Trip to São Jose dos Campos

So back a few weeks ago, I finally did some traveling. I went to a city a few hours away from here called São Jose dos Campos with two other gringos: Ben, another Drexel student also working at Ci&T (surprising I haven't mentioned him here already), and Sphinx, a marketing student from Taiwan. Another young, scrappy, Indian journalist named Tushar who is normally part of our gringo entourage was going to come but couldn't make it (he claimed to be sick but I'm pretty sure he was nursing a mean hangover).

We set out by bus early Saturday morning, June 21. We ended up missing our connecting bus so we actually left Campina for São Jose around midday only to arrive in the early afternoon.

Ben and I on the bus. That's Sphinx in the background making a heart. She also doctored up the photo with what can only be described as "gay shit." What can I say, she's Asian!

We were to stay with another AIESECer (AIESEC is a student exchange organization that we gringos all know each other through) from Panama named Johnathon Gray, about the least Hispanic sounding name imaginable. However when he picked us he certainly looked the part, his skin a dark roasted coffee mocha, and he spoke Spanish like the dickens.

John looking solemn and Sphinx looking... a half second too late for this picture .

So John picked us up at the bus station along with the family he was living with. The family turned out to be extremely nice, warm people. I don't actually remember everyone's name, but I liked them a lot. The dad was away on business somewhere I believe, so it was just the mom, the daughter, Ludmila, 18, and the young son whose name I cannot remember. The kid was cool; he had no interest in speaking any other language except Portuguese and he had a speech impediment which made it sort of hard to understand what he was saying. He was really into games, so I taught him bear ninja cowboy which he absolutely loved. We also had a good time playing old school Playstation video games like Crash Bandicoot. The mom spoke no English which was nice. I practiced my Portuguese a bunch with her and she liked the fact that I wanted to learn. As always, everyone was extremely nice. They put us up in their place, fed us, and made us feel right at home.

Our first night there we went out to a bar with some kids from ITA, a technical military school and apparently one of the best and most difficult in the country. As expected they were kind of, you know, nerdy, but we had a good time getting back very late that night. We had some transportation issues coming back.

We fit 8 into this ridiculous little French two door. It was around 5:30 am. Perfect photo op.

Sunday was the better of the two days. We went to Campos do Jordão, a very scenic, beautiful place. Think of a Swiss village stuck on top of a lush, semi-tropical rain forest mountain and you've got Campos do Jordão:

It's difficult to even describe the climate there. On the way up in the bus winding around the mountain side it seemed very tropical like we were still in Brazil. But by the time we were at the top the change in altitude made the difference; there were evergreens and... European style architecture. It was cool.

Boys in town in front of a church.

Me, Sphinx, and Ben. Notice the stuff written in French.

Group shot in front of some shops.

The only problem with this trip is that it was very rushed. Since we had to take buses everywhere we were slaves to the bus schedule and getting around was slow. We only ended up spending about an hour in the little town itself, a combination of poor planning, getting a late start, and there not just being enough hours in the day. The place was very cool though and I would love to go back with a whole weekend to spend there.