When we are young, we do immature things. Without planning.

When I was 22 and finished college, I stayed up all night partying, bought a ticket to Brazil, and left the next morning.

When I tried to get through Immigration, the Officer asked where my visa was.

Which apparently you needed to enter Brazil. And apparently I did not have.

And apparently that is the one advantage of purchasing a cheap, multi-airline ticket from a third party: the initial ticket agent in Pittsburgh failed to ask me if I had a visa for Brazil, which normally should occur at check-in and normally would if you were flying one airline the whole way through.

But had the question occurred during check-in, I would have not been able to check in, and I would have never left Pittsburgh.

As it were, I was at least in the São Paulo airport, where they were telling me I had to return to Pittsburgh, or at least somewhere in the United States.

While I did not argue with the Immigration Officer, I also did not accept that as the inevitable result, I was not looking to retroactively make that my fate, but the answers were not to be found in my mind alone. I needed a Good Samaritan, like the Great Good Samaritans of Old.

Finally (after what was probably only a mere couple of minutes, but felt like a “finally” and so it is deserving of that discourse marker here), I found an otherwise anonymous Good Samaritan, who has become immortalized in the internet scrolls of these Hammock Reviews (she also appears in another illustrious Review), who advised me in Spanish to fly to Argentina and apply for a Brazilian visa from there, which I did.

And allowed me to enter São Paulo.

After a week in Buenos Aires.

That was not the immature thing I did.

The immature thing I did was not reviewing a Hammock during my time in São Paulo.

But (un)luckily we grow up. We become 41. We become more mature.

Instead of getting wasted, buying a ticket on a whim to Brazil, and arriving on no sleep, I almost literally (with few breaks in between), worked 48 hours straight (yes, I’m crazy) and flew to São Paulo on no sleep.

But this time, I had prepared for such whimsical action.

I had procured a visa.

The now-electronic visa allows for a decade of Brazil-destined whimsy.

As long as you have a color-printed copy with you.

And I, now 41, had printed out four copies, double the recommended two copies (probably because they wisely estimate the average person will lose one), to double up the responsibility of the whole operation, like the Great Double-Blind Studies of Old.

But neither was that the mature thing that I did.

My mature action was Reviewing a Hammock during my time in São Paulo.

I stayed in Pinheiros, a borough or district in São Paulo that is a collection of neighborhoods including one also named Pinheiros.

Pinheiros means pine trees. Which is synchronistic considering less than 24 hours prior I had left Maine, the Pine Tree State. Though Pinheiros once had a lot of pine trees evidently, it would appear that Maine now has the lead in that category as Pinheiros now has the lead on cool city stuff.

Pinheiros has cool restaurants, shops, bars, etc. Not many pine trees, which are not normally found in hip places (citation: Maine, the State of). Pinheiros is a hip section of town.

Hip sections of towns largely have three categories of accommodations.

Expensive hotels.

Regular hotels.

Hostels.

I considered the hostel, which was about one tenth of the price of the Hilton.

Hostels may offer a hammock.

Which is amazing because they also offer the best price, in another tally for the possibilities of having your cake and eating it too.

But I have fallen for the hammock-in-picture trick one too many times at hostels.

“Where is the hammock?”

No idea.

Classic bait and switch.

So I settled on Filadélfia Hotel, which was about a third of the price of the Hilton.