I should have listened. My friend Jocelyn in Santiago, Chile told me São Paulo, Brasil would be a waste of my time. Originally my plan was to spend a week in São Paulo and a week in Rio de Janeiro. After much convincing, she was able to get me to reduce my stay to 3 days in São Paulo and an extended stay in Rio. I should have listened to her and skipped it altogether. I should have listened.
How NOT To Spend A Night In São Paulo
I arrived in São Paulo late on Monday evening after a 30-hour bus ride from Montevideo, Uruguay. The bus ride was satisfactory and the view along the way once we entered into Brasil was nothing short of spectacular. Hundreds of kilometers filled with rain forests on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other definitely cannot be complained about. But little did I know that once I finally arrived in São Paulo, my real adventure would begin.
I arrived at 10:45 PM and had just under 45 minutes before the subway closed to figure out where I needed to go and how to access the metro line. As the primary language spoken in Brasil is Portuguese, which is a far cry away from the little bit of Spanish that gets me by, this was a feat on its own. But after a few hand signals here and there, I was able to find the correct line and get to the station nearest to my hostel.
Once I got to the correct station I determined that my hostel was five blocks away. I could risk walking five blocks at night on the streets I didn’t know too well or hail a cab, pay unnecessary extra money, and attempt to communicate with a cab driver that might or might not work out for the best. I went with option one, or as I now call it, “mistake number one”.
About two and a half blocks in, I realized I was not in a friendly part of town and the streets were pitch black. I had a new decision to make, do I keep going the next half or head back to the subway station and hail a cab? If you have a sinking feeling in your gut, you need to stop using your head and go with your gut. Your gut is usually right. I used my head instead of my gut, and decided since I was already halfway there that I would keep going and finish the trek. This is what I like to call “mistake number two”.
I arrived at the hostel around midnight and rang the bell. No one answered. I kept pressing the button and could hear it ringing inside, but no one came to the door. Every hostel I’ve discovered so far have 24-hour receptions, and by the description online, so did this one… or so I thought. After about five minutes, a small child peered over the balcony three floors above me, but alas, no one came. My only option now was to walk back through the darkness to the subway station – sigh.
Once I arrived back to the subway station I hailed a cab and asked him to take me to another hostel I had found on my smartphone. When we arrived I rang the bell and a man speaking Portuguese came out of the building next door and started shaking his head “no” about something. With no earthly idea what he was saying, I asked the cab driver if he could just take me to a hotel near the subway station. This is what I like to call “mistake number three”.
When we arrive at the beautiful, elegant, and sophisticated, wait for it… “Romance Hotel”, I just shake my head, but head indoors to at least scope it out. I ask the receptionist how much it would be for one night and she told me the equivalent of sixty dollars. Not only was that way more money than I was willing to pay, but she kept asking me, “ONLY YOU? ONLY YOU?” Now, not only was I thinking about where I was going to sleep for the night, but she gave me a kind reminder that I don’t have a girlfriend – sigh.
I walked out and headed back to the subway station. It was now approaching 1:30 AM and I was almost to the point of calling it quits and sleeping on the cold, scuff-marked tile inside the station. I then saw two girls and a guy approaching a bus stop that I recognized from a nearby restaurant patio earlier in the night. This was going to be my last shot.
I needed a Plan B in case they didn’t speak English, so I typed a small phrase into Google Translate on my phone before I approached them. It read something along the lines of, “I was supposed to stay in a hostel tonight but no one answered. I have money but don’t know where to go. Can you please help me?”
I walked up to them and attempted to communicate this in English. Just as I thought, only one girl said she spoke very little English and the other two spoke none at all. I then flashed my smartphone, which doubled as my small beacon of hope, and they decided to help. At first they told me to try the Romance Hotel. My brain promptly exploded, but I kindly told them I already had been there and that it was sixty dollars. They told me not to do that, which I kindly agreed with. After about five minutes of talking amongst themselves, they told me we could share a cab and that they would find me a hotel near where they live. I find myself to be a pretty good judge of character, so I decided to take a leap of faith.
Once in the cab, we began communicating back and forth through Google Translate on my phone. I broke the ice when I typed, “Please don’t kill me” and they laughed wholeheartedly out loud. One of the girls then said something to the guy, and I noticed he was hesitant and didn’t really like whatever she said. She then turned to me and typed in my phone, “If you want, you can stay with me at my parents’ house tonight.” I had options! Option 1 – stay with this random girl who I can’t communicate with at a possibly unsafe location OR Option 2 – stay on the cold hard ground of an open and definitely unsafe subway station. As she had already seen every card I had, I figured I was all in and told her yes.
We arrived at a truly stunning high-rise condominium and it seemed as though my luck was finally on the upswing. On the elevator up, she told me I would need to leave around 5:30 AM so that her parents wouldn’t know I was there. I felt like I was back in grade school, but assured her I would be gone by then. When we entered what turned out to be a beautiful residence, we had to remain silent. I placed my bag in her room and she typed a message into my phone that made me lift one eyebrow very peculiarly – “Would you feel comfortable staying in my bed with me so my parents don’t see you on the couch?” At this point, what did I have to lose? I replied once again, “Please don’t kill me” and then nodded my head. She laughed and then got ready for bed. She turned on “The Voice” and after a few minutes of watching a friendly Adam Levine and Blake Shelton banter back and forth, I nodded off around 2:00 AM and quickly woke back up around 5:00 AM – the most awkward three hours of sleep of my life.
She called me a cab and I headed back to the original hostel I was supposed to stay at. They once again did not answer the door and after I contemplated burning the building to the ground, I booked another hostel through my phone and finally found a place to stay (Hey Hostel).
What began as one of the most unsettling nights of my life ended up with a friendly reminder to not only me, but should also be a reminder to you, that most people around the world inherently have the nature inside of themselves to be compassionate towards others. I don’t know why no one answered the door at the first hostel. I don’t know if anything bad happens on the dark streets I walked upon. I don’t know if I would have been in danger inside the subway station. And I don’t know if I would have been murdered at the “Romance Hotel” (the odds of that seemed pretty high though).
However, I do know one thing. Somewhere in São Paulo there is a girl that decided to help out a stranger in desperate need of a place to stay for a single night. We never exchanged names, contact information, or anything of the like. But if only for a few brief hours, I felt secure and at ease. And for that, and to the forever unknown girl, I say thank you.
