Hey kids… I’ve been in Brazil for nearly 3 days now. It was a fun adventure getting here! We took a flight from DFW to Sao Paulo (GRU) on Sunday night. While at the airport, we learned that the aircraft had a maintenance issue, so we would be delayed. Once the plane showed up at the gate from the maintenance hanger, we all boarded. James & I enjoyed a half-assed mimosa and were just getting comfortable.

Then….

Pilot comes on and says that a panel fell off the plane when it was being transported back to the gate from the hangar, and now the Boeing 767 is not air worthy. Luckily, there was another 767 fueled and waiting for us 8 gates down the way. So we all mad-dashed off the one plane to the next.

We kept looking at our watches knowing that we only had about 3 hours to make our connection in Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre. That includes going through Immigration & Customs, then back through security to catch our TAM Airlines connecting flight. Well, as you might guess, we walked off the airplane 8 minutes past the departure of our flight.

So we see an agent who gives us a new ticket. It’s for TAM Airlines again, but at the OTHER Sao Paulo airport (40 minute cab-ride through some interesting parts of town). And only 2 hours to get there. Still have not gone through Immigration or Customs.

Well, we make it JUST in time, but it turns out that a delay on our end would have been tolerated as the second airport was shut down shortly after our arrival. Overall, we ended up being about 5 hours delayed into Porto Alegre.

That said, WE MADE IT! Porto Alegre is absolutely beautiful. The town is very safe, and we tend to hang around the hotel after work.

Time to do some client work!