Brazil 2013 Traffic in Sao Paulo

We are enjoying our vacation in Brazil to the fullest. We arrived on Friday morning after a 11 hour flight, via Green Bay to Detroit to Sao Paulo. We left cold and snow and flew to balmy tropical fall temperatures. 75*F and beautiful. It is fall here in the southern hemisphere and that make the temperatures very comfortable. It can get hot in the heat of the day but the house seems comfortable enough even though there is not air conditioning.
Our first impression in Sao Paulo the largest city in the Americas was that the traffic was very interesting. Over all the drivers are much more polite. There is one thing that makes driving challenging. It is called motor cycles. As we were on our way home from the airport, we hear a beep, beep and a motor cycle comes up riding the white line at a great speed between two lanes of traffic. They dodge in and out of cars, passing left to right and right to left. You do not want to be hugging the white line and we narrowly saw a motorcycle avoid getting hit. He yelled at the driver and drove away. After he was gone, we realized the passenger mirror was broke. Apparently this is a common practice if the motorcyclist don't like the way a motorist in driving, they break their mirror. This is quite common. These people are like a gang, so laws really don't matter to them even though what they are doing is totally illegal. They do serve a purpose though. If someone has to get someone or something across town in a hurry, they get hired to do this. It doesn't matter if there is a traffic jam as they just keep moving. These are not real big motorcycles so they look dangerous weaving in and out of traffic with two passengers.

There is so much traffic in Sao Paulo, that you are only allowed to enter the city during certain times on certain days or you will be fined. You have to plan your work around this so employers have to schedule their employees around this. This morning Eryka's brother went to go to work and all the buses were full, so he had to wait until after 10 am to take his vehicle to Sao Paulo. He cannot travel home until after 8 pm tonight.