The Odyssey

[I'm at an Internet Cafe in Recife and I hate having to use an ergonomic Portuguese keyboard - where the hell are the quotation marks?!?]

Saturday was one endless day. We started off with our tennis lesson (we'll miss the last two, but c'est la vie), on the way home stopped by REI for Jfer to get more travel clothes. Then we picked up Homer at home and hurried to Hutto. When we arrived at Triple Crown we discovered that the office had closed fifteen minutes earlier. Damn! Luckily our trainer was around and eventually checked Homer in. It was a bit traumatic for us leaving him behind locked in his kennel. He didn't seem to mind, but of course he had no idea he was being abandoned for two weeks. We hope he'll remember us when we pick him up and doesn't hold this against us. So we made it home barely in time. I fought with Illustrator and printed out the cover for Doug's CD - Illustrator seems like a really cool program, but it's a bad idea trying to learn it in fifteen minutes. I think I was still in the shower when Elizabeth showed up.

It was long, long trip. Elizabeth drove us to the airport and we made it past security without major incidents (they did make Jfer take off her shoes, though). Flight to Dallas was uneventful and the flight to Sao Paulo was long, but no uncomfortable. We were on a fairly new or renovated large American Airlines plane, so we had some legroom. We arrived in Sao Paulo around nine AM. Landing in S.P. you see a continuos city for miles and miles - simply amazing. Went through customs. We declared our prescription drugs (because that's how Jfer interpreted the directions on the form) which seemed to confuse the customs agent. He went looking for the "health department" guy, didn't find him and so let us through.

We had about six hours to kill in S.P. so we jumped a buss into town and got of an Paulista Ave. by the MASP museum. They had some huge Pele exhibition so we passed, but went to the lovely park across the street where we hung out and napped. The park was very clean and full of tall and shady trees and palms. It was pleasantly warm and a breeze was blowing. Eventually we got on another shuttle and back to the airport.

We got to our gate with plenty of time to spare. Our flight wasn't being announced and Jfer discovered they moved it to another gate. No problem to get on. We started our hopping way towards Recife. We got dinner and soon landed in Rio de Janeiro - the city is surrounded by a bunch of cool jagged mountains but we did not see the Jesus statue. Next dinner and stop in Salvador. It was dark and I napped through our stay. Another dinner (I passed) and another stop. We were getting off the airplane and checked only to discover that this was not yet Recife. So another take off, napping and landing in Recife.

We were picked up by Luciana's mom in a carnaval costume and sent on our way to the Hotel. There Doug said hi and took us to our room where we collapsed - close to two AM. Oh, and I did get to see the Southern Cross. It's not all that impressive, sort of a crooked kite in the sky, but hey, I can see the friggin Southern Cross! How cool can you get?