Guarulhos. Friday February 23, 2012

I hate flying at the best of times. Add to that mix domestic travel in a foreign country, on a Friday evening in the middle of a thunderstorm and there is clearly a recipe for trouble.

It all sounded such a good idea at the time. How many times have we heard that? Steve is at a conference next week in the north of Brazil. Recife to be precise. The conference is in a resort hotel and many are the times he goes to these events and wishes I was going with him. So I agreed to go and spend the week.

The first glitch in the system is that I have recently been back to the United States to do the first part of my Re-entry visa. We are on green cards in the US and as we are now living – albeit temporarily in Brazil, we have to have special permits to allow us to come and go without hassle. Well, part two of the re-application process is to have an appointment to have my fingerprints taken and the allotted time is next week. Right in the middle of my week long sojourn to Recife.

So we re-booked the tickets and the plan was that I would go with Steve on Friday evening, stay for the weekend and fly back to Sao Paulo on Monday in time to catch the overnight flight to the States. Well, here is another glitch. My flight is scheduled to land on Monday afternoon at around 3.30, and the flight out isn’t until late evening. Trouble is, that in Sao Paulo there is such a thing called “Rodizio” which means that for one day a week, our car cannot travel into the centre of Sao Paulo during rush hours. Our car, inconveniently enough is off the road on Mondays. Okay a 6 hour layover isn’t so bad, except when it is at Guarulhos – the main airport for the commercial capital of Brazil and one of the worst in the world.

But back to this evening. Of course, being Friday meant that the traffic is worse than usual. The fact that it was raining and coming at the end of a holiday week (Carnival) meant that for a 7 o’clock flight we left at 3.45. Fortunately, once at the airport, there was little in the way of queues and I even made it through security without the full body check that I usually incur courtesy of my titanium hip. I swear that they made me go back and forward through the metal detector, turning down the sensitivity each time until it was low enough that my hip didn’t register.

The thunderstorm was still going strong and very noticeable because there was a considerable amount of rain coming through the roof of the terminal. The cleaning staff were doing their best to keep on top of it, but failing miserably. Unfortunately, the area that was flooded was the holding area where everyone is bussed out to the aircraft. Chaos was ensuing. The elevators and escalators were all out of action and people were trying to make it down the stairs with rain literally bucketing down all around them. The cleaning staff were trying to place buckets to catch the water, but we were talking a deluge. Buckets weren’t cutting it.

We headed for the nearest café. Three times the gate for our flight was changed and we wandered up and down the concourse, setting up camp near the next gate. Eventually the inevitable happened and the flight was cancelled. I have to say that it was reasonably efficient to rebook us onto the next flight, which was due to leave about an hour later. We were offered supper at one of the restaurants and so blindly followed the ground staff back - to the land side.

It was hardly worth the walk because it was a “por quilo “restaurant and having been here now for over two years I know that “por quilo” is to be avoided at all cost. It is basically a buffet where you help yourself and then at the checkout, they weigh the food and you are charged by weight – hence the name – “by the kilo. It was pretty awful, but given that we wouldn’t be getting to the hotel until gone midnight it was a case of “better have something”. But then after the disgusting food we had to go through all the procedure of getting airside again.

I was fully expecting to see Marcelo. Steve is convinced that Marcello is able to track him via his cell phone and Marcelo never leaves the airport until the flight has taken off, just in case it is cancelled. Either that or he has nothing better to do on a Friday night and I guess the overtime is always handy.

So four hours after we arrived at the airport, we were still waiting for our flight to be called. I sometimes wonder how Brazil is ever going to cope with the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. There is lots of talk about building a new terminal to cope with the influx of visitors, but with less than two and a half years until the World Cup, that is clearly not going to happen.

But for now all I am concerned about is whether my luggage is going to make it onto the new flight. I hope so; I need some of it for my trip to the States on Monday. Assuming of course that I make it back from Recife in time for that flight.