After a bit of rest and relaxation in Florianopolis, we checked into what was seemingly an all guy hostel (Ben's choice) in Sao Paulo of which the only highlight was the owner's cute little terrier puppy that kind of mooched about the dorms and greeted you when you woke up and was always up for a little scrap. It had this badass little tie that it wore that gave it some class compared to the filthy backpacking clientele of the hostel. Rodney it's name was, although that's just what I called it, and I think it was a girl. Anyway so Sao Paulo, wow, the largest city in South America and with so many districts and boroughs that on this occasion, sticking to the LPG's top recommendations might have been a good idea for the short stay (before the place transformed in front of our eyes later on into some messed up fantasy world...). Just cruising about the place and twisting your neck up, down and around in all directions gives the impression of South America's answer to New York, with a mass of skyscrapers and tall grey buildings lining the grid of streets. There are various greener areas and small parks scattered all over the place as a token gesture to the environmentalist, but the thriving metropolis of the greater Sao Paulo area for some would be the undisputed concrete jungle for others. But endless superlatives aside, Sao Paulo is sure to have you confused in what to do and what to think. We kicked things off with a museum, a bit unusual for us but that's SP for you, which had an exhibition of an artist called Vik Muniz. It was actually really really good because the guy is no regular artist. He does clever things with mundane, mostly household objects to make pictures which he then photographs, blows up and puts on display. Kind of like a much more talented Art Attack deal. I realise that that doesn't sound very interesting but it's hard to describe. Like for example he likes to make pictures of people out of things that epitomize them. Like famous actors out of scattered diamonds or hole-punched magazine clippings of them, poor garbage men and sugar cane workers in Africa out of trash and sugar respectively, an Apache Indian out of American toy soldiers, and stuff like that. He does other clever stuff with wires and play-dough and things, it's a really interesting form of art and definitely had me oohing and aahing more than I can remember at any museum on the trip. Check his stuff out on the net anyway to make up for my lack of justification. So that ate up a lot of time before funnily enough, a huge 24 hour carnival kicked off in the streets. It's like the biggest event of the year in Sao Paulo, I don't how we managed to fluke the timing, where there are basically tons of performances, from every possible echelon of music and dance, on stages scattered all over the downtown. I mean everything from Opera and traditional Latin-American music to heavy metal, hip-hop and hardcore techno and dubstep. There was all kinds of crazy s*** there it was nuts. There was a free cinema open to everyone that played only zombie movies continuously, there was some confusingly aggressive interpretive dance going on one stage and a guy in drag prancing about on another, and generally absolutely loads of street performers doing all kinds of weird s***, including these entirely naked ladies in body paint who danced around people and did all these inexplicably weird things. I don't know it was pretty f***ing strange. So we mooched about with some cheap booze and greasy street food all night and took in the atmosphere, which changed at every corner. I saw s*** there that I never thought I'd see, but not so much out of taboo but more out of sheer oddity. It was insane. But for all the madness going on, the ambience was still an upbeat and happy one, with people laughing and singing and dancing with one another in the streets. And it went on all throughout the next day too so we got more of it when we went back to try and sight-see. I mean we managed to get our token photos of all the main historical and cultural buildings but that barely distracted from the relentless party-goers still maintaining the buzz. Although whatever some people were on had seemingly turned them into zombies themselves, barely moving their limp limbs to the music still blaring with there eyes rolled to back of their heads. And the fact that the area was now covered, and I mean absolutely at sea, in trash, including actual human excrement, the place had transformed overnight from a festive and buoyant party to some post-apocalyptic zombie horror movie. I mean it was a staggeringly monumental s***-sty that morning afterwards. And lot of people just were lying in it all, still swaying to the music and holding each other affectionately. I mean how the f*** are you supposed to comprehend that? So like I said, you never know how you're going to feel after Sao Paulo, and you won't forget it soon after for whatever reasons good or bad that still coexist in my head at the moment that make it impossible for me to make a definitive judgment on the place. But then again that could have just been because of looney-bin festival there at the time and maybe the place is quite pleasant usually. Who knows. Anyway I could go on forever but hopefully that should give you an idea of what went down in Sao Paulo. And Rio next?? God help us...