Highway Havoc in Brazil

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Travel Log
June 16th, São Paulo, Brazil



Everyone’s screaming in the bus. I snap awake, pissed off. It was the first time in six months I had finally nodded off so effortlessly on a night bus. I'm trying to piece together what the heck is going on. And it’s my first day in Brazil.

Here we are, stranded on a highway at 1 AM, fresh out of São Paolo. Something's up with the steering wheel, but I'm too tired to wrap my head around it. Panic courses through the passengers. Why are they so afraid?

Luckily, one of the passengers speaks Spanish and grants me a minute: "We're at the border of one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in São Paulo. If we stay here, they will rob us and take everything we have. We need to leave, now!"

I spot a woman behind him, frantic, red-faced and sweating, with two others trying to calm her down.

Okay, this seems serious.

Time creeps by, each minute an eternity. Phones buzz non-stop as the driver struggles to reach the bus company for assistance. Then, under pressure from the passengers, he performs an incredible manoeuvre to get back on the highway, with the steering wheel still stuck. Fifteen minutes down the road, he finds a safe spot where we can stop, at a gas station.

We waited four long hours in the cold (July in Brazil is winter) before another bus arrived to take us to Angra dos Reis.

Ten hours later, I find myself on a paradisiacal island—exhausted and hungry, looking like a zombie. But I explode with joy. Finally, I've reunited with the sea, after a three-month journey in the frigid heights of the Andean mountains. I spot waves peeling gracefully in crystal blue water. My one mission: hunt down a surf shop and rent a board.



Read this short travel story in French↗

Video: saib. - São Paulo Sunset