10 Things I learned in Brazil.

This seems a little more dramatic than it needs to be, as I was in Sao Paulo for one night only. And that is not a sold out Broadway show. Not yet anyhow.  It’s just me being wisk away across the Atlantic in a metal tube for one meeting and then flying back the next day.

But like anything in life there is always lessons to be learned.  Here goes.

1. Your passport will be checked at least three times from the time you disembark up to an excluding customs. Maybe it’s my face. 
2. No-one checked my yellow fever certificate which means my emcounter with a HUGE needle, in a smellly clinic, was all for nothing.
3. Traffic is horrendous. People walk around with carts selling snacks, thus providing additonal things motorists have to avoid on a never moving freeway.
4. Woman do not strut their stuff in g-strings like they do in all the travel brochures of Brazil. They do drive taxis though. But fully clothed.
5. Public urination is frowned upon even though the canal smells like a urinal during the October fest. A cop will verbalise his disgust in Portuguese even if you have a medical condition and would die if you hold it for another second.
6. People consume so much meat that if you dare to witness a full sitting, you are definately going to end up with a gout attack or something worse. It has to be a vegetarian’s worst nightmare.
7. Some areas of the city has a putrid smell that can only be described as the underarm pit of a hoarder-cat-lady who belongs to a cult that considers personal hygiene a cardinal sin.
8. Caparinho is a lemon-vodka based drink so sweet, it strips the fluoride from your teeth whilst attempting to finish it. It contains approximately 1,634,298 calories. Per sip.
9. It takes a taxi one hour and forty five minutes to get from the hotel to the airport at the speed of a dying snail. I already mentioned the traffic didn’t I?
10. And that’s all folks, it was a quick visit.