After the jaguar tour we stayed one more day at our wild camp spot near Porto Jofre so Finnley could run around a bit more and then we set off to drive the Transpantaneira out of Porte Jofre. This is a dirt road which goes, as the name already suggests, through the Pantanal. There were still quite some animals to see here and several wooden bridges to cross.
From the Pantanal we slowly started driving in the direction of Sao Paulo. Along the road we found some nice and some not-so-nice wild camp spot to spend the night. Two of them really stood out since they were next to some beautiful waterfalls.
Kilian started noticing that the temperature of the engine was getting (too) high for no reason. It appeared we lost some cooling liquid. After changing the thermostat and a new radiator cap he started looking for garages in Sao Paulo. I started looking for accommodation and things to do. In this search I stumbled upon a Dutch restaurant, but on further inspection it turned out it wasn’t in Sao Paulo but in a small town called Holambra. This town is a mostly Dutch settlement, the name a derision of the DUtch, AMerican and BRAsilian inhabitants. Several restaurants serve some Dutch food like kroketten, frikandellen and stampot and both speculaasjes and stroopwafels are being sold. Kroketten and frikandellen are Dutch deep fried meat snacks and speculaasjes and stroopwafels are Dutch cookies. With these nice Dutch foods calling our names we decided on a little detour. And we had a blast in Holambra. Many buildings have Dutch facades, there was a big windmill and we really enjoyed the Dutch food! I think we did more sight seeing in Holambra than we did in the Netherlands! It was so much fun!
After three nights in this town it was however time to make our way to Sao Paulo (SP). Kilian had already been in contact with some garages. And that was a good thing because he now had to add 2 liters of water every 100 km! We made it to a garage and after some inspection and a pressure test we got the bad news; the head gasket would need replacing again! We had the head gasket replaced in Costa Rica only two years ago! They probably made a mistake somehow and we were now paying for it, again! They told us it would take about three weeks! Crap, by now we had already noticed this wasn’t a very nice city and the choice of accommodations wasn’t great either. But with no choice left we agreed to bring the van as soon as we found a place to stay. Sao Paulo (SP) is the worlds fourth biggest city with 22 million people living it! This means the city is expensive and overcrowded and therefore apartments are really small. Since it was now Friday, I finally managed to book a studio for Monday, I couldn’t find anything with a separate bedroom, basically it was like staying in our camper only a bit bigger and a lot more expensive! We spend the weekend on a camp site outside of SP enjoying nature and we met some nice Brazilians, who were having a family get together there. They invited us for coffee and snacks like pastels. A pastel is deep fried pastry of savoury dough with meat inside it. And on Sunday we were invited to a churrasco, a Brazilian barbecue! We had a really nice time with them.
Then on Monday we went to the apartment. Now, online it said this was a great location, close to all the sights. And true, Sao Paulo does have a few nice sights. Beco de Batman a hip and upcoming area with nice murals, the theatre, the post office building, a monastery, the cathedral and parque Jardim da Luz. All the sights can easily be seen in two days though, it’s just a few buildings and streets.
So although close to the above sights, they had failed to mention the neighbourhood was horrible! Most cities have their sights in the centre and this area is usually kept nice and safe because of all the tourists. Well, this is not the case in SP. Down town SP is overrun with homeless people and drug addicts and there are quite a few prostitutes as well. There’s a lot of trash lying around, it smells horribly like pee in a lot of places and the trash and poop everywhere only add to that aroma! Buildings are grey with dirt and covered in ugly graffiti and are often in a bad state. Police is everywhere. There’s an area called Crackland where drugs are used openly on the streets. Needless to say this makes the centre with al its sights a very unpleasant and unsafe area. We were on guard and very careful the whole time. We bought a money belt, took only one of the two credit cards and left things like our wedding rings at home.
Basically you can skip the entire city, but if you insist on visiting then you can do it all in two days, tops. And part of that time you will spend in the horrible congested traffic if like us if you come by car. Wealthy business people use helicopters to avoid the traffic. Of course there are nice areas as well but these are mostly the (rich) residential neighbourhoods. In four years on the road this was by far the worst city we have ever been to. And we ended up staying here for almost four weeks, while they replaced the entire engine and some other parts as the head gasket wasn’t the only problem. After little over a week in the city and already bored, we rented a car and booked a hostel in Rio de Janeiro for 5 days early September, despite the extra costs. Rio also doesn’t have a great reputation safety wise, but it couldn’t be worse, could it? You will find out in our September blog. And yes, I know it is already October!
P.s: how do you like the featured image on top? Thought we had sneaked back to the Netherlands, didn’t you! ???? Fooled ya!