Partying in Florianopolis

After Sao Paulo we were looking forward to go to a place with a beach so we had quite high expectations for Florianopolis. But of course for our luck it started to rain as soon as we got to the town… And not just some rain but actually so heavy rain that the streets were flooding like crazy…

In a small place like that there’s not much to do if it’s raining – expect drinking! And because it was also a Saturday night the hostel had put on a nice little party for us. We also had an organized transport to a night club and it wasn’t just a normal bus but actual party bus with disco lights, good music and people dancing on the floor and even on the seats! It was a crazy party!

After partying until sunrise we were happy that the next day was sunny and we could relax on the beautiful beach just next to our hostel. After catching the sun again we were ready to head to the inland towards the border of Brazil and Argentina!

Sao Paulo - A city full of contradictions

Our first weeks in Brazil we only visited places with a beach so next in our agenda was the megapoly city of Sao Paulo. The fact that this city has 4 times more people than in the whole Finland made us quite scared before even entering to the city and already the first day in Sao Paulo we faced the truth what this kind of big city means...

 

After travelling 6 hours by a comfy bus we arrived to the terminal which is also South America’s biggest bus terminal. This time being smart we had written down the directions to the hostel beforehand and we knew which metro lines to take. Even that we had read from our guide book that we should avoid taking the metro during the rush hour, we still decided to give it a go – a totally wrong choice! 

When we first arrived to the platform we thought that there has to be something wrong with the metro because we saw thousands of people waiting for the next metro. However, after asking some locals what’s going on and is the metro running, they just said that this is normal rush hour time for every day! We determinedly pushed our way to the crowd and used our bags to avoid getting squeezed by the people. We waited about an hour and maybe 20 metros before it was our turn to squeeze inside. Magda had been more pushy and got into metro before me and I had to wait another 5 metros more before I could get in too. When it was my time to get in, someone stepped on my foot and I lost my sandal but in the crowd I didn’t even have a chance to look for it while people were pushing me to go further inside. It was only 4 stops but it took forever because all the lines were stuck and the metro had to wait a long time before it could even move anywhere...

So after this adventure, we were so happy when finally arrived to our hostel. However, when we realized that this hostel was nothing as nice as it was described on the website, we got so disappointed of the whole stay in Sao Paulo that we just hoped that we would have skipped the whole place.

After all, next day we gave a chance to the city and wanted to see what the city has to offer. As being girls we were pretty excited especially about the shopping possibilities in such a big city. However, we don’t know where Brazilians get their taste of fashion but for us the choice of clothes was just terrible! So disappointed from the shopping we concentrated to the few sightseeing places the city is famous from. One of them is the Japanese district which is quite unique as every big city has a china town but Sao Paulo has the biggest area of Japanese influence after Japan itself. And the sushi we had in the Japanese town was probably the best part of our day. 

Another thing that Sao Paulo is famous from is the skyscrapers and the tourists can also visit the tallest building in the city in one hour in the afternoon. For our luck, it always started to rain during that time and the first day the tower was shut but luckily on the second day we could quickly visit the tower and see how big this gray city actually is.

So for us Sao Paulo didn’t offer anything special and we were more shocked of certain things in the city than being amazed of. Especially the huge gap between the poor and the rich in the city was pretty noticeable and homeless people could be seen in every part of the city. Even the much spoken nightlife of the city was disappointing when we once tried to explore the fancy bars of the city. So after two days in Sao Paulo we thought we seen enough and were ready to leave the city.

The local touch of Paraty

After the weekend in Ilha Grande our next stop was in a small town called Paraty which is famous from the colonial-time buildings, cobblestone streets and picturesque beaches. Because we wanted to travel cheap, we decided to take the public transport there. The public ferry was pretty simple but the two-hour bus ride was just a total nightmare when the bus was so crowded that people had to stand with their luggage and of course there was no air-condition so by the end of the trip we were pretty exhausted…  

Already the first evening in the town we met some nice locals in our hostel. One of the guys had a fancy car with amazing sound system with music videos and somehow we ended up cruising around the center playing music loud windows wide open to look for the best party of the town. Unluckily it was a Monday night so the party in the car was much better than in any other place in town. 

The next day was a perfect sunny day and our own local guides with the same fancy car took us to see the best sights of Paraty. We saw a waterfall where you could slide down the rock along with the current and another one which hide a small cave behind the mass of the water and where you could also go inside. We had a great day full of activities but somehow we also had a feeling that we were more the attraction being blond girls on the back seats of the car and the boys were just showing us around. :) In any way, thanks to our local friends we saw some beautiful beaches and places which we couldn’t have found on our own. Overall, Paraty was definitely one of our favorite places in Brazil!

A weekend full of action at Ilha Grande

After Rio we decided to spend couple of days on a small island called Ilha Grande, which was only a two-hour drive to the port where we took a one-hour ferry to the island. However, the trip wasn’t that simple as it was supposed to be… First of all, after couple of hours sleep from the night before, travelling with heavy backpack is never fun. Then trying to explain to the driver, who doesn’t speak any English, that we need to get some cash out on the way because on the island aren’t any ATM’s. Finally when we got to the port, Magda realized that she had mysteriously lost one of her favorite sandals. Possibly it was dropped out from the van when another customer had left the car one stop before. We were undoubtedly a funny looking two blonds with heavy bags and cranky faces and one of us walking with only one shoe… 

When we saw the boat which was supposed to take us to the island we thought that it was a joke! This tiny boat with capacity to max 8 people were barely staying above the water and the cockeyed captain could not possible even go straight with the boat and not to even mention about taking us all the way to the island! Luckily we had some local tourists coming with us to the same boat and made us to feel safer. However, these locals started their holiday straight away by lighting up a joint and laughing and dancing the whole way to the island. It was a wonder that nobody fall overboard… 

 We had booked dorm beds from a hostel beforehand but again as we are two blonds, we had forgotten to write down the address of the hostel and even the whole name of the hostel. So there we were again walking around on this island with our backs trying to ask locals where this hostel, which name we only partly remembered, were located and in some miracle way we did find the right place! 

Our plan for the two-day stay on the island was just to relax on the beach but actually the days filled up with heavy hiking in the rainforest while we were searching for the tranquil beaches with turquoise water without really thinking that almost 20 km hike in the rainforest during the hottest time of the day might be quite hard thing to manage.. So on the second day we had managed to hike to another beautiful beach and we couldn’t be bothered to hike back and therefore we decided to take a boat back to the town we were started. So after these two days we were not really feeling relaxed, instead our feet hurt like hell and again walking with the backpacks were not fun at all…

One of the funniest things that we experienced on the island was during our last evening when we went to drink some beers with our German friends to a small local bar and suddenly a tropical storm hit the island and it started to rain heavily. Instead of the locals on the island moved away from the rain, these people went crazy about the storm and started to dance in the rain! Brazilian funk music loud on the background the locals started to show their moves which look more like they were giving lap dances to each other and when they tried to get us involved, we decided that it’s time leave this place because it just looked too crazy for us to handle…

Caipirinhas and Cariocas in Copacabana

After hearing all the scary stories about the dangers of Rio, we were pretty scared to even walk on the streets during the first days of our stay but the more time we spent in the city, the more confident we got to explore also the downtown of the city without thinking all the time that someone is trying to rob us. One day we decided to take a tour from our hostel and saw all the main sights of the city at once. For us the well-known Cristo statue didn’t offer such a big wow-effect as we hoped for but the famous Sugar Loaf instead was much better experience, when we went to the top of the 396 meter high mountain with a cable car and the views over the city were just amazing! 

To us the highlight of the sightseeing in Rio was definitely Santa Teresa and the staircase of Selarón, which also hides such an interesting story behind. The stairs are made by a Chilean artist, who started to cover some 215 steps with over 2000 tiles from 120 countries in mosaic-like shapes already in the 90’s. However, the area were the stairs are located, used to be inhabited by drug dealers and the more famous and touristy these stairs became, the more the drug dealing had to be moved away from the area. Sadly, the Chilean artist was found dead in January this year and there were also speculations that he was murdered by the drug dealers. This was because the body was found with burn marks on the steps just after he had given an interview to one newspaper where he had admitted that he has received dead threats from the dealers. So if we would have visited the stairs two months ago, we would have had a chance to see the artist himself working on his masterpiece just like he was doing every day before his death...

In Rio we also got familiar with the crazy nightlife scene of the city. The best parties of Rio are located in the area of Lapa, where especially during the weekends the streets are full of terraces and people drink and dance on the streets all night long.. After drinking too many caipirinhas and partying until the sunrise, we spent our days mostly on the beach of Ipanema where we also got to know many Cariocas, the locals who pretty much use the beach as their living room and spend the days enjoying the sun and talking to gringos like us. 

The last night in Rio we spent on the beach of Copacabana playing guitar and singing with Cariocas. Next it was time to have a break from the caipirinhas and get away from the big city to an island of no roads or traffic just to relax…