Two nights in Sampa

Heavy rain forced us indoors. One minute I was fending off the humidity with a cold beer, the next we were crammed on the porch of a bar called Salve Jorge. All the smokers stood outside; my hand was one of many cupped over a smouldering cigarette.

It is not cheap to drink in Sao Paulo (Sampa as the locals call it). And Salve Jorge is not the cheapest spot in this sprawling metropolis. I had a few Brahma Chopps - they bring you a tumbler and a quart in an ice-bucket like a bottle of champagne.

And though every icy beer was a pricey drink, the place was pumping for a Sunday afternoon in March.

The downpour was a curtain through which you could hardly see what used to be the tallest skyscraper outside the US.

Salve Jorge charged a premium for being in the long shadow of this the Altino Arantes building. It resembles New York's Empire State Building, but is only about three quarters as tall as our own Carlton Centre. Still, it's a good reference point in a city where thousands of blocks blend into a concrete maze.

I did plenty of walking through that maze, but walking is not the best way to travel.

Sampa is massive and your map will give no indication of how hilly the city is. The subway gives you easy access to most parts of the inner-city. But the subway is for people-watching, not for sightseeing. Take the bus, but avoid rush-hour as Sampa's traffic congestion is worse than Cairo's.

From the air it looks like the whole of Sao Paulo was built on the same day - as if a load of pale bricks were dropped in a jungle.

I spent my first night just off Avenida Paulista in a posh area with gleaming office blocks and international hotels. A rand buys you nothing there. The sum of R1000 buys you a 1970s hotel room.

If you have arachnophobia, avoid the jungle park, Parque Tenente Siqueira Campos - big spiders tend to bungee jump from branches onto your shoulder.

The second night I had a more authentic Sampa experience. I booked into a seedy hotel in the suburb of Republique - you can afford it if you recently passed "go" in Monopoly. By day, the neighbourhood has a market that would stock your mantelpiece for the rest of your life. At night, roaming people of the night market goods that could never appear on a mantelpiece.

At Salve Jorge, my Portuguese was limited to ordering a beer. Two beers, actually, because I kept mispronouncing "una", it was easier to say "dois".

I gave the second beer to a local and asked her what the best way back to my hotel was. She suggested a taxi. "Don't walk," she said. "Danger." English is not big in Sampa.

The city is everything but boring when you run-walk a kilometre at midnight.

FACT FILE

To get there: SAA has daily flights from OR Tambo. About R10034 return.

To sleep: Book hotel rooms through Booking.com. Clean and central for R800 to R1000. Seedy for less than R500.

To relax: Take a stroll through the Ibirapuera park and feed the black swans.

To agonise: Convert prices into rands.

To blend in: Get a haircut from a local barber for 50 reais. - TJ Strydom