We took a cab from Itamambuca-- the beach where we stayed for several days after Ed and 'Na's wedding-- to Sao Paulo on Wednesday Jan. 2-- a bit expensive, but very hassle free compared to our other options, including the bus. One of the reasons the bus was unappealing is that to get from the beach to the highway linking Rio to Sao Paulo, you have to go through the Serra do Mar-- the coast mountain range-- up a very very steep two-lane road. In one 8 km section, it can take up to several hours in bad traffic, just to get up to the plateau of the range. We were lucky-- it only took about 45 minutes to get up this stretch of road, and from there, no traffic at all until we hit Sao Paulo, and even then, the traffic wasn't bad. Just one near collision.
Once we got to our hotel, we settled in, found some food (certainly not food that would do Sao Paulo justice-- it has a well-deserved reputation as a food paradise, but we happened on a very mediocre food court-- but it was quick, convenient, and didn't require extensive use of my and Matt's non-existent Portuguese), and then after a nap (a necessity after new year's eve in a beach house with 15-17 people 10-15 years younger than we are), two of Matt's virtual friends came to our hotel and picked us up. We ended up at one of the (probably) thousands of bars in Sao Paulo to celebrate the birthday of one of Matt's (no longer) virtual friends-- Lulina, in the bottom right of the last picture.
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