Guarulhos

Guarulhos is a major city in the state of Sao Paulo, and its location adjacent to Sao Paulo city has led to its secondary role as a de-facto suburb of Sao Paulo. Outside Sao Paulo, it is perhaps best known as the namesake of Sao Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport.  However, it is a city in its own right with well over 1.2 million inhabitants, making it the second-most populous city in Sao Paulo state and more populous than Campinas.

Guarulhos is home to one of Sao Paulo’s obsessions and a standard conversation topic in the city: the Cantareira System. While the Cantareira reservoir is known to many Paulistanos only as the cause of water rationing, the Cantareira natural park, or Parque Estadual da Cantareira, is a vast and beautiful natural park and one of the largest areas of indigenous tropical flora and fauna in an urban area in the world. One of the entry points to the park is the Cabuçu Center, located in Guarulhos, which has a visitors’ centre as well as access to waterfalls and hiking and biking trails.

Despite its relatively large size, Guarulhos is somewhat dwarfed by Sao Paulo in cultural terms, although there are several theaters, colleges and sports teams in the city. There is an extensive bus network and busses and coaches connect the city to central Sao Paulo city as well as elsewhere in the country. The area, particularly the highways towards Sao Paulo, can be plagued by traffic, so journey times by car from Sao Paulo city centre to Guarulhos can vary wildly, from 30 minutes with no traffic to several hours in heavy traffic.