South America- Day 31- Sao Paulo/ Home!

Cannot get over that it is our last day on our incredible trip! We fly out a little after 9 tonight, so we luckily had some time today to continue exploring Sao Paulo.  We packed up and checked out, then headed to the Ibirapuera Park in the middle of the city. Noted as being the city's version of Central Park, it is a beautiful spot to walk around but didn't feel as big as we expected. There is a terrific lake in the middle, filled with swans and ducks, and there is plenty of shade on the pathways that helped shelter us a bit from the sun (the trees there also have some of the craziest root systems we've ever seen).

We wandered around here for a while, then walked through the surrounding neighborhood, seeking out the MUBE, which is a small modern art museum we read about on CNN.  The walk itself was nice though the museum was very small. There was one exhibition, one under construction, and the outdoor sculptures; the space was cool as well, but definitely didn't take us long to complete. It's actually right next door to another museum that is based on audio and visual components, and it turns out there is a cafe near that one, so we ended up eating there. Surprisingly cool and chic crowd, which was a nice surprise!

Unfortunately I woke up this morning feeling a little off and as the day progressed, kept feeling worse. Hoping it was just allergies we kept walking for a little while longer and hit the nice shopping district on Oscar Freire. Wasn't really up for much, but we did walk the strip and I picked up a pair of Havianas as a last token from Brazil. We ended up going back to the hotel after this and resting for about an hour before changing and grabbing our cab to the airport.

The traffic in SP is absolutely insane and even though the airport is not that many kilometers, we had heard horror stories so we left two hours to get to the airport. An hour and 45 minutes later, we were very glad we did! Lower stress level all around! Our flight actually ended up being late since the plane was stuck at a remote section of the airport, or some such nonsense. They made us switch gates and there was overall mayhem, but the good news is that it eventually worked out and they bussed us to the plane and then we were off on the nine hour flight home to the US.  Newark to Dulles and then arrived back home!! What an absolutely once-in-a-lifetime trip!