Brazil

This week my travel continues with a trip to Brazil, and aside from a brief layover at Sao Paolo airport last year on the way to Buenos Aires (in which I didn’t even have to change planes), this is my first visit to the country.

I’m spending the balance of the week a couple hours south of Sao Paolo before stopping in Rio de Janeiro for the weekend on the way back. I’m particularly looking forward to the visit to Rio, as I’ve heard that it’s an incredible city.

That said, I’m also a bit apprehensive given some of the horror stories that I’ve heard about the potential dangers of Rio from my Brazilian colleagues. The advice included things like “Don’t carry anything with you of value” and “make sure you have just enough cash on you so that if you do get robbed, the mugger doesn’t feel shortchanged and resort to violence.”

Well, I definitely wouldn’t want my mugger to leave disappointed…

I flew to Brazil on Tuesday night, arriving early this morning via a connection in Sao Paolo. It turns out that my previous “connection” (i.e., staying on the plane at the gate while it unloaded passengers and re-fueled) was unfortunately not representative of the true Sao Paolo airport experience.

The real experience consists of multiple lines (passport check, customs, ticketing, security) that are borderline unbearable, particularly if you are one of the last morning international flights to arrive (thanks to a boarding delay, we arrived about 7th in the queue rather than 1st or 2nd).

My favorite line was definitely the one for customs. In fact, there were two lines: one for “Declarations” and the other for “Nothing to Declare”. In reality, though, only the former was being used, which was interesting given that seemingly every local had multiple luggage carts full of boxes and suitcase bursting with purchases made abroad.

Apparently, a favorite pastime of the well-to-do Brazilians these days is to fly to the U.S. (namely to Miami and New York) to take advantage of the relatively low U.S. prices and strong Brazilian currency. According to my Brazilian colleagues, they then return with a stockpile of goods and wager that the customs officials won’t ask any questions.

And it turned out that the customs officials had no problem waving the countless “importers” along without hesitation. Never mind the fact that some couldn’t even manage to properly push their carts through without having their massive boxes and bags fall off and spill out the contraband.

As we had three hours for our connection, I wasn’t concerned about missing the next flight…initially. But with each successive line our time buffer began collapsing in on us. A Brazilian colleague had warned me that a minimum of 2.5 hours was generally necessary for an international connection in Sao Paolo. I didn’t believe him at the time, but he was right as we barely made our flight.