Sao Paulo – Day Zero

Sunday was the day that I arrived into Brazil. I had a 10 hour non-stop flight from Chicago to Sao Paulo on United Airlines. The flight left Saturday night at 9:30 and arrived at 10:00am local time in Sao Paulo. The flight was actually very uneventful. I decided to wake up early on Saturday morning so that I would be tired on the flight. I also have a prescription for Ambien in case I needed help sleeping. I took one of those pills to help me get a good nights sleep, and it worked.  One small note, I watched Mall Cop for a portion of the flight. It was one of the movies available to watch. It was ok, but not great.

The flight arrived in Sao Paulo and we went through customs. Again, this was another very uneventful aspect of the trip itself. No questions were asked and I went right through. One good thing was that two other members of my class were on the flight. This meant we had three far a taxi from the airport to the hotel. We could have taken a bus, but the price would have been about the same. It cost us R$90 for the taxi, which was about $30 each. Right now the exchange rate is about R$2 to $1USD. Pretty good I have to say, it makes for easy calculations.

drive into town

After arriving at the hotel, we met up with a few other people from our class. Some interesting things that happened during the check-in process: we did not have a reservation in our names. This was quite a shock because we were expecting to have a reservation. Luckily the hotel had rooms so this was not a problem. We also had 3 people sharing one room. The room is a suite of sorts. It has a separate bedroom with two single beds. We had a third bed requested arrive after several attempts to get one. I am sleeping on the extra bed. It is actually not that bad all things considered. I have slept on worse. The bed didn’t actually arrive until about 9pm at night.

After some getting acclimated to the room, we decided to head out and get some food. We also thought it would be interesting to head out to one of the soccer fields afterwards. We had learned from the cab driver that there was a 4pm soccer match for the Palmeiras. This is one of the soccer teams in Sao Paulo. I looked up in my Fodor’s Sao Paulo & Rio book and located a place called Sujinho. This was an interesting restaurant mainly for the fact that it covered two corners of the intersection it was at. You could eat at either location. We also had learned that at a lot of restaurants, you order dishes for two. This was very helpful. There were six of us at this time. We ordered three plates of food, and we still thought this was too much. We ordered a filet mignon dish, a filet cubano dish and a chicken dish. I am not sure what kind of chicken dish it was. The dishes also came with tons of rice, fried broccoli, fried pineapple, fried banana and french fries. The food was delicious. It ended up costing about R$30 a piece for our first meal. That also included some beer. One thing we didn’t realize was that we some of the beer we ordered was actually non-alcoholic. Lesson learned number one.

fried foods: broccoli, pineapple, banana and meat

After we ate we set out on our journey to find the soccer stadium. This became the big walking adventure of the day. We asked the host at the restaurant where it was. He pointed in a direction and we went that way. We also had a map to help guide us. The host seemed a little surprised that we were actually going to walk. He kept saying taxi taxi. But, being from Chicago, it was only about 3km so we figured we would walk it. So we headed out and started walking. And walking. And walking. At one point we decided to stop and grab a drink.  We went to a little spot on one of the streets and grabbed a drink. Some had water, some had beer and some Gatorade. It was a nice break.

taking a break at a local little shop

As we were walking, we kept asking a few people if we were going on the right track and how long. Each time, they said about 15 minuets and they couldn’t believe we were walking. We thought this was odd that each person was saying 15 minutes, even though they were about 15-20 minutes apart. They also acted like we were on the right track. As we were walking, we came upon a bus terminal and a Metro station. I looked at the map and realized that the Metro station was not the one we were looking for. In fact, it was west and south of where we wanted to go. Instead of walking north, we had been walking west. At this point, we had to make a choice of whether to take a taxi or the Metro since it was right there. Not having taken the Metro yet, we decided to take it and experience Sao Paulo’s subway system.

I wish Chicago’s CTA was as good as the Metro. The Metro is clean, on time, clean, spacious, clean. And, did I mention clean? For a city of almost 15 million people, I was amazed at how well kept the Metro is. People were actually hanging out in the stations, sitting on the stairs. The stations are spacious and flowing. You line up in queues to get on board the train. It is organized. But at the same time, it was fast and like clockwork. We had to make two transfers between the first station and the station with the soccer stadium. We would get off one train, walk to the platform for the next one and it would arrive like it was planned. Almost every 2-3 minutes a new train would show up. It was a great experience. Also, it was R$2.55 a trip, which is about $1.25. how they do it, I will never know.

We arrive at the Barra Funda Metro stop in a short period of time. This stop was huge as it was a transfer point for several rail and subway lines. The soccer stadium was somewhere near this point. By this time, it was already night time as well and so we were now walking in the dark in a new city. Luckily there were six of us walking together. We walked down a couple of streets and were basically lost. We noticed some police and proceeded to ask them for information and directions. They pointed us in the direction of the stadium and said it was a 5-10 minute walk (again with the times) but commented that the game was about to be over and why would we want to go there at this point. One easy answer to this: Loco Americanos!

We started walking and noticed the large stream of people with soccer jerseys on. We knew we were close. Eventually we started to see the lights of the stadium and it was just up around the corner. Large crowds were leaving the area. We found the main entrance to the stadium which at this point was cleared out. Across the street was a huge block party of sorts. Tons of people hanging out drinking beer and eating. Also, there were the street vendors selling shirts and goods. Several of us bought shirts. I bought one as a souvenir. It was very cheap – R$28.

green is their color

While we were standing there, we noticed a large group of younger adults all start running down the street. We thought this was odd, and really didn’t comment on it. We decided it was about time to head to the Metro and make our journey back to the hotel. As we walk back to down this street in front of the soccer stadium, we see the large group of people standing in the street. All of a sudden, they run back through us. Then we see the large group of military police in riot gear following them. We then hear shots, tear gas canisters going off and we almost get into panic mode. Instead of running, we simply push ourselves to the nearest wall and stop. The kids run down the street being chased by the police. The police run by as well, holding more tear gas canisters ready to pull them. Luckily, when they looked at us just standing there, they realized we were not a threat and kept walking by us. We then decided to walk as quickly as possible to get out of this area. My first riot! Yeah!

The only other interesting thing that happened on the way back to the hotel on the Metro was this one kid that we saw. It looked like he had a huge gash on his forehead. Blood was splattered all over his face. We couldn’t tell if it was real or not. It looked real, it looked fake. I saw a blood tear come down from the scar and so believe that it was real. No one seemed to really pay attention or care. He was stopped by a couple police to ask him something. We did not stay and find out. He seemed to be ok and didn’t seem like he needed help. It will always be a mystery.

That was day Zero. It was not our first full day in Sao Paulo, which was Monday.

View Pictures