são paulo on a shoestring (or how i got drenched in humidity and cheap espresso)

okay so i just stumbled out of this brutal 12-hour bus ride from curitiba, my backpack smells like regret and cheap corn snacks, and i’m standing here in são paulo feeling like a damp napkin. someone on the bus-this guy with Uniview merch-kept trying to sell me a ‘miracle’ humidifier that was just a clunky plastic box. no thanks, my dude, i think the sky just peed on all of us already. the air here isn't just humid, it's…thick. like someone melted a stick of butter and threw it in the atmosphere. i just checked the weather app and it's sitting at like 25c but it feels like soup. hope you like that kind of thing, seriously.my first mission: find a hostel that isn't a roach motel. after three near-misses with places that had yelp reviews screaming ‘drain flies in the shower!’, i found a dump in the República area that’s basically a bunk bed stacked inside a closet. it’s 50 reais a night. the ‘breakfast’ is stale bread and a coffee that tastes like filtered regret. but the view? i can see about 17 different clotheslines from my window, all strung with someone’s underwear. this is the real são paulo postcard, baby.people keep asking ‘so what’s the vibe?’ and i’m like, it’s 16 million people all trying to get somewhere while collectively sighing. the noise is a permanent symphony of car horns, construction, and distant funk carioca blasting from a sideways优化的 taxi. if you get bored looking at concrete canyons, Santos and those beach towns are just a short, hellish drive away in traffic that makes los angeles look like a golf cart parade. i tried to go yesterday and spent two hours moving about 4 kilometers. never again.i heard from a local who seemed shady but turned out to be just…tired that i absolutely cannot miss the ‘mercado municipal’ for the mortadella sandwich. ‘it’s a tourist trap but it’s our tourist trap, and it’s good,’ he slurred over a chopp at 10am. he was right. i paid 25 reais for a loaf-sized sandwich stuffed with cheese, olives, and a mountain of that pink, speckled mortadella. worth every messy, greasy cent. i followed the crowd to a tiny bar downstairs where the bartender shook his head at my request for ‘something light.’ he just pointed to a small glass of cachaça and said ‘for courage.’ fair.

the street art here is insane, by the way. not the pretty kind. this is aggressive, dripping, three-story-tall murals of black-and-white faces with one neon eye. i saw a kid with a can of spray paint get chased by a cop on a motorcycle. it was like a live-action cartoon. much more exciting than the ‘cultural centers’ on TripAdvisor that charge 80 reais to look at a pot.from the hostel, i met these two architecture students from porto who are here documenting brutalist buildings. they looked at my swanky ‘free walking tour’ flyer and laughed. ‘those are for people who want to be told where to stand,’ one said. they gave me a better tip: find the ‘becos’-the alleyways in the centro-where the real graffiti lives and you might get invited to a terrace party with a view of the entire city’s jagged skyline all lit up. did that happen to me? no. i got lost for an hour and found a guy selling bootleg blu-rays of hollywood movies with portuguese subtitles crudely burned in. i bought a bootleg of ‘mad max: fury road’ for 10 reais. it’s a fuzzy, pixelated masterpiece.my budget is screaming. i’m surviving on coxinha (those fried chicken dough balls), more coffee, and the random fruit from a street vendor who cutsopen a mango with a machete right there on the curb. 5 reais. heaven. the supermarket ‘prato feito’-the ready-made plate-is a gamble. sometimes it’s beans, rice, meat, and salad for 12 reais. sometimes it’s beans, rice, a single Salisbury steak, and a sadness. you learn to read the line.if you’re coming here with dreams of clear skies and tranquil parks…adjust. this place is a beautiful, chaotic, exhaust-fumed, vibrant, overwhelming, cheap, expensive, friendly, standoffish, concrete beast. i’ve been here 48 hours and my brain is both fried and wired. i wouldn’t trade it. but i might trade my boots for a pair of sandals. these blisters are no joke.

ps. i tried to find the ‘best’ pastel (fried pastry) based on a local blog and ended up at a fair where a woman yelled at me for not having exact change. the pastel was still incredible. that’s são paulo. you take the yelling with the delicious. you can read some more raw, unfiltered takes on the chaos over at this São Paulo subreddit-it’s a goldmine of ‘wtf’ and ‘wow’ moments. and for when you just need a map that doesn’t judge your life choices, the official city transit app is surprisingly decent. just don’t ask it for emotional support.