Yang

I arrived in Porto Alegre after midnight. I needed to return here to meet up with the flights organised by work. My flight was not till the morning and I had planned to get a few hours sleep at the same place I stayed at while working. I tried to contact them earlier though there was no reply to emails.

Turns out they were full. The other options were far away or expensive so I gave up and went back to the airport to waste the night. I failed to get any real sleep at all, and found in the morning that my flight was now a late afternoon flight. I resigned myself to this, checked in and went to acquire some connectivity. Of course the information desk was out of wifi access cards though.

Some time later I was paged to go... somewhere. I tried the check in desk first, and they just told me that the flight was now in the afternoon, and my boarding pass was fine. Unconvinced I tried asking at the information desk (where they do not offer internet) who paged me. The lady kept telling me where the check in desk was and that I need to check my luggage there. I was shoving my boarding pass at here and pointing out that my luggage was already not with me.

Eventually I got pointed to the airline office, where the same scenario repeated. As I was leaving and giving up, someone came in and talked to the lady at the desk, then she suddenly said 'oh yes, your ticket is not valid'. Turns out Qantas like to sell tickets for other airlines flights even if the other airline does not accept Qantas tickets. I eventually managed to buy new tickets on the same plane (just as well, I was to meet someone from that plane and my luggage was on it).

Many hours later I arrive in Buenos Aires. the family friend who was to pick me up had already been to the airport twice with the constant change in flight times. She had nicely organised a taxi for me though she could not be there when I finally arrived (though it took me a while to notice the sign with my name).

The taxi took me to a hotel which was not in fact where I had booked. The hotel were helpful though and pointed me in the right direction. When I did get to the place I book I did not have a booking. This rant is long and will be added as a comment when I have had sleep. I would like credit for not setting anyone on fire.

I returned to the first hotel and they were nice, but full. They rang around for me and found a place that had a room, but quite pricey. Having had about 6 hours sleep in three days and after all of the above, I would have taken anything. Now that I am here I had a bath and decided as a birthday present to myself I will hang around here for the duration of my stay. I deserve it.

Yin

Although I am writting these two posts at the same time they are two posts because they belong that way. Read on to find out why.

With only one night in Rio I knew I would be pushing things to get much done. Unfortunately Rio has been fighting back. In São Paulo I managed to get off the plane, get some maps, get a bus, get a train and find my hotel in the time it took to locate the information booth at the Rio airport. I found it quite frustrating that my taxi driver could not find the hostel, though I knew where he had to go. Eventually I gave up and walked when he was near.

After that things all started falling into place. I have walked over beaches and many other places named after dance steps. The cable car to Sugarloaf is certainly impressive, though I am sure that the smaller peak is typically better for actually seeing Rio as Sugarloaf itself is just too high.

On the second day I headed out towards the large statue of Christ. I never made it there, but that really did not matter, as I had a great time getting the tram through the mountains and going on a fairly random walk though some very interesting 'roads' with waterfalls and natural delights aplenty. I would have walked to the statue, but I had to make it back in time for...

Hang gliding. I got to run off a big cliff and soar over southern Rio. Very happy to have done this, some of you will know I have been talking about doing so in Melbourne, though I am sure the scenery would not have been as good.

Timed well, I went straight to the airport, had a nice dinner and flew out. The pilot did a perfect sweeping manoeuvre across the whole coast of the city and I was in the perfect place to see the whole city by night. This exceptional experience was where my luck ended.

Fencing!

My stay in São Paulo has significantly cut into my time in Rio, which at first concerned me. In retrospect my time here has been well spent indeed. Though crowded and busy the city is surprisingly green, with large amounts of vegetation. In my travels I have stumbled upon many things in this large city, such as an entire floor of a shopping centre dedicated to goth goods and impressive book stores that sell English titles cheaper than Australia*. Of more significance, I noticed a group of men with horses, so I went over to have a look. As it turned out they were dressed in garb from the Narnia series to promote the new movie, along with archery, chess and fencing. I ended up getting a 20 minute fencing lesson with the guy running the fencing.

São Paulo is a lot less isolated that Porto Alegre, which does makes it easier to get by. Many people know basic English and some have very good English. I also attended an xkcd meetup last night. It was good to meet some locals and it gave me a better idea of how things work around here.

In the morning I fly to Rio, though I have done nothing other than book a hostel, so I should sort out some plans about now...

Nathan

* It is illegal to tax books here. What a great idea!

Destress

I have officially finished work. Some very long hours this week, but it is over.

You're not from around here...

Porto Alegre is hardly a hive of tourist attractions and sightseers. As a result it is rare to see anyone who is not a Brazilian. Even the tourist office staff do not speak English and everyone seems quite surprised to see me. There is a lack of English here beyond anything I saw in Europe, where it seems to be a fairly common method for neighbouring countries to communicate, even if it is native to neither. There is one television channel here which is entirely American shows, dubbed into Spanish and then subtitled with Portuguese.

For the most part this is a Modern developed city. Of course most modern developed cities do not use horse drawn carts as garbage trucks. Shopping centres look more like exhibition halls. It makes a lot of sense to have modular stalls for the shops, so now I am just surprised I have not seen this anywhere else. There is a large port here, though it is hard to tell which piles of rust are still in service.

Soccer is THE sport. You play it, you watch it, you talk about it. There are two local teams, one red one blue. On days where there is a significant game the entire city looks like a big CTF match.

Down the south here is the cowboy or 'gaúcho' area. The local cuisine is a BBQ style restaurant. You get a plate and waiters walk around with all types of meat on sticks and carve off whatever you want. This is often accompanied by dancing shows. Waiters are numerous and attentive, though little emphasis is made on presentation. I ordered from a picture of an Alfredo dish at one place, though I was not expecting bare pasta with herbs and cheese in separate containers for me to apply myself.

At the end of the week I fly out of here. Presently I am holding on to getting this job over with.

Time to collect myself

... is something I do not appear to have currently. I have managed to write this as it is presently 5:30 and jet lag has caught up with me.

Despite typical levels of incompetency form Quantas administrative personnel I have arrived in Porto Alegre. I am sure Quantas training involves strict instructions to provide any response which removes customers from your presence above the importance of trivial details such as the truth or your knowledge regarding the issue at hand.

I found it both amusing and depressing that the in flight music contained typical CDDA corruption, particularly as the album I was listing to was Radiohead's In Rainbows*. TAM airlines also thought it was a good idea to drastically limit the movie selection in cattle class, because clearly customers would pay for business class to watch a certain movie in awful quality on a pathetic screen rather than just switch airlines. They were, however, far more helpful than Virgin staff when I passed out on them during the flight. Apparently long flights and me do not mix.

Initial impressions of Brazil are not too different from my expectations. Most notably the definition for 'queue' is more akin to my definition for 'mob'. This results in a lot of pushing around, which is in fact required of any visitors also if you intend to make it to the check in counter before your flight leaves.

Dinner was first had at an airport and choices were limited so Pizza Hut was considered a lesser evil. There are three flavours of pizza and one size - too big. You need not trouble yourself with carb levels and so forth though, all of the additional mass is sodium chloride.

Traffic here consists of small cheap European style cars, and big trucks which all look like they are from the 50s, even if they are new. Despite the factory being 500m away from the hotel it is strongly suggested I take a taxi. Even the factory workers are afraid to walk around at night here. I am told there is a slum just across the road though I really have not had a chance to see anything.

Work is taking all of my time, and I do not really want to go into details, but suffice to say things are NOT going to plan and I have a new life experience seeing an IDE cable catch fire.

* Famous for it's digital distribution

Naming Inaccuracies

I have decided to resurrect this blag as a primary method of communication with those who wish to know about my South American trip, for which I am leaving tomorrow. I expect my electrical connectivity to be much improved, which could result in more frequent posts with far less actual content. Or not, we shall see.