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We left Lima on time at 9pm with little indication of the trauma to come. The forecast was set fine, and we were expected to land in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at 6am the following morning, before catching a connecting flight to Salvador at 9am. Everything seemed to be fine initially, and we landed around 6ish at what we thought was Sao Paulo Airport, however after much confusion we realized that we were in fact at another airport (don’t recall the name) as the it was too foggy to land in Sao Paulo. Fair enough we thought, can’t be helped, I’m sure we won’t be here long….how wrong were we!! 7 hours later, after sitting on the plane and not being able to leave with no explanation of what was going on we eventually took off and flew for all of 20 minutes to Sao Paulo airport, arriving around 1pm in the afternoon. We flew with a company called TAM and quite frankly, they are bloody useless!!! They didn’t tell us what was happening, the hostesses were as obnoxious as possible (after two hours they all left the plane and were replaced by a different set of equally obnoxious individuals). Why
we couldn’t disembark and get transferred to Sao Paulo by coach, I don’t know. In summary, our first impression of Brazil was not a good one!
Needless to say, we’d missed our connecting flight to Salvador and the TAM muppets couldn’t fit us on another flight that day, even though there were a further half a dozen and so we had to settle with a 7.30am flight the following morning which meant having to spend the night in the delightful city of Sao Paulo, the gangster capital of Brazil at a skanky over priced hotel which the airline refused to pay for (I’m writing this blog over two weeks after it happened and I’m still mad as hell!). A taxi to the hotel would have cost too much and so we opted to wait for the free shuttle bus service which runs every 40 mins from the airport. 3 hrs later, ours eventually rocked up and after a 20 minute drive through the charming slums of Sao Paulo we were at our hotel, where we stayed put until the following morning when it was time to catch our rescheduled flight. We ordered takeaway pizza and just sat and watched
TV, it was the least we deserved after the last 24 hrs!
The 7.30am flight didn’t leave until nearly 10´clock and the TAM pratts thought it would be amusing to keep changing the departure gate which created absolute mayhem in the terminal. When we did eventually board the plane, it was still a further hour before we departed….we were becoming very sick of TAM and very quickly and what was worse is that we still had a further half dozen flights booked with them over the course of the next two weeks! Joy!!!!!!!!
We arrived in a very wet Salvador a few hours later, only to find our prearranged and prepaid for transfer, nowhere to be seen. With no money left we tried to get some out of the cash machines at the airport, except they were all empty. Consequently we ended up catching a cab, knowing full well that we couldn’t pay for it. We explained our predicament to the driver using our best hand signals and got him to stop along the way at several different cash points, only for them to be empty as well!!!
The hotel, Lago Mar, (which Dan had found and paid for already over the net….it looked nice) was in the middle of nowhere (literally you had to go off road for 20 mins and along some muddy tracks to get there) and looked to be closed only for a couple of Brazilians to appear whom somehow, we managed to get to pay the taxi driver. Our bags were taken to our chalet (shack) where we crashed out for a while. That was until we were summoned by the owner, some German chap (living in exile no-doubt) who´d just arrived back from the airport and wanted to know why we weren’t at the airport to be picked up…..I explained that we were there and that in fact he was late, which is ridiculous because the flight was over 2 hrs late (so much for German efficiency) and so he was horrendously late. He still seemed to think that he had a point and seemed set on debating it….I suggested that this wasn’t really the best way to greet what appeared to be his only client especially after what we’d been through since arriving in Brazil and he eventually seemed to get the message. With that he decided to go off on a different tangent complaining that the flight details I’d provided at the time of booking, were wrong. I was adamant that they weren’t and fortunately had a print out in the room which backed me up and promptly shut him up!
When the rain resided a little we took a stroll down to the beach which was nice enough and Dan spent some time trying to get some coconuts down (to no avail) before grabbing a bite to eat at the hotel and having an early night. The population of Salvador is largely comprised of Black Brazilians and as such there is quite an African influence, particularly in the food. Dan had a kind of spicy chicken curry dish that night which was delicious and possibly only good thing to happen in Brazil so far!
To our surprise there was actually another guest staying at the hotel, an equally shady looking German chap, who without being too presumptuous, seemed to have a Brazilian girl (young enough to be his grand daughter) staying with him in his hovel. We’d paid in advance for 5 nights at this place, but fortunately we’d already made arrangements to cut it back so that we could have longer in the Panatanal and were due to fly to Manaus, via Brasilia the following afternoon. Any longer at this dirty old mans hang out would have been too much!
Gurt, the owner, drove us to the airport around lunch time, stopping at a cash point along the way, which actually worked for once. While we didn’t get a chance to Salvador we can say that the surrounding area that we saw, was dirty and certainly not worth visiting. So far Brazil had been not short of an absolute nightmare and for the first time in the trip we both wanted to go home!!!
The flight to Brasilia only left a few a hours late (not bad by TAM standards) and fortunately the Brasilia - Manaus flight was also delayed by a couple of hours and so we still made it in time. We arrived in Manaus (´The Paris of the tropics´ and the gateway to the Amazon) around 12am, promptly grabbed a ridiculously expensive taxi to the shabby over priced Hotel Continental where we bedded down for the night.
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John
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Sports Day
Hi Guys, I hope you are both well. just a quick note to update you on Sports Day. Soph won the ' Bean bag Pick Up ' but lost out in the Sprint, she was a little distracted. Harry was fantastic and won the 100, 200 and came from behind as the last runner in the Relay to win for his House. He missed out on the School record for the 100 set in 1979 by point one of a second. I'm not too sure where he gets it from ? A full head of blond hair, blue eyes and fast !!! Ummmmmmmmmmmmm. Take care of each other. All my love John xx