Rio de Janeiro - When my baby smiles at me we miss the plane

To this day I'm not sure how we missed the flight. Our schedule seemed reasonable, we left at the right time and there was no traffic in Madrid that day. Our morning started with some croissants and a last chat with Tonya the canadian, then Kristy, Michelle and I caught a cab out to the airport. We bid Kristy goodbye as she went back to London, then we got in line to check in. Once we got to the head of the line, the chick said we were in the wrong place, and directed us to a gate that literally didnt exist (this became a common theme). we found another chick who told us to line up at this other huge check-in desk, and with a bit of begging we got to the head of the queue. Unfortunately, by the time we'd gone through all of this, we were 10 minutes past the check in deadline and they couldnt help us. This was at around 10am I think, and after some initial distress we managed to re-group and make a plan.

First we went to the Iberia ticket counter for a re-schedule. The only option they could give us was the same flight, but on Wednesday, meaning Michelle would miss the majority of the conference. Next, we managed to wrestle the public phones into submission and I called Dad, who then called the 24hr support number for our travel agent. The only option they could come up with was a 6:30pm flight leaving that night on British Airways. The catch was that it was $3000. Each. Then Michelle clued onto the idea that we might be able to fly to Sao Paulo and get some kind of connection to Rio. If theres one way to cheer Michelle up, its giving her something to plan. She skipped back from the ticket office 20 minutes later with a big smile and some re-scheduled tickets and after a couple of manditory hiccups at check-in we were booked for Sao Paulo at midnight.

We still had to book a flight from Sao Paulo to Rio, so I asked an airport guide where the Internet cafes were. He directed me to a photocopier. With a healthy dislike of Madrid airport building within me, I finally caught on that we could use Michelles laptop and pay through the nose for some wireless access. By now it was getting to the point where no matter what we tried, it wouldnt work. Every Rio travel option we could find fell through in some way. Either we couldnt book that early, or our credit cards wouldnt work, or the site was totally useless. Michelle even managed to get her card briefly suspended for suspicious activity. We'd been at it for about 6 hours by this point and it had become a bit of a joke. We gave up and spent the next 5 or so hours stalking the airport, looking for food or something to spend the last of our Euro coinage on when most of the shops were closed. Finally we got on the plane, and strapped in for a 10 hour flight to the same destination the airline had crashed at a few weeks prior. Michelle slept like an old man, but unfortunately I stayed awake the whole time and had to sit through Spiderman 3 (what the hell was that, seriously).

The plane landed at 5am on a foggy Sao Paulo morning, to the relieved applause of everyone. I'm not sure if the pilot would feel complimented or insulted. I was extremely tense as we went to the ticket office to organise the connection to Rio. I couldnt help thinking "Whats going to go wrong now?". Everytime the girl behind the counter would pause and read her screen or ask her co-worker something, I'd close my eyes and wait to hear that my passport was actually a fake, or we'd have to connect via Norway, or I was somehow doomed to live in airports forever. But amazingly, it all worked the way it should. I think the tickets were $150 US dollars or so (roughly $150 AU dollars I believe) and after checking our bags in we hit up McDonalds for some celebratory nuggets.

This was when I started to notice what I'd been warned about in South America. Michelle and her big shiny blonde curls were stopping traffic everywhere. I'm pretty sure she was the only natural blonde in the building, and she was also about 2 feet taller than everyone else. As we sat waiting to board the 10am flight to Rio, there was a group of Brasilian looking dudes who were just constantly staring, regardless of my superman eye lasers from the next seat. Just as I was considering buying her a bhurka, our flight was called and an hour later we were in Rio.

I'm really not sure how to sum up Rio. All the people I've dealth with have been really polite and smiley and all that, but everyone else just seems suspect. Its not necessarily because they're acting suspiciously or anything, but when you see security guards posted everywhere and huge fences guarding even the most generic facilities you cant help but think everyone is out to get you. The first thing you see as the bus takes you from the airport is slums. Slums as far as the eye can see, carpeting the cities outskirts with their own unique architecture which I'd call "jaunty rooves and broken glass". I felt like I was watching Man On Fire again, but then again everything feels strange and alien when you've been in transit for the last 35 odd hours.

We managed to find the Hotel and check-in, which were the last two things I could think of that might go wrong and I'd never felt so happy. We're located a few blocks back from one of the main tourist beaches called Copacabana. We're a couple of blocks away from where Michelle catches the bus to the conference, so every morning we run a gauntlet of homeless people and at nights she gets the Hotel taxi to drop her back here. For the first few days we were huge sissys and never ventured too far from home base. Fortunately there is an excellent pizza place just across the road, you just have to sit far enough back from the street so that people cant hassle you for cash or food. I'm probably over-dramatising it a bit though, if you stayed here long enough and got to know some locals it wouldnt be that bad at all, and if you're still paranoid, some Hotels offer a service where they send a local out to hang around you. Oh, and old people can hire young people to walk them around the streets.

After a few days of being homebodies we finally decided to get out and do some touristy stuff. We adopted Steph from Bath, whom Michelle met at the conference, and caught a cab out to the Sugarloaf. First things first though, noone here can drive. You can tell just by looking at any cars dashboard, everything is worn and beaten up but the indicator stalk is in mint condition. I could tell our taxi driver had an aversion to straight lines, as he would sit in his lane (barely) and wiggle the steering wheel left to right constantly like an infant in one of those rides in shopping centers. Anyway, it was late afternoon by the time we got on the first cable-car, so the haze was in full blinding effect. It was a nice little ride, so I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

I've spent most of today buying Havianas and eating McDonalds, so I think I'll take a walk down to the beach and hopefully soak up enough Brasilian summer to see me through to the Australian one.