Travel shots galleries

Cleveland, OH, USA, July 2003

Niagara Falls, Canada, July 2003

Traveler's journals

Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dec 2001    

Regarded by many as the Business capital of Latin America. I must agree on this, since there is nothing much else there worth seeing or (legally) doing by visitors from abroad, I’m afraid. In this huge 17m inhabitants city you will find some museums and art galleries, most of them vacant or with rather pitiful collections. People there are way too occupied with their looks and with guarding their possessions from those (lots of them) who have nothing, to find an interest in culture. This middle-class lot is very keen on exercising though – parks (which house several vacant museums) are otherwise full of joggers. Hardly surprising for a country (still) nurturing pristine human relations, where one’s look and shape HAS to comply with social standards, no matter how ambiguously set.

If you want to get to anywhere in the city, you have to take a cab. Buses come when they come and they aren’t advisable for visitors anyway. Beware though, metered cabs have a time meter (not a distance meter), which in a traffic jams littered city rapidly brings the bill up.

Cabs from the airports (white with blue stripes) operate on the fixed charge basis, dependent on your destination. So sit back and try to look relaxed on the way to the city, as the driver (skillfully) jokies for those few extra meters in traffic jams.

Should you find yourself in Sao Paulo, head for Placa de Se and Placa de Republica, the two main squares in the city center. They are within walking distance apart, which I recommend, to give you the feel for the buzzing life of packed streets full of ordinarily (and poor) folk selling cheap gadgets for peanuts.

A cheap option to get to Rio and doing some sightseeing on the way is to take a bus. Their intercity bus network is well developed. There are a dozen bus companies offering hourly journeys to Rio. These vary from about 20 R$ for an ordinary bus, to 34 R$ for executive bus with air conditioning, which in a tropical +35C climate is a necessity for us. The journey takes about 6 hours with half an hour stop in between. Make sure your baggage is given an ID tag matching that on your ticket! I thoroughly recommend this option if you are going to Rio (or from Rio to Sao Paulo for that matter). It sure gives you more pristine feel of the country from geographical to social viewpoint, as you ride form the city center (I left from Tiete bus station) through the suburbs housing favelas, hitting the open road and after some hours arriving back into favelas at the onset of Rio de Janeiro.