Sao Paulo City Tour

Welcome back to Sao Paulo! This morning, our trusty tour guide picked up the three of us at the hotel promptly at 9:30 to begin the day's adventure. The temperature was already 30C and quite humid. A nice air conditioned vehicle made the journey much more tolerable.

We drove around various parts of the city to head to the Independence Park Museum and Palace. Built in 1890, this palace was one of the earliest monuments to the independence of Brazil. We had actually driven by this place in the past a couple of times on lost cab rides trying to get to work - at least we had seen the main military bronze monument (built in 1921) at one end of the surrounding park before. Brazil declared its independence from Portugal in 1822. This place is now a Sao Paulo history museum and was fun to venture around. We were not allowed to take photos inside, but got some outside on and the ground surrounding. See the photo link at the bottom of this post.

From there, we drove into the heart of downtown, looking at a lot of interesting buildings and parts of the city. Lots of traffic, lots of people out for the day. We saw the Municipal Theater, modeled after the Paris Opera. This place opened Sept. 12, 1911. There is a picture in the photo album. Some things new, many things old. Then it was testosterone time! The driver knew I was a motorcycle junkie and he took me through the "motorcycle section" of town. A long couple of blocks of motorcycle shops, one after another. And a gazillion bikes parked and moving about. My kind of place!

A funny thing about the downtown area is you have all of these specialty shopping areas. We have seen many. I just talked about the motorcycle area, but we have seen many others. We saw one area that was a couple of blocks selling nothing but mannequins! And another section that was all bridal wear - store after store, lined up side by side! And an electronics section that is only rivaled by the Ahikabara area in Tokyo!

We commented we had never seen a cemetery nor a firetruck / fire station in all of our travels around the area. Today we saw both. The cemetery (see photo link) very much reminded me of the Catholic influence of the area.

The fire station boys were very talkative to an American. My driver told him I was a fireman from Colorado that rode motorbikes. We talked a long time, very friendly people. The fireman let me sit on his bike for a photo.



They use the motos as an advance team for a call to see if they really need to bring out the heavy gear and big ladder trucks. With the traffic like it is as well as the narrow, twisty streets everywhere, I cannot imagine trying to navigate a regular fire truck around. All of the buildings and houses are made of bricks and concrete anyway, so they probably don't see much action.

Then we headed to the central train and subway station building, the Estacao da Luz, built in 1901. The central vaulted area covers 4 tracks. Again, you can see this in the photo album. This is a neat old building that sees lots of action. It was interesting to hear that the trains are not national as the states in Brazil use different gauges - some narrow, others "standard". There is an effort to change this in place within the country, but that is about 5 years down the line.



From here, we drove around to a more modern area of town, the Paulista district. We stopped at this very old coffee plantation home preserved in the middle of the financial district. This was a neat old stone home surrounded by some splendid gardens.

On our way back, we stopped for a photo op at the Monumeto as Bandeiras. Completed in 1950, this tribute to the explorers who opened up Brazil's interior. Photo in the album.

We finished up with a nice lunch in the Italian district.

There are a couple of "different" aspects about men's restrooms down here. One is you frequently find tissue dispensers just above the urinals. Can't touch anything dirty, now can we? Another oddity is that in nice places to eat, there are ice cubes in the urinals. Today, there were Mentos down there - keeps things smelling fresh. Different strokes for different folks.



We safely arrived back to our hotel around 4 in the afternoon, ready for a nap! Thanks for reading.

Here is the link to my photos, starting with a couple from last trip before venturing into today's trip.

Click Here!

Round 3

Arrived back in Sao Paulo yesterday after another uneventful flight (the best kind). Brazil went off of Daylight Savings Time while I was away, so the home time difference is now only 4 hours. That will change to 3 hours when the USA makes the flip on March 8.

Still very warm and humid. Had a dandy of a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon with plenty of lightening close by. This afternoon's storm ought to break out any moment.

We have scheduled a city tour for this coming weekend. Ought to get some more photos then. Otherwise, it's the usual work party each day.

See you this weekend...

Evidence of the burning couch

A couple of days ago I mentioned we saw a burning couch on the side of the freeway, during rush hour. Today I got a picture of the burned out carcass, still sitting on the side of the highway.



The whole time we have been here, we have been watching the painting of a mural on a freeway wall. It is being done by a couple of Art schools and is very nicely done. I took several pictures that I will put on Picassa, but here is one to grab your interest.



And finally, here is another video taken from a bridge over the freeway we take every day to get to and from the client sight. Traffic is moving along very quickly in this one. Watch the motorcycle guys...

Testing a video

I may remove this post before all is said and done. Yesterday, while in the cab heading back to the hotel after work, I tried an experiment capturing a video of the motos on the freeway. But of course, when I want to capture chaos, things were pretty normal. I am not sure how this going to work, but here is a test. The file on my laptop is 175M. Let me know about performance issues if you try the movie link.

Here goes...

A Big Weekend - Mountains and Japanese Sao Paulo

We covered a lot of ground over the weekend and it was all good, with the exception of a traffic jam last night. But one thing I forgot to mention earlier in the week. Wednesday, while driving down this 10 lane freeway at a grand speed of 20 KPH, we look off to the side of the road to see a couch sitting upright, as it should be, right beside the road, in full flame. I mean, this bad boy had been carefully placed by the highway and torched. And nobody seemed to care one bit. Everyone was driving along in the frenzie, paying no mind, and no fire trucks (which is something I have yet to see down here). Pretty funny.

Yesterday our trusty tour guide took us to Campos do Jordao, which is about 180K north and east of Sao Paulo. This would take us into the mountains - something us Colorado folks have been itching to see. We took off from the hotel at 9AM and hit the road. About an hour later, we stopped for a pit stop in the Brazilian version of "Stuckeys", but the specialty of the house is chicken. The place was packed and it seemed to be a good spot for the moto-tourists to take a break as well. On the freeway, I got to see lots of nice, fast sport bikes, still lane-splitting, when needed, at 120 KPH.



We returned to the road and soon started climbing up into the mountains. I had to keep reminding myself that I am in the tropics and north of the Tropic of Capricorn, so this mountain excursion will not remind me of Colorado. The ride up was beautiful, even if our driver was driving the Chevy minivan like a sports car. We stopped at a roadside overlook just short of our destination for some photos and a taste of sugar cane juice. Very nice, but super sweet.

Next we arrived in Campos, which is this German / Swiss town for the wealthy. The architecture is very German and Swiss, up in the mountains, lush green everywhere.



We drove through town and then stayed on the road to climb higher up, eventually reaching the "end of the road" at the highest point of our trip - 2035M or 6766 feet. It cooled down to the mid-80s temperature wise, a welcome relief. Looked at many places in the country, including some really big, but very beautiful hotels built on the side of mountains with distinctive German architecture. There are lots of photos in the photo album that accompanies this blog. Back to town for lunch and the German influence was everywhere.



Enjoyed some fine food and very good Brazilian brewed German beer. I thought I had returned to Munich when the glass of suds arrived. We walked around a bit - the place was beautiful, full of people and full of life. I spotted a couple of my beloved BMW motorcycles parked up here - which really warmed my heart. Don't see many German bikes in Brazil, but found this sticker on a 1200GS as a positive sign they are here somewhere...



We had a great afternoon hanging out at the sidewalk cafe, enjoying good food, good friends, and good beer. The street entertainment was awesome as well. The cafe where we dined had a guy playing Beatles tunes on a Sax and he was good. In the street was a mime with a outfit that made it look like he was riding a horse. He was a hoot to watch as he harassed motorcycle riders, slowed traffic, and made everyone laugh.

Finally had to head back to Sao Paulo. Just as we arrived in the city, we encountered stand still traffic for 2+ hours. What a let down to such an exciting day. Finally got to the hotel almost 12 hours after we started.

Today, Sunday, was a sleep in day. Arose to some nice Brazilian coffee, a good time with my Sword, followed by a steamy run in the nearby park. Cleaned up, had a good breakfast and it was time to head to Liberdade, the Japanese community in Sao Paulo.



The Japanese community here is 2nd only to Japan itself. Today is market day down there and the place was crazy-packed with people and booths. It was sunny and very hot. It is also called the hippy market and we could see why: lots of beads, incense, macrame for sale as well as typical 70s hand made "stuff". But a lot of Japanese influence in some of the things being sold also. We had lunch in a Chinese / Japanese buffet. When you can't read nor speak the lingo, buffets are the way to go. You walk in, grab a plate, fill 'er up, pay by the weight of your plate. I needed a beer and was rewarded!

Enough for now. Many new picture have been added. Start about midway through, if you have already seen the ones from the last trip.

I am still trying to figure how to make this a linky so you don't have to cut-n-paste, but Blogger is baffling me...

Here are the pictures

Again, thanks for reading and the emails of encouragement. Get to head back to Colorado next Friday for almost 10 days. Then round 3...

Still here...

No, I haven't been captured by the famed Brazilian bandits. Just lots of long hours at work and not much "fun time" yet. It sure rains a lot here! And very warm and humid. The cab ride back to the hotel this afternoon was in a fairly hard rain storm. It was amazing to watch the gazillion motorcycle riders ripping through all that wet traffic, lane splitting like it was nobody's business. These folks are fearless. I really need to figure out how to capture the moto frenzie on film (or digits).

We have booked an adventure for Saturday into the mountains near by. Looking forward to seeing that. Booked flights for trip 3 later in the month.

Stay tuned this weekend for some exciting adventure stories. Thanks for reading!

Back in Sao Paulo

Left Colorado yesterday in some very nice weather. Pretty cold and windy (and a little snow) there most of the week. Arrived to hot and humid.

A huge thank you to American Airlines who comped us Business Class upgrades on the long flight this morning. Now that is flying in style! If Business Class is this nice, I cannot image the spoilage that occurs up front. This was really cool.

Back to work with our Brazilian friends tomorrow and sight seeing adventures this coming week-end! The Super Bowl starts at 9PM Brazilian time, so not sure how much of that I will be able to stay awake to see. And the saddest part is that the commercials are not shown down here! I mean, come on, those are the highlights of the game. Go Cardinals! (sorry, Sam)