Sao Paulo

Well, here we are in Sao Paulo. Two ants in a huge city. Apparently Sao Paulo is the largest city in the southern hemisphere and the third largest in the world. We got here yesterday afternoon after a 6-7 hour bus ride from Paraty and 2 more hours of walking around looking for a hostel. Here is a sample of the scenery we had from the bus.

We are leaving tomorrow afternoon for Iguazu. So as you can imagine anything we see in these two days is barely scratching the surface. We spent most of the day today wandering around the ´centro´ and being tourists. Sao Paulo is a very modern city that reminds us a lot of New York or Buenos Aires- completely different than Paraty.

We walked through the asian part of town and made our way to the ´mercado municipal´ which is a big indoor market where they sell all kinds of meat, cheese, fruit, etc. We ate lunch while we were there- a ham sandwich type thing and fresh mango, papaya, pineapple and kiwi.

After the market we walked a few blocks to a tower called the edificio banespa where we went to the top to get a good view of the city. Neither of us were prepared for what we saw. We knew the city was big, but this is ridiculous. There were skyscrapers and buildings as far as we could see... in every direction! I mean, this made New York look small. We tried to post a video I took so you could get the full 360 feel that we did but this computer couldn´t handle it for some reason. Hopefully the pictures will still give you a good idea.

We are back at our hostel now to rest our feet a little, but we have the address of a Starbucks near us so we might go check it out. Too bad I didn´t bring my apron...
And for those of you who are curious what a hostel looks like, here is the one we are in now. This one is nicer than most and happens to have a good view of the city :)