DAY 13 - Leaving our idyllic island for the mental ness of Sao Paulo!!! Very sadly we piled the bags on our backs, had our last piece of chocolate cake for breakfast (must take that up when we get home!!) and a few stone heavier now, said goodbye to our beautiful posada and beach and trekked sadly to the boat. We know though that we will without doubt come back to this isle again so that made leaving slightly less distressing ha ha!! The sun was beaming as we got on the boat, typical, then it was back on the local bus to Curitiba through the mountain area then a 6 hour bus to Sao Paulo, a long day was in store. At Curitiba I almost cringed when I saw the budget bus Cometa we were going on, it was like an old steel greyhound from the US with smaller windows, no air con or fans and looked cramped from the outside, blimey can you tell I am fed up of buses by now, I am SUCH a geek as Adam says!! Anyway it ended up being fine, the windows opened so that was cool and the seats were quite comfy, soon we were off heading for the city that everyone says not to go to! Slightly anxious as to what was in store the journey there was beautiful, through more forested areas of lush green as we wound our way nearer the coast. Hardly passing any towns we saw a few shacks mainly noting that although we have found Brazil very western for the main part, there is still a hell of a lot of poverty here also. Reaching Sao Paulo, at first we couldn't really see why people said not to come here, it looked quite pleasant and clean on the outskirts, un threatening and not a bad city at all, we wondered what all the fuss was about........ However as we got closer in we realised the problems this city has. Firstly it is absolutely HUGE, neither of us could get over the size of the place, it felt even bigger than when we had flown into LA, this place is vast and goes on for miles and miles and miles..... Normally in a city you will see one main area of high rises, be they residential or business with a few more dotted about but in Sao Paulo they are absolutely everywhere and if anyone asked you which was the main central district it was impossible to say, there could have been 20 of them!! As we drove in we followed the main river and unfortunately the stench of it didn't help in blackening the view that we were now getting. People drove like nutters, there were so many homeless people and drunks everywhere, sleeping under the freeway, under bin liner tents in the middle of roundabouts, anywhere where they could get some kind of kip for the night. We noticed so many areas also where nobody went or walked and with the graffiti and rubbish on the streets we now could see why people say not to come here. It didn't feel too safe. Our view could be biased though in that we only did that one main highway in but so far not too good, take us back to Ilha do Mel please Mr Bus Driver!! The highways were just mad too, when you think of the 4 lanes we have to get in and out of London on the M4, this place has 9 JUST to get in, it was utterly nuts!! Unfortunately too, we could only afford to stay in the old area of the city which was recommended as the place 'NOT' to stay or go near at night so as it was 9pm already and dark we weren't looking forward to the prospect. After grabbing greasy burgers at the station, we got in a taxi and the experience didn't really get any better. Firstly a big accident had just happened on the freeway we had come in on and we got to see a couple of dead bodies left on the side which was not pleasant, then as we came into the old area it got VERY quiet to say the least, not tranquil, more a case of no b***** dare go there at night!! Near our hotel drunks were hanging around and some loony women was singing her head off totally mad. We almost sprinted out of the taxi and it was only 20 metres if that to the hotel and in that time we had already been approached twice, get us out of here!! The hotel was actually ok and pretty clean after we had ruled out the fact that we thought our bed had bed bugs!! The guy next door though must have been deaf and all we could hear for hours was his TV, blaring music, street mayhem and what sounded like some gun shots in the night.......not good! By now we wished we had just forfeited the hundred quid and flown to the Amazon from Curitiba but needs must and all that and generally Sao Paulo is the cheapest place to fly from, now we could possible see why! Fortunately though, now that Fabi and Gustov had kindly offered to pick us up on our return meant that we didn't need to stay in SP another night on our return so we were quite pleased to say the least!! Not much sleep was had that night.....