors strikes me as incredibly poor. Sure, the pale green is the official green color of Cuiabá, "the Green City." In my mind, however, they could not have picked a worse contrast, or have cluttered up the street sign more. I have no idea how drivers at night are supposed to read this at any speed. The use of white-on-blue and big names for streets in Fortaleza (and supposedly São Paulo) is a much better idea.

Oh, and that's the town symbol, with a touch of soccer ball because this will be a host city for the 2014 World Cup.

Second, I'm staying at the same hotel as I did previously. The neighborhood is changing slightly. The motorcycle shop across the street went out of business, and it looks like the car rental place next door is going to follow. But it's not all bad news. Down the hill, a boxing gym has opened.



This gym is only noteworthy in that the name is a transliteration of the English word "knock-out," as it would be spelled by a Portuguese speaker. Literally, one would say the word "knock-out-chee," with the stress placed on the last syllable varying according to where in the Lusophone world you happened to be. The word "blacaute" is used similarly for power outages.

It made me smile.

In two weeks and a few days, se Deus quiser ("God willing"), I'll be in São Paulo, home of the Museum of the Portuguese Language. I can't wait.