Day 1: Sao Paulo, Brazil

Well, we made it!! After more than 24 hours of travelling (from Vancouver --> Calgary --> Toronto --> Sao Paulo) we arrived at around 11am Brazil time (5 hours ahead) on March 7th. The B&B my dad chose is lovely, though from the outside looks like something simple. You get buzzed in and enter a world of orange and blue hues, wicker and wood furniture with gorgeous pottery and windy stairwells. There are only 10 rooms in this place so it´s intimate, and there´s free internet (a bonus!). We did wander around the city a bit today, through a market and a park, and had a nice lunch of eggplant, mozarella, apricot arugula salad .. and an antipasto plate. Oh and of course, 2 x 600 ml beer. The meal came to about $30 CAD so not bad, though I expect Argentina to be a lot more reasonable. The jet lag today will mean an early bed time, but since dinner doesn´t usually start until at least 8 we will have to cope with perhaps a 930pm bedtime ;). The cafes and bars are funky, nestled into little broken cobblestone streets. The people have been friendly, if a little shy, and we quickly learned that while Portuguese LOOKS a lot like spanish, the pronunciation is a world different! Prices of interest are approx $.80 per minute for the phone, $2/hr for internet, $35-$45/day budget IF you´re living in hostels and off of delicatessen food.

We are going to be here for another night and then head to Salvador (on the coast) by plane. It´s supposed to be a wealthy locale, with high-end resorts. We´ll be hotelling it ... and I think I´ll take in the non-hostel experience whilst with my parents, as it will come to an end when they depart at the end of March and I begin my hostelling endeavours. Unless, of course, Ryan is able to make it over here, in which case we may live it up a little and do the hotel thing for a bit :-).

Will write again in the next few days and post pictures then too.