Pronto do São Paulo?

Are you ready to do São Paulo?

After threading ourselves through the city many times there are a bunch of things you need to consider when coming to São Paulo aside from avoiding the intense level of automobile traffic surging daily through the streets. These are practical problems you will encounter day-to-day unlike any other city in the world.

First, each car in São Paulo is restricted from driving in the city during rush hour one day a week. For instance, if you have a license plate number ending in 3 or 4, you cannot drive between 7:00 AM and 10:00 AM and from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM in the inner city zone of Sao Paulo on Tuesdays. If you do, you will get a ticket even if it is the day you plan to fly out and need to get to the airport. Know your restricted day and plan around it.

Second, in most outlying neighborhoods, you will need to pay someone to watch your car when it is parked on the street. This is a kind of bribe to protect your car gifted in the form of a tip. The strange thing about this is that the parking monitors have no official status or license. The unofficial guardians are often unemployed guys after a tip and their administration of duty might be spotty. Also, it can be difficult to ascertain which guy hanging out on the sidewalk is the unofficial monitor for the street where you wish to park.

The upside: these parking monitors usually give great customer service unlike the particularly unfriendly and unhelpful staff at the art museums, shops, banks, and indifferent waiters at places you might reasonably expect friendly service and instruction. Parking monitors understand good customer service can reward them financially.

Third, in the inner core of São Paulo the parking monitor system isn't in effect. However, posted next to the street where parking is allowed, you will find a blue box that says you will need to purchased a ticket (the paper sheet resembles a lottery scratch card) with days, hours, months, etc scratched out.

But unlike the lottery, there is no fixed price for the parking and you don't always know where to purchase these parking vouchers. On two different occasions we paid 3 reals and then 2 reals and hour to park near Ave Paulista. The blue tickets are usually not in effect on weekends and only during business hours during the day depending on the street.

Go the the nearest bar, restaurant, or street news vendor and ask where you can buy the parking voucher. Hopefully they speak Ingles or you are carrying a Brazilian Portuguese phrasebook. Be warned, having a blue card does not offer protection from breaking and entering like the monitors do in outlying districts. Always hide anything of value in the trunk of your car or take it with you.

Fourth, when driving in heavily congested São Paulo traffic, you will quickly notice a swarm of motorcycle messengers who fly around your automobile like locus in West Texas in October. These motorcycle dare devils drive very fast down the center strip between cars stalled in a traffic jam. São Paulo is quite unlike any other city for the numbers these drivers running all day and night. You must be hyper-alert to everything going on around you to keep track of the danger they pose to your car and themselves.

Fifth, banks both private and state run in São Paulo are very difficult offices to access. Due to high security, going to a bank is probably one of the most harrowing experiences you'll encounter in Brazil. You will be thrilled by the polite and courteous help from the unofficial parking monitors and happy to give them a bribe after experiencing the extremes of banking customer service. It is just wrong to call the treatment "customer service."

If you need to go to a bank, plan on spending and afternoon or at least a couple of hours. When you walk up to the bank you will notice a bunch of guys standing around with guns. Do not yell at the guys with guns. When you enter the vestibule they will ask you a series of questions and type a bunch of stuff into their computer terminals. More guys with guns. Remember, if they have a gun and a uniform, it is their job to shoot and kill people who act strange, erratic, or angry.

Essentially, bank employees are trying to determine if you have legitimate business and an account with the bank. If you do the will pass you onto a checkpoint more daunting than TSA at airports and these guys also have guns and banish them visibly. Don't taunt them.

You will then be forced into a revolving door that traps you like a rat in a cage if you have metal items on you. You should have placed all metal items in a basket to pass through the system separately. There are far too many false positives and customers get enraged.

Once inside the employees are reluctant to help and provide prompt and polite customer service - not all that different than American banks frankly. The bank tellers are amazingly lax about money and you have very little privacy. If you are exchanging cash be careful because people are watching and you could become a target once you leave the bank.

Patricia told me about customers getting so angry trying to pass through the cage that they stripped all their clothing off down to being completely naked.

Now that's Brazilian Caraval!