São Paulo from the Pico do Jaraguá

With a population of around 12 million, São Paulo is the biggest city in Brazil and South America as well as the entire southern hemisphere. It’s also the sixth most populous city in the world. It has an absurdly large amount of shopping centres and has the largest fleet of helicopters on the planet. But there’s another superlative that’s not so well-known: on the northen edge of the metropolitan area lies what is allegedly the largest urban forest in the world, the Parque da Cantareira.

Cantareira Reservoir

While São Paulo itself is a concrete jungle of five and a half thousand skyscrapers, the Cantareira spreads for 80 million square metres of Atlantic rainforest. There are several areas (or núcleos) which have been developed for tourism. Last weekend I visited the Núcleo do Engordador which has a relatively easy trail past some waterfalls. The…