Monday 10 December 2012

I love working in Latin America, but sometimes...

Doing an audit in Buenos Aires on Monday and Tuesday. Trying to get out of BsAs on Wednesday early morning from Buenos Aires Aeroparque Airport. As the flight was delayed, I would have missed my connecting flight in Montevideo.

Pluna was being so nice and transfered me to a flight operated by Gol, leaving out of Ezeiza Airport in the afternoon. After a long taxi ride, I finally got to Ezeiza, being informed, that this flight is delayed as well. After some sweet 5 hours of waiting, I could finally board my plane to Asunción, Paraguay and subsequently to Curitiba, my Brazilian home, feeling all nice and comfortable to reach homey home soon.

In the early evening hours, the flight took off in Asunción, heading towards Curitiba. Reaching Curitiba, we thoroughly enjoyed the view of thick fog hovering over the not so beautiful airport of Curitiba. Thanks for whoever built it there, being the only foggy spot around. Anyways. Our pilot decided ‘we cannot land’.
Off to Sao Paulo, folks! Landing in Guarulhos at around 21.30 in the evening, now just slightly worried how this whole thing wouldl turn out. At that time, Curitiba Airport was now officially closed. I received the warm offer of flying to Florianopolis and subsequently taking a 7 hour bus ride to reach bed. Erm yerrrr. Not. I kinda pushed the GOL folks to get a hotel in Sampa.

 “No hotel available in Sao Paulo”. Yeah right. I was off, going on a quest to find one on my own, which indeed didn't seem too easy. Finally, a happy GOL dude came up: “I’ve got a hotel for you. In Campinas!”. Okay GOL dude, that’s 70km away. Never mind, I took a taxi to Campinas, hoping to catch a flight to Curitiba from Campinas airport the next morning (that’s what they had promised me). Waking up today after around 3,5 hours of not so deep sleep, I firstly destroyed my Galaxy S2 by throwing it on the floor of my hotel. 

After the probably most expensive wakeup call of my life, I then took a quick shower, rushing to Campinas airport. And guess what. The GOL flight to Curitiba had been canceled. High five, anyone? GOL wanted to offer us the courtesy service of driving us (BACK in my case) to Guarulhos. Great idea on a day, when public transport in Sao Paulo is on strike and 250km (!) traffic jams are reported. 

I chatted with a couple of people at the airport and found out that Azul was offering a flight just 20 minutes later to beloved Curitiba. And, yes yes, there were 7 seats available. I was trying to convince GOL to pay the flight for me, and it didn’t work out in the first place. They sent EVERYONE to Guarulhos, but I had enough of going back and forth and bought my AZUL ticket, to later try to reimburse it with some head monkey dude of GOL, which worked out, somehow. 

Really not caring much about anything anymore, and forgetting about all the business appointments I had missed, I went through the security check and walked towards my gate. Just to find out… yeah you guessed it… my flight being delayed… by another 4 hours… bligh me. When I finally touched the ground in Curitiba at 14.00 this afternoon, I couldn’t quite believe it. 2 days to return home from Buenos Aires. 6 airports. 3 airlines. 1 broken phone. fml

7 comments:

  1. my rule for flying within brazil: if it's an adjacent capital city, there's a high chance of getting there faster by bus.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with this dude, Fred, up here. Specially if you are dealing with Gol folks, or Webjet (which now are the same thing).
    Taking a bus would be less stressful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Manuel muito bom seu blog, vou recomendar. sou de são Paulo e moro em Curitiba faz 17 anos, a questão dos nomes é bem forte aqui, em São Paulo não, ninguém quer saber qual o nome de sua mãe.

    abraços.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear Manuel,
    Just for your information, the Curitiba Airport was build in that place because in 1944 they choose a nice foggy place for hide the military airport from the germany army.
    So because our country (my grandmother and grandfather was german) Curitiba has a terrible airport.

    ReplyDelete
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