Rio de Janiero

The ship arrived in Rio at 4 a.m., and people were supposed to begin clearing immigration at 5.  However, when we got in line for our 6:30 scheduled time, they began making announcements that the officials were stuck in “Carnaval” traffic.  We had picked a ship’s half-day (4-hour) tour that would drop us at the airport.  They told everyone with tours to go wait in the theater… that we’d be processed by immigration as we left for the tour.  They finally arrived and our tour which should have left at 8, pulled away from the ship at 9. 

the cathedral

After announcing that we were heading for Sugarloaf first, the bus wandered around the downtown area where we saw some of the Carnaval festivities.  They announced we were headed for the cathedral, but on the third pass said that we would not be going in because it was closed due to Carnaval. 

So it was off to Sugarloaf…again.  Just as we got in line for the tram, they announced there was a problem – that the officials had closed it down.  After 20 min standing in 95° tropical heat, they decided to put us back on the bus and go to Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. 

Ipanema

Right as we got aboard it looked like they got the tram operating again.  We went to the beaches and got back to Sugarloaf about 45 minutes later. 

Sugarloaf

The problem was, with the late start, there was not time to go all the way to the top and still get to the airport by 1 p.m.  We went to the first level (which gives a spectacular view of the city), then came back down to get our transportation to the airport. 

Christ of the Andes, atop Corcovado

 The coordinator who was supposed to take care of the 8 of us with early flights, pretended to call the bus, then disappeared – leaving us to stand in the sun for an additional 50 minutes while the rest of the group went to the top. 

We did not leave Sugarloaf until 1:45, and finally reached the airport at 2:15 – only to go to the international terminal when all of the early flights were the domestic ones at a different terminal.  After much stress we made our TAM flight to Sao Paulo – the problem was that the delay meant we did not have the time to complete our check-in for the international flight, and could only check our bags to Sao Paulo.   That necessitated picking up our bags there and schlepping everything from the domestic terminal to the international terminal so we could check in with LAN.  It also caused confusion with immigration… we tried to explain we were “in transit” but got put in a line to clear immigration – when we got to the counter they spoke no English and could not understand why we had documents already stamped indicating we had entered the country.   A policeman who spoke English finally was able to sort it out and told us to leave.  When we checked in we were given passes to American Airlines’ VIP lounge – a perk for flying business class.  At least we had a quiet, comfortable place to wait.

We flew from Sao Paulo to Lima, then picked up another flight to Miami, arriving at 6:30 am.  Luckily, we could check our bags for the remainder of our flights.   We grabbed some breakfast and wandered over to the Military Lounge – turned out to be a quiet oasis in the chaos of the airport.  We had computer access, coffee, and a comfortable place to crash. 

We got to Atlanta OK, only to be told our flight to Portland was delayed by bad weather.  We left about 45 minutes late, but made up some of the time, so we got in about 25 minutes late.  By our calculations, we were in our 43^rd hour of being “on the road” – if it hadn’t been for the two legs on business class where we were able to get some real sleep, we would have been basket cases.  Jet lag had set in. We got a hotel in Portland, then worked our way south on Monday, hitting Trader Joe’s. IKEA, Lowes, and the outlet mall before heading to the beach.