where are you in brazil man? i spent 6 months at a time two seperate times in Jundiai, Sao Paulo. But yeah you're right about the women...a white guy with a little change is like god to them. And i mean a little change lol. If youre able to hit the bars n clubs at night, then you'll likely pull the most gorgeous women youve ever seen. My lil manufacturing equipment technician ass spent a couple weeks shacked up with an asian brazilian 27 year old doctor! That would never have happened here. But, i never had any threat of violence and i ended up in some pretty rough places (strip club/brothels) in the slums out in the middle of nowhere...but the most i ever saw was the occasional bar fight. well, and some of the soccer games i went to were kinda rough. i was sitting at a corner bar having a beer on the sidewalk when a guy in a car came by waving a neighboring towns soccer flag and a guy sitting alone drinking got up and threw his lawnchair thru dudes windshield and consequently got the fuck knocked out of him (no police involved, mind you.) but that was it. i never personally felt threatened at all. I loved brazil!
I'm in a city called Curitiba man, it's further south from São Paulo.
It's funny what you say about the violence man, because I too was a little worried about it at first. In general it is pretty peacful here, granted, you HAVE to know where and where not you should go and in all honesty I have had more harrasment from cops than from bum drug dealers. Which say's a lot.
You can't have been in one of the bigger favela's in São Paulo man, sorry, but you go into any of the big favela's here, and you better say goodbye to your wallet/cell/belt/shoes. It really is not advisable to venture in to those places, especially being a white ass gringo like me hahaha and São Paulo is pretty well known for it's bandido's.
Rio is worse though, as of now, the main drug cartel's have promised to kill an innocent person or light fire to public busses until the cops release the 40 ton's of weed that they found, and about 200 odd kilos of coke. It has basically been a war zone up there, policemen dying, innocent's being murdered and a shit load of things on fire! It's scary man. And they want to host the World cup and Olympics there! The world must be getting worried hahaha
Glad that you liked it here though man, the culture is so cool and the people are really generous and receiving here. It's only fault is the government. May I ask, why did you go to Jundiai twice and not to some more beautiful parts of the country? I'm guessing you have ties there?? As there are some gorgeous spot's further to the north.
Anyway, oh and every football game get's violent here hahaha they are so passionate about it.
By the way, what did you thnk of the weed? Were you able to find anything good?