Author Zhu

The sun was shining, the city sounded dead quiet and we didn’t need hangover remedies since we only had half a glass of a mini bottle of cheap champagne.

“Well, I hope you can wait because we don’t really have the choice. First, it’s a bit of an old tradition that the new year starts at midnight, second we’re kind of stuck in a crowd of 1.7 million people.”

It’s only minutes before landing in São Paulo for the second time in nine days that I realized I could barely remember the first three days we spent there when we came from Canada.

This is one of the things I like best about travelling—first-hand experience. You can read all the books you want, chat with people and browse pictures, you won’t truly understand a place until you’ve been here.

You can eat, drink, exercise, shower, play, buy and sell stuff and more on Avenida Atlântica and on Copacabana Beach.

The 15-minute subway trip from Cardeal Arcoverde to Cinêlandia is barely long enough to realize that you’re not just travelling from one neighbourhood to another but stepping into a different world.

Of all the dangers I’m supposedly facing in Rio de Janeiro, it’s the old ladies walking their dogs I fear the most.

We spent Christmas Eve walking along the beach, getting soaked and drying between downpours.

The next day, we took the subway to the Terminal Rodoviário do Tietê, São Paulo’s bus terminal. Fuck. It did look like the Guangdong train station before Chinese New Year.

The first thing you’ll notice during the 40-minute taxi ride from the airport is that you won’t get to explore all of São Paulo—it’s huge.

So, why on earth are we starting the trip in São Paulo? Pure masochism?

Mark is possibly the only kid who was picked up from school early on an otherwise perfectly ordinary Wednesday to take a ten-hour flight straight to the Southern hemisphere.