Sampa!

On Friday, we left Argentina behind with some great memories, and headed over to Sao Paulo. We also decided to trade the rough hostel life to some real high class hotel living: we booked the Formule 1! For those unfamiliar with the chain, it is the French response to Tokyo's capsule hotels - stripped of absolutely everything non-essential, you basically get a bed, a shower, and a bathroom. Everything else is either not available, or at least incurs an extra charge. We also got a weird combination of one queen size bed and one small bunk bed, and being unlucky in the coin toss, I got the smaller bed. Bummer!

I have a couple of INSEAD buddies in Sampa (as Sao Paulo is locally known) that we wanted to meet up with, but both were busy on Friday. However, one of them, Guillaume had suggested we go see a samba singer named Diogo Nogueira, and had kindly even booked us VIP tickets for the show. Having no idea what to expect, we turned up and were shown to a table very close to the stage. The show began with a promotional video, and instead of the moody, black-dressed, long-haired pale artiste that I had come to expect from the Flamenco guitar concerts I'd been to, the guy on stage owed more to 50 Cent: Diogo Nogueira sported short-cropped hair, designer stubble, flashy jewelry and biceps that hinted at a significant amount of time spent pumping iron at the gym. His voice, however, left no question - this was one talented guy. After a couple of songs, the audience really warmed up, and many got up from their seats and started dancing along. We were also handed some serpentines to chuck at the stage. All in all, a great night and something we probably wouldn't have thought to do on our own - it's always nice to have friends in town.

On Saturday, we did a bit of sightseeing on our own (the Pinacoteca museum, also recommended by Guillaume) and met up with Guillaume at our hotel around 8:30pm. We headed out to a very classy designer bar (and paid about 4x more for our caipirinhas than we had paid for any drink on our trip so far), then had absolutely wonderful steaks and some great wine at a restaurant called Figueira. The restaurant had been built around a HUGE fig tree, which was still the dominant element of the interior. Glass panels made up a roof around the tree, and we watched the rain pour down around us as we ate. After dinner, we tried another bar with a much more laid-back vibe, basically sipping beer with local student types. From there, it was on to one of Sao Paulo's clubs - a loud affair with a very mixed crowd from the upscale party princes and princesses to rowdy rapper types. Guillaume and I felt old giving up at 4am, while Santeri held the fort until 6am. All in all, a great night and a great weekend, for which I am very thankful to Guillaume.

Sunday consisted of a painfully early wake-up, followed by a 6-hour bus ride to Rio de Janeiro, where we hopped on yet another bus for the 3-hour trip to Buzios, a little beach resort North of Rio "discovered" by Birgitte Bardot and consequently dubbed "the Saint Tropez of South America".