Day 43
Today I'm in: São Paulo, Brazil
Day 42 was spent flying first from Port Elizabeth, at the end of the Garden Route, to Johannesburg, where Aaron left to head for Central Asia. I hopped on a South African Airways flight to São Paulo, and about ten hours later, touched down in Brazil's largest city just before midnight on a foggy evening.
Brazil has more than a few large cities, but São Paulo takes the cake. This is another of the world's megacities, with close to 30 million people in the extended metro area. Like Jakarta, a city of similar size (see Day 17), São Paulo is a sea of high-rises spread across smoggy hills and valleys, choked with traffic and linked up by spidery elevated freeways. Fortunately for the Paulistas (who call their city Sampa), São Paulo manages to have some character and livability, too (that's based on my single day of professional observation, of course.)
My hotel is right off of Avenida Paulista, an eight-lane thoroughfare that's lined with glass-and-steel high-rises housing some of Brazil's largest companies. If São Paulo is the New York of Brazil, this is its Park Avenue. South of Av Paulista is the Jardins neighborhood, a leafy square mile of luxury high-rises and boutiques containing some of Brazil's priciest real estate, and beyond that are even more exclusive areas with villas and private homes running into the millions of reais. I saw helicopters overhead many times today - the ultra-rich in Sampa use them to bypass the city's notorious traffic jams.
North of there is the historic center of the city, which has lost some of its luster to Av Paulista but is still the home of the country's financial industry. This is Brazil's Wall Street, and as I walked around at lunchtime I passed plenty of well-dressed bankers coming and going from Art Deco high-rises. Many of the streets in the center have been pedestrianized, and while the shops there aren't as pricey as they are in Jardins, the whole area was bustling with people.
São Paulo has its darker side though - as polished and well-heeled as its middle and upper classes may be, the city is ringed by poorer neighborhoods, including slums climbing the hills and snaking through valleys west and south of town. Unlike Rio de Janeiro (where I'll be touching down in a few weeks), most of the favelas of São Paulo don't sit right beside the rich areas, so the city feels pretty starkly divided. There were homeless people sleeping everywhere in most of the parks and plazas I passed, including the Praça da Sé in front of the city's main cathedral. Crime here isn't as bad as it is in some parts of Rio, but you have to be careful at night and watch your belongings during the day.
The city's population is incredibly diverse. Although a slim majority of Brazilians are classified as white, that encompasses a whole range of backgrounds. Portuguese heritage is obviously very much in evidence, but Brazil (like the US) took in immigrants from all over Europe, so there are plenty of blondes and even quite a few redheads as well. São Paulo has almost two million citizens of Japanese ancestry - the biggest Japanese community outside of Japan. There are also enormous Lebanese and Jewish communities. Another quarter or so of residents are of African descent. Throw in intermarriage and you have a whole range of backgrounds sharing the city.
Irrespective of neighborhood, on most corners there's a lanchonete, a pop-in-pop-out type of restaurant selling cheap meals of meat, rice and beans. They also sell salgados, a Brazilian catch-all term for salty, fried or otherwise unhealthy snacks. Today I was reunited with pão de quejio, a cheesy bread roll made with tapioca flour that one of my Brazilian classmates made for us at a dinner party in business school. I also tried kibe, a sort of croquette made from cracked wheat and stuffed with minced meat. Accompanying everything are juices made from every fruit you can imagine and some you've never heard of. The lanchonetes stick to favorites like orange, lemon, acai, mango, melon and acerola, but the dedicated juice bars have combinations running up into the hundreds. I'm glad I have two weeks here to try as many as I can.
Today I'm in: São Paulo, Brazil
Day 42 was spent flying first from Port Elizabeth, at the end of the Garden Route, to Johannesburg, where Aaron left to head for Central Asia. I hopped on a South African Airways flight to São Paulo, and about ten hours later, touched down in Brazil's largest city just before midnight on a foggy evening.
My hotel is right off of Avenida Paulista, an eight-lane thoroughfare that's lined with glass-and-steel high-rises housing some of Brazil's largest companies. If São Paulo is the New York of Brazil, this is its Park Avenue. South of Av Paulista is the Jardins neighborhood, a leafy square mile of luxury high-rises and boutiques containing some of Brazil's priciest real estate, and beyond that are even more exclusive areas with villas and private homes running into the millions of reais. I saw helicopters overhead many times today - the ultra-rich in Sampa use them to bypass the city's notorious traffic jams. 
São Paulo has its darker side though - as polished and well-heeled as its middle and upper classes may be, the city is ringed by poorer neighborhoods, including slums climbing the hills and snaking through valleys west and south of town. Unlike Rio de Janeiro (where I'll be touching down in a few weeks), most of the favelas of São Paulo don't sit right beside the rich areas, so the city feels pretty starkly divided. There were homeless people sleeping everywhere in most of the parks and plazas I passed, including the Praça da Sé in front of the city's main cathedral. Crime here isn't as bad as it is in some parts of Rio, but you have to be careful at night and watch your belongings during the day. 
The city's population is incredibly diverse. Although a slim majority of Brazilians are classified as white, that encompasses a whole range of backgrounds. Portuguese heritage is obviously very much in evidence, but Brazil (like the US) took in immigrants from all over Europe, so there are plenty of blondes and even quite a few redheads as well. São Paulo has almost two million citizens of Japanese ancestry - the biggest Japanese community outside of Japan. There are also enormous Lebanese and Jewish communities. Another quarter or so of residents are of African descent. Throw in intermarriage and you have a whole range of backgrounds sharing the city. 
Irrespective of neighborhood, on most corners there's a lanchonete, a pop-in-pop-out type of restaurant selling cheap meals of meat, rice and beans. They also sell salgados, a Brazilian catch-all term for salty, fried or otherwise unhealthy snacks. Today I was reunited with pão de quejio, a cheesy bread roll made with tapioca flour that one of my Brazilian classmates made for us at a dinner party in business school. I also tried kibe, a sort of croquette made from cracked wheat and stuffed with minced meat. Accompanying everything are juices made from every fruit you can imagine and some you've never heard of. The lanchonetes stick to favorites like orange, lemon, acai, mango, melon and acerola, but the dedicated juice bars have combinations running up into the hundreds. I'm glad I have two weeks here to try as many as I can.
Although I was only in Sampa for a little while, it's been a nice introduction to Brazil. Tomorrow afternoon I am flying to Salvador, a large city in the northeast of the country that's home to the country's largest African population.
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