Arriving in Rio, what an adventure!!!

It took five connecting flights and 30 hours to arrive in Rio de Janeiro. The lineup for customs was an excellent introduction to Brazilian inefficiency, but finally I made it through. Amazingly, all my baggage managed to arrive despite the 5-leg journey, thank you Air Canada. Thiago and I called his father, Napoleão to let him know that we had arrived. Unfortunately, he went to the wrong terminal and had been waiting for us for a long time. Finally he arrived and we had a wonderful first meeting. He is funny and reminds me a lot of my Grandpa Paul in his mannerisms. Because Napoleão had come to the wrong terminal, he also parked in the lot that was furthest away. Being so happy to see us, he insisted on pushing our baggage cart the nearly 1 km to the other terminal.



We took our baggage cart on one of those moving sidewalks, but as we tried to disembark the rolling walkway, the cart was too heavy to make it over the edge, and we got stuck with all our suitcases and bags falling off around us. People behind us starting dog piling into our massive stack of bags, and some people in suits tried to vault themselves over the pieces of scattered luggage, without success. Fortunately, someone further back pushed the emergency stop button and we were able to regain control of the situation, and wisely decided to ditch the cart each taking one suitcase and bag to drag behind us.


When we finally got to the parkade, wouldn’t you know it, but we couldn’t find the car. We searched and searched, with our suitcase wheels bobbing up and down over the cobble stoned garage…yes, cobble stones (particularly cobbly, I must say). We gave up searching, went back to the elevator (all elevators in Brazil have attendants to save passengers the enormous inconvenience of having to push a button), and asked the lady where the “blue lot” was. According to her there was no “blue lot”, but we could try getting off on the second floor of the parkade. Skunked again. The well-armed security guard also denied any knowledge of a “blue lot”, but suggested that there may be a blue lot at the smaller regional airport. No, Napoleão had definitely parked at this airport.


Despite the escapade of the missing car, I found the parking garage another hilarious example of Brazilian mayhem. Cars were seemingly parked in any available place and position, whether it was a designated space or not. Cars had driven up on the median and defying all geometric conventions, managed to parallel park between two support columns, all the while, tearing up the cobble stones and making a huge mess. Dozens of cars had been parked this way. Given Brazil’s well-known penchant for profiteering, the Tom Jobim Airport in Rio de Janeiro has clearly not yet caught onto the racketeering of airport parking tickets. Finally we found the elusive “blue lot”. Despite being painted with an obvious blue stripe, the lot was properly called “Ipanema lot”, not the “blue lot”, as one would logically think, thereby explaining everybody’s inability to acknowledge the existence of any “blue lot” at this airport.


Well-intentioned Napoleão opened the trunk of his Peugeot hatchback and pondered for a moment about how to handle the fact that it was already full of cardboard boxes and various items. In a decisive moment of “let’s just get the hell outta here”, Thiago tossed them into the parking lot for someone else to deal with. Problem solved. We piled our stuff in the car and off we went!