missing flights and traffic in Sao Paulo.

I've lived in several places throughout my life, and I'm no stranger to traffic jams-- from the Bay Area to Long Island. But I've never, never, never seen such incredible traffic as I had in Sao Paulo. It makes sense to me now why people use helicopters to get to work... it takes forever to get anywhere and do anything.

Case in point. Even though we planned and started my return trip to Garulhos, the international airport in SP, four hours ahead of boarding, we hit so much traffic (and part of it on a motorcycle, at that), that we missed my flight back to Rio de Janeiro.

It might as well have been out of a movie. I headed to Garulhos on a motorcycle of a friend's brother, who races (motos, obv) for a living. Driving 150 km on a highway is fast, my friends, and we still didn't make it in time. After missing the flight, and finding out that the next cheapest tickets were $300 and $500 respectively (I used Webjet, which seems to have a pretty bad policy with exchanging flights if you miss them), I decided to take a bus back (thank goodness it was just Sao Paulo). I caught the 10:30 PM bus back to Rio and arrived around 6 AM at the Rodoviara, and then 7 AM back at home. It was a rough night, but I needed to get out of the city with insane traffic. 23 km in nearly an hour? Ridiculous.