I was actually able to sleep on this bus ride, which was a miracle since it was the worst bus imaginable with a frat party of Brazilian men happening in the aisle next to me and trash everywhere. I think I was just so exhausted that my body gave up. I woke up when the bus stopped for breakfast at around 8:00am. Alyssa had unfortunately not been so lucky and hadn't slept at all, so she stayed on the bus trying to rest while I went in to have breakfast. Brazilians don't typically eat much for breakfast so I was shocked to see a huge breakfast buffet spread before me. I was actually able to get eggs, bacon, yogurt and fruit which I was soooo happy about. Sadly, it did cost over $10USD, but I've really just stopped paying attention to what things cost in Brazil, it's just depressing. After breakfast, we still had 5 more hours until we reached Sao Paolo. Thankfully, I was able to fall back asleep for most of it and we were there before I knew it.
I felt refreshed when we arrived (which rarely happens after an overnight bus) but poor Alyssa felt miserable. Luckily, the hostel we had made reservations at gave us pretty thorough directions on how to get there by metro and the metro was located in the bus terminal, so it was very easy to use. Once we exited the metro, we could not find the street we needed to walk down to get to the hostel so we tried to ask some young girls in Spanish and thankfully they spoke perfect English and were able to plug the address into their iPhone and point us in the right direction. It was a 5 minute climb up a massively steep hill to get to the hostel and we were exhausted from carrying our packs when we arrived. We were staying in a four person mixed dorm, but the other people were not there when we arrived so we had a chance to settle in.
We went out in search of some lunch and to get an idea of our surroundings. Everyone had told us how dangerous Sao Paolo was, so I had been expecting it to be all slums, but the area we were staying in called "Vila Madelena" was extremely nice and upscale. Don't get me wrong, we drove through some incredibly impoverished areas on our way into town and I'm positive there are areas that you wouldn't want to walk around and speak English in, but we tend to stay in nicer, touristy areas and I felt completely safe there. Alyssa had looked up a little cafe before we headed out and they had delicious food and a full bakery. Alyssa had her first Acai bowl, complete with bananas and granola (something we would come to love eating in Brazil). It is basically frozen Acai juice with toppings that is very refreshing. After lunch and a few cups of coffee, we headed back to the hostel.
The guy working at the hostel front desk was very knowledgeable and we asked him tons of questions trying to determine if we should go to Rio de Janiero or Ilha Grande next. We had not realized that the upcoming weekend was the Brazilian Independence Day, so most of the hostels were already booked and the ones that were available were very expensive and had a 3 night minimum. We went back and forth over the options for hours before Alyssa had reached her limit due to exhaustion and I just made the decision to go to Rio first and Ilha Grande second and booked two hostels on HostelWorld for an insane price. We really didn't have a choice though; we wanted to go to both of those places and we only had a week left so the decision had to be made. Once that stress was over we decided to go grab some dinner.
We walked around the area for about 45 minutes perusing menus. There we tons of cute places and we were a little indecisive about what we felt like eating. We finally settled on a cute restaurant that looked like something you'd find in New York. I felt like I'd been eating way to many carbs so I got a salad and Alyssa got the fish which our waitress had recommended and she said it was one of the best things she'd eaten on our trip. We obviously don't read Portugese so ordering from a menu would be impossible but the Brazilian people are always so willing to try and help, even when they don't speak English. We somehow figure out a way to communicate between Spanish and sign language.
After dinner, we headed back to the hostel to try to get some sleep since we would try to get up relatively early to get to the bus station and buy tickets to Rio de Janiero.
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