São Paulo, Brazil

after extended stays in salvador and rio, we have picked up the pace a bit, spending only two days in sao paulo on our way to foz do iguacu. sao paulo is one of the ten largest cities in the world, with the city and its surroundings providing homes to approximately nineteen million paulistas. for most of its history, the city has been relatively small, but in the last one hundred years it has become the industrial center of south america. the sprawling geography and immense population present serious challenges to visitors, so we dodged the issue by limiting ourselves to a very short stay.

we arrived by bus around five in the afternoon on sunday, which gave us time to check into our hostel and prepare for a night out. sao paulo is known to have a bustling nightlife, but sundays and mondays are pretty slow in most cities. we were lucky to find a very cool spot in vila madalena, and after struggling to squeeze our way through the packed dance floor into the bar, we bumped into a few english-speaking locals and had quite a nice night. the following morning we managed to wake up in time for a free breakfast and hit the streets early. we had a quick stroll along avenida paulista, the 'main drag' of the city, which we found to be quite western. we saw a myriad of office workers dressed quite formally (a change from the previous places we've been) pacing between the large office buildings during lunch break. afterwards, we fought through a bustling street mall (apparently paulistos love to shop) to the mercado municipal, wherein could be found every variety of meat, cheese, fruit, and vegetable imaginable. after a heaping mortadella sandwich (about half of all paulistas can claim italian heritage), i sampled an unfamiliar vermilion fruit which turned out to be excessively detoxifying.

on tuesday we checked out the impressive museu de arte de sao paulo, which boasted a very well-organized and -documented presentation of the last 100 years of the evolution of western art, as well as a stunning exhibition of what the chinese vanguard is up to these days. after that, it was time to haul our bags to the rodoviaria to catch a 17-hour bus to foz do iguacu.