I woke up with a headache. The last few days of long days,
short nights, endless packing, unpacking, repacking, cleaning and moving boxes
from A to B to C to A to C to Z were catching up with me. The
leaving drinks the evening before probably helped too. The past
month had been so frantic – between arranging the practicalities of
transferring my job to Brazil, arranging shipment of our possessions, packing
boxes and suitcases, selling and donating our furniture – my wife and I barely had
time to breath and now the day had finally arrived: our last day in the USA,
the end of one phase of our lives and the beginning of a new one.
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| Our last view in California and what we remember most: cars, cars and more cars! |
We decided to stay in a hotel at the airport to make life simpler (for
once) and chose one conveniently near the car rental facility to return the
monster I had hired to bring our 7 large cases, 2 small cases and backpacks to
the airport. The hotel itself was nice, the room was comfortable and
the check-in staff were friendly and helpful. But they really let themselves
down with the breakfast. I don’t know why, but breakfast in North
American hotels is always a depressing disappointing affair. The
lower end usually consists of waffles, cereal, bruised fruit and little else,
while some of the nicer places I’ve stayed it has been mediocre and
overpriced. This hotel fit somewhere in the middle. On
the face of it, a reasonable selection, but the scrambled eggs and potatoes
were on the colder side of lukewarm and the sausages were anaemic and
tasteless. The coffee tasted foul so I stuck to orange juice.
Partially fulfilled, we made our way to the airport, checked in, found
some seats by the gate and settled in to wait for the first of three flights,
from San Francisco to Chicago. As the flight was due at 1 pm, we had
a spot of lunch and what else for our last meal in California but
burritos? Actually not bad for airport food and a hell of a lot
better than our first meal on living in the US, which was from Taco Bell (we
were young and foolish, and soon regretted it!)
Our last memory of San Francisco will unfortunately be the guy that
thought it was appropriate to fart throughout a 4 hour flight. The
first time the smell wafted over, we reached for some alcohol hand gel and kept
our hands near our faces. The second time, my wife sprayed some
perfume to fight back. The man seated on the other side of her
quietly said “thank you”! We think the culprit was the man sat
directly behind me, but we’ll never know for sure.
The flight from Chicago to São Paulo was uneventful, just long and
boring (10 hours of patchy sleep is never fun) and the landing was smoother
than most I’ve experienced (when the wheels touched the runway, it felt more
like a patch of turbulence.) We went to the foreigners queue at immigration
(the Brazilian queue was full and we could choose as we were a mixed couple)
and passed without delay, which made a pleasant change to arriving in the US
where you are always made to feel like a criminal being processed.
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| Chaos in baggage reclaim at Guarulhos |
The baggage reclaim hall of São Paulo’s Guarulhos airport was in
complete chaos. Actually collecting the bags was fine, although it
took some time, but the problems came on exiting the hall. The exit
was on one side of the hall, with a queue running through the middle of the
hall. As we headed to the start of the queue, we came upon a mass of
people and we realised that this was actually a turning point in the queue
which had snaked its way to this point, then back around the side of the
hall. We made our way to the end of the queue and patiently waited
for our turn. As we approached one of the turning points in the
queue, we could see numerous people joining; cutting the
queue. Although this was annoying, I can’t be annoyed with those
people as they were clearly innocent and did not realise they were cutting the
queue. The chaos was compounded as the queue passed close to a
baggage carousel making it almost impossible to pass. The airport
staff were just wondering all over the place looking completely lost; they had
absolutely no idea what to do. Eventually, they extended the
barriers, further along the middle of the hall, although this was a drop in the
ocean in terms of correcting the mess. Eventually, we found our way
through the maelstrom to the barriered off part of the queue and found
ourselves moving at a steady pace. Someone near us asked a customs
official what was going on and he just shrugged and said that a lot of planes
came in at once.
This was the most frustrating thing. At an airport, where
every plane has a scheduled arrival time, how is it possible to be taken by
surprise by the number of planes and passengers? This was a new
terminal at the airport, and it could clearly have been designed and planned
better. It is not the best first impressions of a country, although
to be fair, it is the first time I or my wife has ever seen such chaos at
Guarulhos. I genuinely hope that this was a one-off.
After clearing customs, it was time to re-check-in our bags for our
onward flight to Curitiba. The queue was long and slow and there was
either no air conditioning, or it was not working. Pushing around
heavy bags in Brazil, in summer, you need air conditioning. When we
were halfway along the queue, one of the check-in agents called for passengers
on the Curitiba flight. We put up our hands and told to wait just a
moment. 5-10 min later, we were called to the front of the line to
check in our bags and were then told to take the shuttle bus to terminal 1 to
catch our flight.
When the bus eventually arrived, 5 minutes after the stated boarding
time, it was completely full of people. Only 2 people got off and I
stepped in, looking for a place to stand, but there was still someone
attempting to disembark. That person eventually managed to leave,
but there were still others. Finally, we were able to board, but
there were still passengers trying to enter. It seemed like we would
miss our flight, when thankfully another bus arrived and ours
departed. We arrived at terminal 1 and rushed towards security,
silently thankful that there was no queue. Working on automatic, I
started to remove liquids and my computer from my bag, when one of the staff
told me that it was not necessary. This came as such a relief considering
our rush and it makes sense to me. Why are you required to remove
all items from the bag when it is being scanned anyway? More to the
point, why is it ok in Brazil, but not in Britain and especially not in the
USA?
The short flight to Curitiba was smooth and uneventful and, for the
first time, I had a clear view of São Paulo, unobscured by
clouds. The city appears to go on forever and is covered by endless
tall buildings. It really shows just how big this city
is. As we headed south, the number of clouds built up until we were
almost at Curitiba and the Earth was obscured by an unbroken blanket of
cloud. The famous Curitiba weather presenting itself.
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| The (in)famous Curitiba weather, greeting us with a rainbow! |
Baggage claim is always a nerve-wracking time and after the chaos in São
Paulo (not to mention having 7 large cases checked in and our 2 smaller
carry-on cases checked in as well) we were nervous about whether all the bags
would appear. The first of our bags appeared shortly after the start
of the delivery with others following at random intervals. Soon
there was only one left to come, and the frequency of bags
decreasing. It wasn’t long before the remainder were delivered, we
heard the clunk of the baggage door closing and the final case had not
arrived.
The woman at the Azul Airlines desk was friendly and helpful and
explained that this isn’t uncommon and assured us the bag would most likely be
delivered that evening. She agreed to have the bag delivered to Pato
Branco and took the name of the hotel so we could be alerted when the case
arrived. These instructions would be passed on to the person taking
over from her at the end of her shift.
This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise; our big worry was
that we not be able to fit all the bags into the hire car, despite choosing an
estate car (station wagon, for American readers) this should make life a bit
easier. So I made my way to the Avis car hire desk to collect the
car. After handing over my driving licence, credit card and
passport, I was given the paperwork and they arranged to have the car brought
to us near the entrance of the airport.
We went to the pickup area in the car park as instructed to await the
car. A few minibuses for other car hire companies passed, and then a
Fiat Doblo arrived. While not a car that I would consider to be
good-looking, it would be perfect for carrying our luggage. But then
a smaller car arrived and the driver came over to introduce himself as the Avis
driver. It turned out he had come to take us to the Avis parking
area to collect our car but could only fit half of the bags into the
car. My wife told me to go with him to collect the car and she would
wait there with the rest of the luggage.
I arrived at the car park and was introduced to the car, a Renault
Fluence, a saloon (sedan.) This would me up, what happened to the
estate I requested? Well, they didn’t have any bigger cars and
apparently, this saloon was a class higher than the estate. But I
have 6 big suitcases and 2 small ones, how would they all fit
in? Sorry, it’s the best they had. It’ll have to
do…
Soon my wife arrived with the rest of the luggage and I explained the
situation with the cars. How about the bigger cars in the area
across from us? They belonged to Hertz, and we had booked with
Avis. The driver helped us to load all the cars into the car using
what I can only assume to magic. When we removed the bags at the
hotel, we took photos of the position of the bags and somehow only just managed
to replicate the driver’s work.
The drive to Pato Branco took about 6 hours, including a 30 minute delay
caused by road works (you can move halfway around the world, but you’ll still
get stuck in motorway road works) and a couple of breaks. After
removing all of the cases (the car now feels like a rocket) the hard part
begins; what to do with all that luggage? Easy solution – have a
beer, go to bed and hope the problem takes care of itself!
It didn’t…
