WELCOME TO SAO PAULO, DOES ANYONE SPEAK ENGLISH HERE?!

For the second leg of my trip I was back in cattle class because my upgrade didn’t manage to clear – but that was okay because I was on a brand new plane again and I had the second exit row with a ton of legroom and full recline! The flight was really long but once they rolled the bar cart down the aisle (Copa has an open bar, for everyone), people started to talk and most of the flight was pretty loud and had a party atmosphere. I didn’t meet any “Panama Greg” characters on this trip, but about an hour before landing I started talking to the kid sitting across the aisle from me. H works for GE in NYC kind of doing the same thing as me, and was traveling to Sao Paulo for a 2-month business trip. We got to talking more, and as it turns out, he is from Hillsborough, NJ – which is not too far from where I grew up. So he’s been to a lot of the same places I’ve been to in Princeton. Small world! He lives in NYC now and travels all the time for work. Once we talked a little more I found out his hotel was right next to my hotel, so he asked if I wanted to split a taxi. Since DIRECTV arranged for a car service to pick me up, I told him he could bum a ride.

H is 25 and pretty energetic – he told me he was out all night and came to the airport drunk for his flight to Brazil! On the way to our hotels he kept talking about going out, so he convinced me to go out and get ‘a drink’ with him. I was pretty tired, considering I took a red eye, followed by another 7 hour flight – but I didn’t want to be anti-social, and I figured ‘what the hell, I’m on the other side of the world,’ so I told him I was game. So we met up at about 1130 and got some recommendations from the hotel front desk. They kept telling us to go to the club in the hotel, but that seemed lame, and H kept saying he wanted a high end bar with good music, so we ventured out to an area called Via Olympia.Via Olympia seemed kind of hood, but there were 7 or 8 bars in a 2 block area, so the taxi dropped us off and we checked out the scene. There were a few low key places and a jazz club – all of which looked cool and would have been perfect for the ‘drink’ we were supposed to get – but H didn’t seem happy. Not happy at all. In fact, he was like ‘there is no where to go!’ So then we saw an Irish Pub and it had a line about a mile long to get in… must be a novelty here in Brazil! So we decided no Irish pub. Then H started asking people on the street where would be good to go – but we had one problem. No one spoke any English! Maybe people here do speak English, but they weren’t willing to speak it with us! It was a little strange, and a little embarrassing for us – but we basically walked around until we found a group of 3 girls and one spoke English. They told us they were going to Rey Castro to Salsa. So H made us go to Ray Castro! There was a steep 40R cover to get in ($25) and they gave each of us this credit card thing when we walked in. Apparently you pay the cover and for all your drinks when you leave. Interesting concept – I was thinking about jumping out of the window! So Rey Castro’s was pretty interesting – lots of young people with salsa/top 40 mixed together. Everyone was Salsa dancing, so I felt a little out of place, cuz I was just there with my new bud H and I have no clue how to Salsa and NO ONE spoke any English! I felt like one of the foreigners we see out at Sharkeez, that only know how to order ‘American Beer’ – and H was getting a little annoyed and quickly developed bar A.D.D. and made us peace out. When we left my tab was 65R ($40) for the cover and 1 mojito, so it pretty much cost over $1 per minute to hang out at Rey Castro’s!

At this point I could have called it a night, it was around 1am, but H was determined to have a big night. He was a little overwhelmed by all the Brazilian women (who are, by the way, pretty amazing), and he pretty much couldn’t contain himself! So he started talking to some taxi drivers and asking what club we could go to. One of them mentioned this club Cabaret so H said ‘take us there!’ We rolled up to the doors of Cabaret around 130am, and surprise-surprise, the girl at the door didn’t speak a drop of English… so she had to get a bouncer who knew English to tell us it was 120R to get in ($75), but you get to charge up 120R worth of alcohol. I immediately thought what a bad idea this was – especially since I couldn’t have more than 1 drink (thanks to my meds from my broken foot). But H insisted and told me he would pay… haha – this kid really wanted to get his party on (and probably something else on).

So we went in to Cabaret and we were handed the same credit card things to charge our drinks – must be a Brazilian thing. Cabaret was actually really cool – it was a big two-story lounge/club that kind of reminded me of an extra large version of Shore in Hermosa Beach (if you’ve been to Shore – think about the light show on the wall). The DJ was playing really good music too – so we got some drinks and walked around a little. This club could have been in California (good looking people and laid back), NYC (way expensive), or the Jersey Shore (guido-esq dancers)… it had all different races of people – most of them good looking – but no one spoke any English! It was the weirdest thing ever! Even at the clubs I’ve been to in Europe – everyone speaks English – and here, no one!



H was getting pretty wasted, and I was nursing my drink since I already had one at the last bar and couldn’t really drink this one. But we started to try to talk to people again – with not much luck. Finally we found this group of 3 girls and 1 of them spoke English – they looked pretty young – but we started talking to them. H bought them all beers, and I decided to play ‘wing man’ and try to hook him up since it was obvious that that’s what he was looking for. So after some small talk with the 1 English speaker, I pretty much started negotiating with her. I said ‘my friend likes your friend’ and she replied ‘him want to make bed with her?’ and I said ‘Yes! Her want to make bed with him?’ and she said ‘Yes!’ – and the deal was done. They started m-ing out! I found out that they were all 21 years old too!

So the night kept going on, and the music was really good, but I was getting tired and H just making out with this 21 year old wasn’t going anywhere – I thought I was going to fall asleep standing up, but then around 4am I heard the most amazing thing… Barbra Streisand by Duck Sauce, mixed to a latin beat ! For those of you that don’t know – I kind of have an inside joke about this song with some of my friends – so hearing this mix when I was in the super-tired, quasi-emotional mood made me super excited and completely energized me, and all of the sudden, I was pretty happy to be in Brazil! The good times started again – and we partied at Cabaret with the girls until 5am on Sunday morning – when they promptly ran out! Dissed.

H kept asking me if they really just did that. He was like ‘did they even say goodbye?’ Nope. That was fine with me – I was ready for bed after pretty much being up since Friday morning at 6am! But I was happy I rocked Sao Paulo on night one. Now I was ready to conquer Brazil!