Brazil - São Paulo and Ilhabela

After a gruelling 31 hours on the road since leaving our hotel in Kathmandu, we arrived in São Paulo, Brazil on 11th November 2022. The flight had taken us via Doha airport, where we originally wanted to stopover in Qatar for a day or two but due to the football world cup being weeks away, they had banned all stopovers, so we spent 5 hours strolling around the huge modern airport instead before boarding our 14-hour flight.

Our hostel in São Paulo was in a charming townhouse right in the middle of the bustling bohemian area of Vila Madalena, but in a quiet gated street which locked at night. We really loved the area and spent the next few days recovering from jet lag, wondering the streets and eating a lot of good food. The area has loads of small boutique fashion stores, cafes, art galleries and amazing restaurants. There was also lots of street art on the narrow hilly roads and we visited the famous alley called ‘Beco do Batman’ which was full of many impressive murals. Although the weather was a little moody at times, with one tropical downpour, we certainly made the most of our time and hung out in some cool bars, with live music and we drunk plenty of Caipirinha’s, while Liv appreciated finally being able to wear shorts and a strap top without feeling out of place.

Our next destination in Brazil was the island of Ilhabela which was a 5-hour bus north of São Paulo. We had an early start to make our 7:45am bus and were shocked when we arrived at the bus terminal; it was massive and more like an airport, with over 100 bays and they scarily only announced what bay our bus was in about 10 minutes before departure. The bus was luxurious, so comfy and worlds apart from what we had been traveling on previously. The bus took us to the town of São Sebastião, where we caught the ferry over to the island. The ferry only took about 25 minutes and was free for pedestrians.

lhabela is considered one of the natural paradises of the São Paulo coast, and literally means "beautiful island" in Portuguese. It is known for its forest-covered tropical mountains, it’s wonderful beaches, clear water and vicious sand flies. I’m pleased to report that although rather paranoid we didn’t get bitten by any sand flies while there and the mosquitos weren’t that bad either. We had three nights on Ilhabela staying near Curral beach. The beach was very lively, lined with restaurants which had tables and chairs spilling right up to the water’s edge. The beach was mainly filled with Brazilians who happily spent the whole day eating & drinking on the beach. The island has a reputation for being the weekend getaway for wealthy Paulistanos (São Paulo citizens) and we had a long chat with three very nice 50-year-old men, one of which was a policeman, owned a house of the island, had his own boat, had educated his children in the UK for a few years and even owned a few restaurants in the city, which seemed to fit the reputation. During our stay we enjoyed lots of yummy seafood and saw some wonderful sunsets over the sea.

We headed back to São Paulo for a final night before getting an early British Airways flight, which had come from Heathrow and stopped over before continuing onto Buenos Aires, where we had planned to stay for a couple of weeks.