Without a Traceroute

Sao Paulo is an absolutely enormous city. Luckily, there’s a subway and surface trams you can take to avoid traffic and get around. Unfortunately, the map of the Sao Paulo metro system is a bit…optimistic. Looking closely at the legend above, you’ll see that all of line 4 and half of line 2 are “under construction”. Half of line 5, and chunks of lines E and F, as well as the airport connection are only “in planning”. This can be kind of frustrating when trying to plan a trip:
“Oh, I can just take the…oh wait, that doesn’t exist yet. Oh, then I’ll just have to transfer at…oh, that station isn’t open either. Well, looks like I’m taking the bus.”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that they’re expanding their metro network. I’m sure in 2010-2012, all those lines will be really useful. But right now, their presence on the map is just a tease.

Well, I’m off to São Paulo, Brazil in a few hours. I’m going for the You Sh0t the Sheriff hackmeeting/conference. Unfortunately, due to fire code/occupancy limitations, I probably won’t get to attend many of the presentations in person unless some people don’t show up. But I will get to meet a lot of interesting people, and I’ve been invited to the after-party, which will probably be more fun anyway.

If anyone has suggestions for a crash-course in Portuguese, let me know!

For reasons that make no sense to me, buying a one-way ticket from Santiago to São Paulo on LAN airlines costs almost 650 USD, but buying a round-trip ticket with a return leg on some random date in August cost only 400 USD.

One of my friends claims that this pricing has to do with market variation and flexibility: the airline is better off getting that August ticket sold now, since they don’t know what the airfare market will look like in August. I still say there’s something really screwy going on when two tickets cost less than one ticket.

Here’s some photos from Cerro Santa Lucía, a park on a hill in central Santiago. It’s a really interesting place, with dozens of different levels, narrow passageways, crumbling stone stairways, fountains, statues, a cannon, a church, and lots of secluded corners where Chilean couples go to make out (PDA is huge in this country). The whole place has kind of a Love in the Time of Cholera feel, there’s lots of shady courtyards with ice cream stands, and it’s probably my favorite place in Santiago to hang out and read a book.
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In some ways, Santiago is an attractive city. Air quality, however, is not among them. Santiago is one of the smoggier cities in Latin America. According to a 2004 World Bank study (PDF link), it even beat out former reigning champion Mexico City in “particulate matter,” which are the little bits of crap that make it hurt to breathe (as opposed to gaseous toxins which just quietly give you cancer).

You might think that 4 years in the LA area would have conditioned me to accept a little bit of grit with my oxygen, but you’d be mistaken. Los Angeles, the United States’ smoggiest city, clocks in with with a measly 34 μg of particulates per m³ of air. Santiago boasts a robust 60 μg/m³, but still doesn’t come anywhere close to the big leagues of “developing” [lung cancer] cities. Cairo puts them all (or, really, itself) to shame with a whopping 169 μg/m³, nearly 5 times the level in Los Angeles.

Breathe deep, son!

One of the best things about traveling is encountering totally unusual situations, and having no idea how or why they occurred. Sometimes, it’s fun to try to puzzle out these mysteries of the universe. Other times, you can only shake your head. This is one of those.

Um…what?

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