The Arrival!
Kim and I flew with daughter Elizabeth and her Brazilian fiance Rodrigo to San Paolo Friday Jan 26. It was a direct flight from Boston. Took about 8 hours but was easy. I slept a lot, maybe a little sudoku. They fed us 2 complete meals!
Kim and I where in seats A and B, very near the back of the plane. Unusual for us to sit together, Kim does not like that I try to talk to neighbors. Elizabeth and Rodrigo were within sight but 5? rows forward and on the way other side of the 11 set across plane. I now board with the parents and others needing assistance. I was able to retrieve my normal copious bags and get off without incident. This was a non-jet-bridge deplaning. Elizabeth and Rodrigo waited for us at the bottom of the steps so that we could board the same bus.
The walk to customs was long. Once we were in line, the woman who had been seated in our row on the flight in seat C was now standing behind us with a Yale sweatshirt. Too tempting for me, to start a conversation. My opening line was something like if you ware merchandise like that, you really have to expect to be asked about it. Very interesting story, as always! She is Romanian. Had to repeat undergraduate degree in accounting once she came to the US at like age 21. Did an MBA at Yale and now is working in pharmaceuticals in San Francisco. She is married to a Brazilian whose family is in agricultural and has a ranch? close to Brasília. He also has a degree in that field but it is from a Brazilian? university, not recognized, so he is driving Uber in the US.
He was not with her as he was in the Brazilian customs line. Her real passion is travel. She has been everywhere. I think they are off to Australia next. They will be in Brazil 3 weeks but she will work remotely a couple of them.
Our flight from the US had been rescheduled to later in the day and so we missed our connection to Rio. There were no later fights so we got put on an early one for Saturday and they paid for our cab and hotel room.
We ate a reasonable dinner at the airport, took a cab to our hotel and passed a reasonable night. We arrived back at the airport well before our 11am boarding time. Then things went seriously south. We checked about 1/2 the bags to Rio. I did early boarding on the LATAM airlines flight. After being seated about 15 minutes, a stewardess came and tried to speak to me in Portuguese. She had my name but no english. Another passenger volunteered to translate and said that the rest of my party was going on another flight and I needed to deplane. It was hard against traffic in the isle. Luckily another passenger pointed out that I had forgotten my book in the seatback pocket. Once I got off the plane, our group was deep into outrage. Rodrigo tried everything short of physicals force but we had been rejected from the flight. The reason was that Delta, who we had bought the LATAM connecting flight through, had not approved the flight change from last night to this am.
Later LATAM employees felt that the gate attendant had made a mistake and she should have just flown us. Rodrigo spent the next 3 hours standing at LATAM counters. There were no Delta people on site until 5PM. The rest of us had lunch at TGIFs and another meal at another stand. We finally all boarded a 6PM LATAM flight and landed in Rio. The trip to the hotel and the Champaign reception to greet us was uneventful. We walked to a restaurant, returned to the hotel and turned in.