Leaving São Paulo - arriving in Belo Horizonte

A few days in São Paulo was far more enjoyable than I expected.  USP (Universidade de São Paulo) was a definite highlight, but there were others.

Rio Pinheiro from Golder's São Paulo office

This is São Paulo's endemic style of tag graffiti, called pichação or pixação - very 'runic' in appearance, and quite striking.  This isn't a great example, just one next to where the bus paused for a moment ...

pixação

Leaving São Paulo took ages, as the bus crawled through the back streets around the Rodoviária Tietê on its way to the motorway.  Once we got going it was steady progress through the rolling hills of northern São Paulo state and southern Minas Gerais.  We had a couple of stops at 'por quillo' lanchonetes along the way.  The only glitch in a 9 hour trip was the 45 minute wait at a federal traffic police stop, where they checked all IDs, and searched a few suitcases - quota filling if ever I saw it!!
 

tchau-tchau São Paulo

And so we rolled in to Belo Horizonte at about 8h30pm after leaving Sampa at 11h00am.  First impressions - slightly flatter and grottier than sampa around the rodoviária.  Once we got to the hotel in Savassi, downtown Belô, it was clear this was a fairly classy party town!  People drink and chat here until 2am fairly routinely.

The Golder Belô office is just off downtown savassi, in the bairro known as Funcianários.  There are about 90 Golder staff, including 6 biologists.  Thiago Alves is the guy I've had contact with for about 12-18 months, and he has covered pretty much everything in making my arrival here a slick affair.  This morning he met me at the hotel, walked me down to the office (~5 blocks), and introduced me to pretty much everyone there.

bairro Funcionários, downtown Belô

I gave my Golder Melbourne spiel to about 20 people in the Hugh Golder Auditorium at 5pm!  Thereafter, Thiago, Bernardo and Fernando dragged me down to the Clube da Esquina, and forced me to drink beer (Antarctica Original and Brahma chopp, aka draught beer) whilst consuming tasty comida mineiro equivalents of tapas.  This after a fantastic comida mineiro lunch.  I think the rose-coloured glasses have kicked in, and I'm having an instantaneous infatuation with Belô!