Just a Quickie

This hostel is awesome. I can´t get my phone to work so far, so sorry for not calling anyone. But obviously I´m fine. This city is so much cooler than I had imagined, especially considering the amount of bad things so many people said about it! The neighborhood where I´m staying, Pinheiros, is pretty well-off and I spent a good amount of time in Jardims today, which is definitely more chic and swanky than what NY has to offer. I bought some flip flops for the scorching heat, and started to get tan... more like red.

Last night, with a little bit too much indulgence over a bottle of tequila, I met a bunch of kids at the Hostel. A pair from Norway, a guy from Peru, a few Australian girls (there are so many Australians everywhere-doing the tours in NY I met more of them than anyone else. Like roaches! But not in a bad way, they´re just everywhere!) and a guy from Berlin who is Portuguese-Italian - not that I like to talk about people in a utilitarian manner, but having a friend that speaks Portuguese is awesome. So me and this kid hung out all day today, and whenever I had any trouble he was able to jump in and help me out. Perfect. The Peruvian guy was insane. Me and him were going at the tequila like Jaws at that fishing boat. He spoke so many languages I wanted to puke on him. Pachuco, the International, he called himself. A bit extravagant, but it was a great time. So I went to bed late and woke up like a monster this morning. Breakfast here is nice though. They actually have really good coffee, unlike any coffe at any accommodation I´ve ever stayed at. This is Brazil, so I guess if they didn´t have decent coffee they would be being inappropriate. I was thinking about the part in Pulp Fiction at Quentin Tarantino´s character´s house. [I doñ´t need you to tell me it´s good coffee. I spend extra money at the grocery store for this, so I know it´s good. I don´t need you to tell me it´s good]. I expressed my joy to the Norwegians but kept my mouth shut otherwise.

So today, Ricardo (the Portuguese-Italian-German guy) and I walked 50 miles. The city is certainly huge, but there is so much to see! We started just before noon, walked through Jardims and saw some really cool shops - all the designer stuff, but the architecture is just amazing. It´s so so contemporary, and that architecture mixed with the tropical plants and trees is gorgeous. Then we went downtown. It could have been a downtown anywhere in North America. Basic mess of congestion, bad guys, good guys, office workers and police, in the midst of a beautiful theater and the tallest building in Sao Paulo, the Bank of the State of Sao Paulo. Then we hopped the Metro back to the Avenida Paulista and rested a bit. Then it started to rain. Apparently it rains every single day between 4:30 and 5:30, like clock work. It´s amazing how much rain falls, the streets turn to streams, the watter draggin any loose items it finds - garbage bags, shoes, whatever is hanging around the street or loosely attached to one´s foot. There aren´t really a lot of bars or pubs here, you have to search like hell for them. Instead there are juice bars. Stocked with melons, pineapples, coconuts, passion fruit and a dozen other things, you order what you want or any mix of options, and bam, fresh fruit juice. Tastes great in this hot weather.

I just got back to the hostel from this bar that was recommended-we decided to grab a little drink to finish off our journey. I had a couple caipirinhas with lime and passion fruit. Delicious. Due to the amount of fluids I lost today from sweating, I feel a little loopy from just that. Now everyone is asking where I´m going out tonight. I am dead. But it´s Friday night, it´s almost obligatory to go somewhere. I´ll see what happens.

Some day when I´m rich, I´m buying a place here. If only it was closer to the beach!