After 3 years in South America, I’ve had my first experience of Brazil, as I went to an education conference in São Paolo in October.

São Paolo is a mega city, the largest city in Latin America with over 30 million people in the macro-metropolis area.  It is absolutely vast and the car is the favoured way to travel.  The traffic is correspondingly awful and huge motorway-width roads carve through the city, certainly everywhere we travelled.  We were advised that we should allow two hours to travel between the airport and our hotel, which was only a distance of 33 kilometres.

From what we experienced of the city, it is densely built with tower blocks everywhere and residential and offices mixed into together.  There are some neighbourhoods called Jardim (garden) which are a bit greener, but not that much. 

Malls seemed to be a popular way of shopping and the students we had taken with us were very keen to experience them.  The first one we visited was a temple to luxury with the shiniest floors and walls I’ve seen and home to Cartier, Gucci, Prada et al.  We did a 5 minute gawp at all the things we couldn’t afford and didn’t need and then went to a more normal, but still mega-sized mall, where the students shopped and we had a good Italian meal, in a restaurant named after a sheep (something for the Falklands’ restauranteurs to consider!)

I had been told that São Paulo is the foodie capital of Brazil and we ate very well.  The different migrant communities brought their food with them, so as well as traditional Brazilian food there is an excellent range of Italian and Asian restaurants.  Apparently São Paulo has the largest Japanese community outside Japan and just round the corner from our hotel was a Japanese restaurant, which we really enjoyed.

Due to our conference commitments we didn’t get a chance to explore but I did have one great cultural experience. At tne end of a conference day there was an hour for a Brazilian experience – I chose Batucada, which is a style of Samba carnival percussion. A group of 4 talented, energetic, patient and smiley musicians, took a slightly weary group of middle-aged British school leaders and shared their joy of the music with us. It was huge fun and at the end we too were smiley and relaxed. I just need to find a Batucada session in the Falklands!