I have a refrigerator magnet with this quote on it and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. In a city that never sleeps, is bustling with people and traffic at least 20 hours a day, and is under perpetual construction, it can be a challenge to ever find a quiet moment in Rio. Add to that the stress of classes (both in Rio and, via Skype, in Pittsburgh), frustration with gathering certain data for my dissertation, and the daily effort required to learn a new language, and it becomes difficult to even imagine a quiet moment.
I took a bus from Gávea that dropped me off right in front of the main building, where I went in and bought my ticket in five minutes with no language difficulty whatsoever. When I left the Rodoviária, I walked around the corner and caught another bus to the university campus. I was on campus by 9:30 am, and considering most graduate students and faculty arrive between 9 and 10, I was right on time.
The process was even simpler on Friday--I took the same bus to the Rodoviária and was on the road to São Paulo by 11:30 am. The plush seats and curtains on the bus were a welcome change from the bare bones buses I usually depend on to get around in Rio. (Is it so difficult to add shock absorbers to public buses?! Really now.)
The scenery between Rio and São Paulo was incredible: open fields and rolling hills, often with mountains in the background. For some reason, we had huge lowlaying clouds all the way out to São Paulo. You can see some of these clouds in the picture below (left).
We also passed several favela settlements. Favelas can be broadly described as Brazil's shantytowns. Many favelas have no running water, no electricity, and until the recent addition of police stations, were run strictly by druglords. Tourists are always told NEVER to enter a favela without a community guide, and even then, safety is a reasonable concern. Of course, some favelas are more dangerous than others, but none of them are clean, safe places to hang out. (Nor are they tourist attractions; they're people's homes.)
Much of the scenery between Rio and São Paulo consisted of a combination of the two features above: favelas and open spaces. Being a good tourist, though, I still took pictures at every opportunity. You can see many of these on my Picasa page here.
The traffic in São Paulo is supposed to be even crazier than the traffic in Rio. However, I didn't see much of it because that traffic occurs mostly during the week when all of the Paulistas, as the people of São Paulo city are called, are hard at work. This is in contrast with the Cariocas of Rio, who are known for their great skill of enjoying the beach and enjoying life in general. (These are stereotypes, of course, though I do wonder if the act of enjoying your work is a concept in either city.)
When I arrived in São Paulo, I went straight to the hostel. I was originally skeptical about the hostel, largely because it's website is full of glowing "testimonials" from former guests (all of which could be completely fake), but I took a chance because it was cheap and convenient. It turns out that I had no reason to worry. The hostel was clean (minus a small bathroom renovation project), safe, and full of friendly world travellers. There were two Danish girls backpacking through South America for four months, two Brazilians who were visiting São Paulo for a Magic tournament, an Australian semi-professional Poker player (did I miss the card game memo?), a few people from Fortaleza in Northeastern Brazil, and an adorable kitten named, "Tutti," pronounced "TOOH-chee."
The hostel managers were great, too. Maria organized activities each night and Rafael, the owner, took care of the behind-the-scenes operations. Rafael also told great stories and one night serenaded us with Spanish-Gypsy music on his guitar. (Never believe someone who says they only play a "little bit.")
The nights at the hostel were lively without venturing into the "out-of-control party" territory. They were actually really nice. The mornings started fairly early since everyone wanted to make the most of their days in São Paulo (and avoid the intense midday sun.) On Saturday and Sunday morning, I headed over to the Shambhala center, which was barely three blocks away from the hostel. As people were arriving at the center, there was breakfast with tea and coffee set up on the back porch and we all soon fell into conversation.
There were about 15 participants for the weekend at the center. The majority of people were born and raised in Brazil, but a large minority of the people were of Japanese descent, which makes sense since São Paulo is the largest Japanese "settlement" outside of Japan itself. There was also one person from England, one from Australia, and two people, including myself, from the U.S. I was really surprised to see such an international group and I learned so much from people telling their stories about where they came from and what brought them to São Paulo.
To make a long story short, we ended up having a great weekend together, and over cups of tea and conversation, over guitar melodies and Portuguese-Spanish-English translations, I began to realize what I had been missing in Rio. I have been spending the past two months primarily around Brazilians (obviously), but talking really only about the day-to-day stuff and maybe current events and other such topics. In day-to-day interactions at school or work or home, people don't really talk about travel, much less about their own travel experiences. I then spent this past weekend completely surrounded by people who had traveled to São Paulo from other cities or, in the cases of the ex-pats, from other countries. We immediately formed the traveler-to-traveler bond. We could all assume we had been living "on the road" for some period of time and we all knew, to a certain extent, what that way of life was all about. We could then bring out the food and the drinks and just wait for the stories to materialize. They always did.
All in all, I'm so happy I ventured out to São Paulo for the weekend. The travel time and arrangements were fully worth the effort. Now I'm just thinking about where I want to go next: maybe Colombia or Argentina or Peru ... ?
