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.
- Your passport will be checked at least three times from the time you disembark up to an excluding customs. Maybe it’s my face.
- No-one checked my yellow fever certificate which means my emcounter with a HUGE needle, in a smellly clinic, was all for nothing.
- Traffic is horrendous. People walk around with carts selling snacks, thus providing additonal things motorists have to avoid on a never moving freeway.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- And that’s all folks, it was a quick visit.