It was a long and restless night snatching short periods of sleep, distracted only by my reading and radio. I was beginning to think a hotel would have been a better idea despite the short time I would have been there until I checked the board at about 3am for the details of my onward flight. It had been cancelled. Not good. Not good at all.
I went off to find someone in the deserted airport who could tell me what was happening. I was hampered by my lack of Portuguese and so far my attempts to communicate with people had proved entertaining rather than wholly successful; neither Spanish nor English helped as the Brazilian airport staff surprisingly seemed to speak only Portuguese. Eventually, after scouring three floors of the terminal - following different understandings from three different conversations - I found the airline office I needed. Knowing that flights to the Falklands are limited I was expecting to not get another until the next scheduled service the following week; although the airline would have covered any accommodation the impact on my plans would be significant. Luckily another option was available and I was to be routed via Santiago in two days time where I would spend another night before an early morning connection to the Falklands. With a clear plan I now felt more comfortable, that earlier sense of not knowing and of feeling lost and stranded now gone. I was steered to another office for vouchers to cover food and accommodation for the next two days in São Paulo, which once again proved challenging to find and to resolve. Nevertheless, after arm waving, a little Spanish, a touch of google translate and an hour and a half of my time I had a hotel to stay in, the promise of food and a taxi to get there.
It was 5.45am when I headed out from the airport towards the city centre. São Paulo is South America’s biggest city with over twelve million inhabitants and I had my first glimpses of it from the air when arriving the previous day. From the aircraft not only was its size obvious but it was clearly heavily built up; grey tower blocks in groups and in rows had filled my window. They were everywhere, nowhere seemed free of them. They defined the view. An hour previously I had been hard pressed to see any habitation among the green of the hills and mountains over which we had been flying. Now I could see no green and only the murky outline of hills somewhere on the horizon.
If anything the view from the ground seemed worse. We drove down a four lane highway full of cars even at this hour (another four lanes headed in the opposite direction adjacent to us). We passed the grey of anonymous hotels and square office blocks. We drove under concrete bridges and over concrete flyovers. There was not a field in sight; nature had been swallowed whole here. The nearest we got to anything natural was when our highway paralleled the river for a while but even that was hemmed in by great concrete banks. Unable to meander or flood, any part nature had once played in the life of the river was now neutered.
After thirty minutes we arrived at the hotel, the usual comfortable but anonymous travellers' sort of place adjacent to a main road and nestled among more concrete buildings. In getting here I had not been able to discern any change from one part of the city to another, no change in scenery or style or obvious economic specialisation, all had seemed tarmac and square, brutish stone and concrete and with only the occasional grassy central reservation for distraction.
I checked in, showered and headed for breakfast; it was still only 6.30am. After that it was into bed for the luxury of lying down, stretching out and sleeping for the first time in many hours.
When I awoke, groggy and confused as only lengthy travel without sleep can make you, I determined to set out to explore the city. I headed towards the centre on cracked and weedy pavement; as well as being grey the place had a run-down feel about it. There were occasional buildings with a splash of primary colour but rather than lift the overall appearance this just seemed to further emphasise the dullness of the whole.
I walked along the main road into the city with a view to visiting an information office somewhere nearby. It was long and straight and a raised metro line ran down the middle on solid concrete supports while either side were three lanes of traffic; everywhere represented the triumph of man over nature, a mass of linear urbanisation instead of the softer and irregular lines of natural countryside. I walked over the Tiete river, tightly constrained by steep sided and straight concrete banks to the point it could have been a canal. Looking along this once river, fixed and cowed to allow for the nine lanes that ran alongside, I saw in the distance only a horizon lined with more uniform towers.
The shops along these wide, busy and anonymous streets seemed run down and lacking in variety: mainly a few open cafes and a number of workshops for the numerous cars that filled the roads of this city. Among the workshops and the cafes there were a surprising number of small furniture shops but they did little to add any elegance to the place; it was more a case of the furniture being in the window simply to be seen rather than any thought of it being displayed.
My hunt for the tourist office proved fruitless and after a while I decided to give up and retrace my route to the hotel where a bed awaited and which eventually proved to be more desirable than dinner.
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