Guys, I’m lost and I need help. I don’t even know how you could help me and this could be my last sane interaction.
So, I’m from south of Brazil and I decided to go hiking on a mountain that is in a city to the north. I am a lover of travel and I do this ever since I learned to drive (even sooner, when I started taking buses as a teenager).
This city (Campos do Jordão) if you’re curious is about 200km north of São Paulo. I decided to drive there because I love to know new places and take some time to myself and just be on my own. I always bring some supplies, fuel the car and go on.
Things were pretty normal until I reached São Paulo. I was always told that transit and the streets in this city are a mess, but boy this was an understatement. I was going by waze’s directions and every turn was a very tight timed gap from moving through lanes to going into a very short gap to somewhere else. This, combined with morning traffic from where I arrived was a terror on itself.
I was driving on one of the crossing avenues of the cities when I accidentally lost a turn and was prompted by the GPS sound of rerouting. It instantly added more than 10 minutes to my travel and I needed to take one of those turns that take you inside a neighborhood. Again, the mess of the rush hour and probably some tiredness and I was feeling lost even with careful instruction following. I was about to go over a viaduct when I had to choose - I kid you not - between 3 directions and 5 lanes. There just wasn’t enough time to decide and I ended up going the first instead of the second. Again, rerouting. Several more minutes were added to my journey and this time I tried to check how the route changed and it seemed like I had to draw a picture by driving before returning to my actual way.
So there I went again, following the GPS instructions. As this journey was starting to become longer I checked to see how fueled I still was and I assumed I had enough gas to keep going. A few minutes went by and I was on the Marginal again (that’s the name of the avenues that are close to one of the rivers). Just as I felt like things were starting to go back to normal I suddenly heard the rerouting sound again. ”what the…” I thought when I saw I should’ve left the marginal, and lost it again. I honestly felt incredibly stupid. I could swear I was supposed to keep going straight. By now I was going to arrive over an hour later and even though, to my previous understanding I was only supposed to keep on the same direction, but now my path seemed like a ridiculous unravelable mess.
This was getting strange and I could feel it because I usually do fine following instructions. Even if the taking of turns was difficult, it’s not like me to not pay attention to the gps.
I was being very attentive now both with the gps and the street. I noticed the road and the cars and paid attention to the distance I had to drive before each turn. If I had a bit over a kilometer I’d try to pay attention to my surroundings. I noticed a very large red SUV coming by, an old Land Rover and it caught my attention because I love cars and I never seen one of those on red. It went by with tinted glasses and vanished into traffic. Back to the gps screen just in time to take the next turn and I went right. After 500 meters I had to turn right again and… there was no way to turn right. Just a solid concrete wall in a cobblestone street. “Okay, that’s getting ridiculous”. I changed from Waze to Maps. First I could’ve been dumb but right now it was clear to me it’s Waze that’s letting me down. Even with the gps change I had well over 5 hours of traffic still ahead of me.
This is when I started worrying about gas. Maps doesn’t point me to gas stations so I had once again to be even more attentive for stations. I started following the map and I began to notice how the city was feeling strange. Because I was looking for gas stations I noticed how the road was never in level with shop entrances and commerce. More and more walls and guard rails seemed to make sure the avenues never intersected with civilization, like the city was in display, disconnected.
I very rarely saw any human and this started to make me uncomfortable. Even still, traffic flowed normally, there didn’t seem to be any major jams and traffic lights operated normally. However I could rarely see inside the cars. Most people tint windows for privacy and climate control but it looked like every single one of the cars hid their people inside. While I paid attention to this, the red Land Rover passed again, to my left in a fast lane. I am sure I was going in the opposite direction from when I saw it. It kinda made me feel like this person was lost as well. But the feeling quickly went away as I was very keen on my gps instructions. I followed them for over an hour before I was supposed to keep straight and Maps rerouted me once again.