Finding Relief in the World's Most Congested City: A Sunday Afternoon on São Paulo's Minhocão

São Paulo's population is the largest of any city in Brazil, the Americas, and the Southern Hemisphere; there are more people living in São Paulo than in New York City, Mexico City, or Lagos. It will thus not come as a surprise that São Paulo has been named the most congested city in the world and that Paulistas, the 20 million people living in São Paulo's metropolitan area, give in to the worst traffic jams on the planet, every single day. But there is one place in the city where, once a week, cars are strictly prohibited, a place reclaimed every Sunday by the city's pedestrians, cyclists and soccer kids: the elevated highway in the city center, known as Minhocão.

Upon its completion in 1970, the highway was officially named Via Elevada Presidente Artur da Costa e Silva after the second president of Brazil, who was in power during the military regime in the 1960s. But among Paulistas, the highway is only known as Minhocão, meaning "earthworm" in Portuguese. The Minhocão, an 80-feet long, Loch Ness-like creature, has been said to slither through the forests of South America since the 19th century. According to legend, its shimmery black body digs through forest soil until, when hungry, the tentacle-decorated head emerges to devour whatever it finds, animal or human.