São Paulo & Belo Horizonte

São Paulo is the largest city by population in Brazil, and it is indeed a busy place. We stayed in an area called Itaim Bibi, a place with residential buildings and offices, full of restaurants and bars, but with very little shopping. At the back of the hotel was a food court, which was good as it was rather unsettled weather with many heavy showers, making it difficult to go out and walk around.

Our city tour took us to the older parts of the city, and we visited an area famous for its graffiti, the central market for some traditional Brazilian food, a couple of churches and areas with historic buildings. The guide told us about how be safe in São Paulo. The risk everyone has to deal with is people on bikes or motorbikes riding close up and stealing the mobile phone out of your hand. Sounds like other places too! In Itaim Bibi we only needed to worry about that, and otherwise we were ok.

We were told in Curitiba, by two senior staff at the hotel, that under no circumstance should we drive any further than to São Paulo, and that going in our car to Rio de Janeiro was not possible. This meant that we needed to work out a plan for how to get to Rio. We got connected with an agent based in Rio who tried to help us, but the airfares between the two cities were so expensive that she didn't want to book them. In the end we decided to carry on to Belo Horizonte and organise something from there.

The drive from São Paulo to Belo Horizonte is too long to do in one go, so we spent a night in Perdões. The drive took us through Minas Geraís, a beautiful part of Brazil with a lot of coffee farms, hills and greenery. The travel agent in Rio asked why we wanted to drive in Brazil, and told us that nobody drives between cities. And of course she was right, it was just about only trucks, buses and us. The road is a four-lane motorway so it wasn't too bad, but so much heavy traffic is making the driving more tiresome.

Belo Horizonte felt like another really big city, partly because it is built up together with Betim. Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Geraís, and is mainly a manufacturing and business center. Our hotel was in Savassi, a nice area with services handy and safe streets to walk. One day we walked to Lourdes, a half hour walk, to visit the travel agent who put together our trip to Rio. The streets are tree-lined and pretty, and we are still amazed by how clean and tidy everything is.

About 90 minutes by bus from Savassi is a park, Inhotim. This is an area of beautiful nature, full of a number of art installations. We spent a whole day there without getting bored, and it was very nice to be out in the native forest. https://www.inhotim.org.br/en/

On the road we saw some areas that looked like many others in Latin America.