For a last bus trip, the Santos to São Paulo ride is pretty anticlimactic—it only takes 70 minutes, two hours if you insist on taking the slowest bus. No power outage, no last-minute surprise, yes it arrives on time.

I waited for my 12:30 p.m. bus listening to Ace of Base and Scorpion, the Terminal Rodoviário de Santos playlist. I’m telling you, this city is stuck in the 1990s.

Despite my best efforts to arrive as close to 3 p.m. as possible, the Airbnb wasn’t ready yet, so I dropped off my backpack and went to explore nearby streets. I picked a place in Bela Visa this time, not far from Avenida Paulista—an eight minutes walk downhill, but a twenty minute walk uphill!—but I didn’t know this part of the neighbourhood.

It took me less than five minutes to find coffee, cigarettes, a comida por kilo restaurant, several small supermarkets and a seamstress to mend my poor Hello Kitty beauty case I’ve been carrying around since our 2008 trip to China.

I smiled. This is what I love about São Paulo and Brazil in general. I can find everywhere I need easily, I can get around easily. Pretty much the opposite of my life in Canada.

The weather was gorgeous and it smelled like summer even though it’s fall down there.

“Any plan for the last three days?”

“The usual, roaming around the city, crying once in a while, buying stuff, getting a haircut…”

São Paulo has to be the best city on earth for urban exploration. It’s endless, it’s bustling with energy, it never really sleeps, it’s surprising and heartwarming because you’d think it’s a soulless megalopolis but the cliché is wrong—people are pretty friendly and it’s not as dangerous or grim at it seems. Granted, the entire city looks like neighbourhoods your mum warned you about—homeless people under bridges, graffiti everywhere, crumbling buildings. But it’s normal here. Honestly, you’ll be fine.

If you’ve checked out the pictures before reading this, you’re probably wondering what’s wrong with me. How can I love both pristine beaches and what looks like a giant urban mess? Trust me, São Paulo may not look that great but it’s a very addictive place.

So I got a haircut, I got kind of lost, I got sad, I got several t-shirts and other small useful items, I got hungry and I got good food, I got happy again, then I got what Brazilians called saudade. De tudo.

I spent hours in the crowded streets around the Mercado Municipal, a giant open-air market where you can buy cellphone accessories, makeup or twenty pounds of cod fish. I explore Libertade—aka Little Tokyo—and Paulista, I roamed around Consolação and I discovered parts of the Centro I didn’t know.

I’m tired. The good kind of tired.

I’m sad. The healthy kind of sad—I’m happier when I’m travelling and I think I’m lucky to know what makes me happy in life.

I’m excited to see Mark and Feng, plus some of my favourite people in Ottawa.

Okay, I’d better go through security. I’m at GRU, boarding AC91 to Canada soon. The COVID test centre is empty, the airport is busy—very different from last year when it was the other way around. Life felt normal and fun down here, won’t be the same in Canada. I can take it. I think.