Cotia

Cotia is in the São Paulo state of Brazil, 30 km west of São Paulo city.

Understand
Cotia is a city with a population of some 230,000 (2015) spread over an area of 324 km². It contains a great number of stores, restaurants, big and small shopping centers, which attract new residents that settle mostly in the wealthy region of Granja Viana.

By bus
There are daily interurban buses that can be taken at the district of Pinheiros, in São Paulo.

By car
Cotia is crossed by the Rodovia Raposo Tavares (SP-270), which serves as its major road and connection with São Paulo. It is also possible to reach it via the Castello Branco and Regis Bittencourt highways, but you will have to take the Rodoanel and eventually reach Raposo Tavares anyway. Raposo Tavares is constantly congested during rush hour, so it's always best to avoid it during the periods.

Get around
As mentioned above, Rodovia Raposo Tavares is the main road crossing the street and it is well-served by a number of lines, but they may be crowded and/or stuck in traffic constantly.

The city center can be covered on foot. The districts of Granja Viana and Caucaia do Alto are more sparsely populated and may need a car ride for a complete visit. Bus lines there are not so plentiful, and most of them are interurban, which means higher prices.

Granja Viana
The district of Granja Viana (sometimes spelled Granja Vianna) is one of the three districts that make up the municipality of Cotia and the first one if you come from São Paulo via Raposo Tavares highway. The district is filled with middle/upper class condos and has a number of restaurants, shopping centers, parks and other features worth visiting.

Granja Viana was once formed by a small number of big farms. The owners of such properties decided to divide them into smaller lots and sell them, giving way to the many houses that have been built there. In the last decades, many people from São Paulo saw Granja Viana as a refuge from the city's pollution, violence and traffic jam. Nowadays, because too many people moved, the same problems from São Paulo now exist in Granja Viana, as well, though with smaller intensity.



Centro
Downtown Cotia is located between Granja Viana and Caucaia do Alto, starting at km 29 of Raposo Tavares Highway and ending at the km 40, at the border with Vargem Grande Paulista.


 * Praça Japonesa, Rodovia Raposo Tavares, km 31. A Japanese-inspired square built in honor of the Japanese immigrants that developed rural techniques in the region.

Caucaia do Alto
Caucaia do Alto is the last district of Cotia for those coming via the Raposo Tavares highway, but it is not located near the road: one must leave the highway before Vargem Grande Paulista and take the secondary roads leading to the region. It is also the largest, particularly due to the presence of the Reserva do Morro Grande, a large preserved area of Atlantic Forest.



Connect

 * Public telephone booths can be found on some streets of Cotia. They work with phonecards only, which can be bought at any newspaper stand. Regular phonecards allow you to make local and national calls, but the credits fall at an incredible rate if the call is directed to another city or to mobile phones. There is a special phonecard for international calls, so make sure you ask the clerk for the correct one if that's the case.
 * The city code, as well as the vast majority of cities near São Paulo, is (11), hence local telephone numbers have the following format: +55(11)0000-0000. If you are making local calls, the +55(11) prefix should be dropped.
 * When making national calls from SP, you have the option to choose your telephone provider: dial 0 followed by (15) Telefónica, (23) Intelig or (21) Embratel, plus the two-digit DDD code and telephone number.
 * When making international calls from São Paulo to abroad, you also have the option to choose your telephone provider: dial 00 followed by (15) Telefónica, (23) Intelig or (21) Embratel, plus the country code and telephone number.
 * To make reverse charge calls within the same city code area, dial 90 90 + the telephone number (do not use the city code (11)).
 * To make reverse charge calls to other cities, dial 90 followed by (15) Telefónica, (23) Intelig or (21) Embratel, plus the 2-digit DDD code and the telephone number.
 * When calling a cellphone number within the 11 code area, be sure to add a 9 digit before the number if the number you are dialing has only eight digits. Since 2012, all cellphones within that area have been added a "9" as their first digit, so that a whole new gamma of possible numbers is created

Go next
From Cotia, taking the Raposo Tavares highway (SP-270), it is possible to reach the nearby cities of Jandira, Itapevi, Vargem Grande Paulista and São Roque.