Old Town School – On The Road

Dispatches from the road from our wayfaring travelers.

flying to rio

of course i had the middle seat on the 10 hour flight from atlanta.
but we switched around. but still, 10 hours on a plane is a long time.
and that was after the 2 hour flight and before the mad dash to the
one hour flight. but now, like magic, i am in belo horizonte, brazil.
i am in brazil. the country.

everything went so smoothly until we reached rio. we had 90 minutes to
change planes. a big cushion. you might think.

as we slowly, a little too slowly, got off the plane, into the odd 70s groovy
design terminal, the first thing noticed was a cluster of lovely young women
on the jetway. all wearing complex facemasks and breathing apparatus, eyeing
suspiciously our emerging from the plane. exiting the plane, more people
in uniforms and masks watched our passage and handed us forms in only
portugese. ahhhh! H1N1. we were to fill out a form that said we hadn’t
sniffled or sneezed in at least two days. so careful they are! but all you had to do
was say no and they stapled it to your immigration form and sent you away.
in the meantime, the plane was full of sneezers, hackers and mucus coated
coughing, but no one was admitting it, because they all sailed through.

at this time, through the first checkpoint most officials wearing masks, i noticed that
the airport was filthy, falling apart and dingy. as we waited the 15-20 minutes for
our luggage to arrive from the plane that was parked about 100 feet away, i went
to the filthy bathroom with the dripping and broken fixtures and discovered no
soap to wash all the H1N1 off of my hands that i got from handling all the forms,
doors and counters that the masked and gloved officials didn’t have to.

(our host here tells me that the display of flu concern is just for show, for the
rest of the world to see and that they have far worse mosquito carried diseases
that are incurable, have no vaccination and kill people often here that the
government doesn´t care about)
the delta lady in chicago told us our bags were checked “all the way through”.
which actually meant to the second to last stop. as we discovered as our bags
were nearly last. fine, there they were. so, after going through another checkpoint
where no one actually told us what they wanted from us, then into a long line,
which was strategically winding around two entrances of the duty free shop
that we had been handed swine flu laden brochures about earlier. the line snaked
around corners and down corridors, no end in sight. to add to our latened distress,
we heard tepid saxophone music and wondered if it was live. i suggested maybe
it was from the duty free shop, and as we turned the corner, there was a tired old
sax player playing along with an equally tepid recorded track, and wonder of wonders, wearing a uniform of the duty free shop. he seemed exhausted from his long gig
even tough it was 9am. as he launched into the retirement home version of
“the girl from ipanema” that would send the perkiest senior into a coma, we realized that we only had about 25 minutes to make our next plane. Bau went ahead around the
corner and down the hall to plead our plight to someone and they saw our problem.
so we rushed past all these waiting throngs scowling at us and cut in front of everyone.
that was never really clear what they wanted at this checkpoint, but they picked it out of
our sheaths of papers and off we went. we passed by currency exchanges. at the
end of the hallway were booths with people trying to get people to hire taxis.
as a welcome to brazil, a voluptous dark haired woman stood up in her booth,
leaned over to present her taxi selling “womanly attributes” to a group of arrivals,
smiled, waved and said “taxi! you want taxi?”

we turned the corner into the terminal. we were swarmed by money changers
and taxi hawkers, and all we wanted was to find TAM airlines. which we finally
figured out was in terminal 2, which was a LONG WAY. We did the rolling
luggage trot. none of the moving walkways were working to help nudge us
along even a little bit. rivulets of sweat were rolling down my face, soaking
my shirt, some of the long ramps were uphill. we were down to around 15 minutes
until the plane left.

finally we arrived at the ticket counter. for some reason, we could not get
ticketed all the way though to this flight in chicago, so we had to check in
and get boarding passes. bau showed the lady our itinerary. she said it was
closed. after some pleading, she checked with a supervisor, who agreed to
let us check in, check our luggage and get to the plane. we got our boarding
passes and ran for the gate. headed for the domestic gate. no! even though we
were flying one hour away in brazil, we had to go through another check
and security point at the intrnational gate. andrea, laura and bau
sailed through. i beeped.
back through the detector. removed things. still beeped. feeling like
jaques tati. through again and still beeped. soaked with sweat. shoes and
belt off; 4th time a charm. put my birks on unbuckled, belt, wallet, papers,
books clutched in my paws, i held my pants up as i shuffled as quick as
i could to the gate
where an anxious man was waiting. he shut the door behind me as i
started down the jetway. and with an exhausted gasp, i sat down,
my pile of suspect belongings on the seat next to me, twisted that
that pointy fan thing at my head and made noises like“phew´´ but more
gaspy, as the male flight attendant stood in the aisle miming a seatbelt
buckling in portugese to the 8 or so people in the back half of the plane.
for the first time in my life, someone held a bazillion dollar plane for me.
little old sweaty gaspy me. in brazil. never happen at o´hare.

but as it turned out, the brazilian people are wonderfully friendly and
accomodating. this day alone, two restaurants stayed open long past their
operating hours to feed us. literally refired the grills to cook us meat
and bring it to us with amazing abundance and bursting with flavor and attentive
service.

but that´s a story in itself for another day. every single thing we have eaten has
been spectacular. but i do babble on. but.

full of beef, pork, chicken, bacon, chicken hearts, meat from every part of
every animal including toad, i say goodnight.

love
steve

Filed under: Brazil 2009, Notes from Steve, Uncategorized by Steve | June 3, 2009 | Comments (0)


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