A Bus Ride to Hortolandia, Sao Paulo

For the holidays a friend of mine, a fellow teacher, invited me to spend the holidays with her and her family. She lives in the State of Sao Paulo in the city of Hortolandia which is approximately 1 hour from the city of Sao Paulo. Rather than flying I decided to use the more affordable and longer way. I took the bus, 12hrs in all! My friend went a few days before. So, I took the bus alone, which was fine by me.

I bought my tickets the day before I had planned to go. Prior taking the trip, everyone warned me that the bus was punctual so I had to on time and that I had to be vigilant in the bus because people would try to rob me. I felt like they were trying to scare me but I know they just wanted me to be careful. Anyways, the most interesting thing about the busride, ironically, was the security and safety measures implemented by the government and bus company.

When I bought my ticket a form was stapled to the ticket, where the passengers had to fill in their name, address, phone number, date of birth etc. The bus driver would not allow any passenger on the bus who did not fill out the entire form. That was a first for me! I have taken the bus in several other Latin American countries and I had never had such an experience. Once in the bus, I noticed that all the seats were equipped with seat belts. Before leaving the bus station, the driver instructed all passengers to fasten their seat belts, because it was federal law. He, then, walked about the bus to ensure that all the passengers did as they were told. There were several stops on the way and before leaving each of the bus stations someone from the bus company did a walk through of the bus to ensure that no one had snuck into the bus and reminded the passengers to fasten our seat belts.

The bus ride was fine I had not problems with missing the bus or being robbed. Even though the bus ride was long I happy I took the bus because I had the opportunity to see the Brazilian landscape. The State of Goais, where I am living is in the center of Brazil while the State of Sao Paulo is in the South East of Brazil. Most of the areas we drove agricultural area, I saw several sugar cane field, soy beans field and other I could not quite identify. Driving through the countryside allowed me to see just how larger Brazil is. There were several towns and city spread over the Brazilian landscape. One interesting things I notices was that with every city we drove through there was a large sign with name of the city or town. The signs were not just a metal sign. The name was either chiseled in stone standing several feet high or was artistically done a the hedge.

As we approached the state of Sao Paulo I could notice the difference from the other states we drove though. Sao Paulo is an industrial state. There were several plants for various makes and models of cars and there were factories for several well known companies such as Dell and IBM. The cars in the area of Sao Paulo were also different. Many different makes, several Europeans models and there were larger cars than other places I had been in Brazil. Without a doubt you could see that this state is the industrial state of Brazil.