Lin and Sandy Grimwade's Blog: Part 1: São Paulo September 23

It is a long time since we posted anything on this blog. We haven’t done much adventure traveling recently. This is our first unscripted holiday in a long time.

We arrived in São Paulo on Saturday morning after an uneventful overnight flight from Newark. São Paulo is not a beautiful city, but it has its charms. We Ubered from the airport through heavy traffic, avoiding potholed roads and stretches of construction, to our little “hotel” in the quiet district of Pinheiros. With excellent reviews on our favorite web site Booking.com, we were a little surprised to have a room with no window, and to find that breakfast was do-it-yourself, with a hot plate and frying pan provided, along with big brown eggs, cereals, fruit juices, fresh fruit, bread, and excellent coffee. We are not complaining.

We are a bit unlucky to arrive at the start of an early heatwave. 93 yesterday and 96 today. Low humidity, however, makes it bearable, and there are plenty of air conditioned shops and galleries we can take refuge in.

Some observations about São Paulo:

People are very polite and courteous. On the subway escalators everyone stands on the right to let the speedier people pass. They leap up to let us old people sit in the seats reserved for the elderly.
There is an astonishing variety of complexions and body types, many tattooed — African, Asian European and every mixture in between. Some women, especially young ones are tall, many nearly 6 feet. Old people are shorter and wider.
Styles of dress vary widely. Men in suits, or neat shirts and slacks, or tee shirts and shorts, or even bare-chested. Women in tight and revealing outfits, or long and flowing robes and everything in between.
Today so many male and female soccer fans, in red and black striped shirts supporting SPFC (São Paulo Futbol Club). They were playing in the final of the Copa do Brasil match today, and we got caught up in all the excitement.
We visited the main market — so many varieties of fruit, many with no English names. At one stall we were plied with samples of many, some excellent and some weird. We eventually bought a mango weighing over 2 lbs that was the best we have ever tasted. Other stalls were selling less tempting varieties of dried cod — they seem to love their “bacalao”.
Today, the Main Street of the city, the Avenida Paulista, was closed to traffic and was packed with people enjoying every variety of live music — samba, heavy metal, punk, etc. — and dancing, sometimes solo and sometimes in large and well choreographed groups. Vendors along the sidewalks sold art and handicrafts, baked goods, clothing, jewelry, weed and drinks.
We visited a beautiful exhibit in the Japanese Cultural Center of very inventive miniature art made from everyday objects — a set of brushes being harvested by tiny farmers, a temple made from polystyrene food containers, a little fisherman sitting on the edge of a cup of soup — so imaginative.
São Paulo suffers from almost New Delhi level wiring chaos. Every lamppost is decked with hundreds of power, phone, cable TV and other wires in vast profusion.

Later….

Now we have a power cut and will be out of electricity for 2-3 hours. Everyone is at home with the A/C on and watching the big match on TV.

So, our host, Jessica, owns a bar not far away, and said we could go there and have free drinks and burgers while the power was out. What an insane scene! It was the final minutes of the final of the Copa do Brasil, which São Paulo has never won. They were 2-1 in the lead and managed to hold on for the win. The bar and indeed the whole street erupted with delirious fans jumping, screaming, chanting, singing, dancing whenever their team got the ball…the most Brazilian scene ever. When the final whistle blew the already crazy scene got even crazier. People were in tears, overwhelmed with emotion after their team won the national championship for the first time ever. They were very well behaved fans, taking selfies in front of the TV, revving their bike and car engines, waving flags and applauding. No overturned cars or lamppost climbing,

We are looking forward to one more (cooler) day in São Paulo tomorrow before we leave for Paraty, an old colonial town on the coast.