Sao Paulo

So after a 10 hour flight and a 30 minute taxi drive we arrived at our hostel, Che Legarto in the busy and bustling Sao Paulo city centre. Sao Paulo is the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere… With 5644 skyscrapers, a population of 40 million people, 2,9 million dogs, 580 000 cats (I had to throw that in) 🙂 it is a pretty phenomenal place. You think JHB traffic is bad… you ain’t seen NOTHING! Some wealthy businessmen use helicopters to get one from end of the city to the next because it can take hours in traffic!

The language barrier was a slight struggle at times, not many people speak English, the language spoken is Portuguese. Our first night it took us about 45 minutes to try and figure out what was on the menu, all we knew (& could understand) was that the Piranha steak was not an option. Thankfully my clever husband had Google translate app on his phone, so we managed to order a chicken salad and some other random breakfast meal for dinner

We only spent 2 days in the city, but managed to explore the beautiful Ibirapuera Park – a MASSIVE park where tons of people go to work out, run, cycle, walk their dogs etc. The park has a handful of outdoor gyms, a planetarium, 2 beautiful ponds with swans and ducks and some exquisite trees. We had an expensive lunch at Unique Hotels Skybar which gave us some incredible views of the skyscrapers… I felt rather underdressed as most of the woman parading Louis Vuitton or other expensive name brand outfits.

The graffiti along the street walls was something we both really enjoyed! Sao Paolo has become an artistic and creative city welcoming the graffiti artists, the colours and designs were phenomenal!