Come Ride the Crazy Bus
The Intrepid Adventures of the Roberts Family
5
Nov

Stuck in Sao Paolo

Posted in Argentina/Brazil  by chad on November 5th, 2014

I don’t know who first came up with the lie flat airline seat, but in my list of greatest inventors of all time, he/she deserves a place of honor, up there with the likes of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. OK, perhaps that is a bit much, but few things excite me more about a long flight than the prospect of stretching out comfortably and sleeping right through it. The rest is even more appreciated on this leg of the trip, as landing in Sao Paulo we find ourselves settling in for a tasty, ten hour layover.

The free wi-fi does give us a chance to connect, and catch up on life back home, but that distraction quickly fades, and like the neurotic polar bear at the Central Park zoo, we’re soon stuck in a cycle of stand up, walk a loop around the terminal, sit back down and watch airplanes take off. By the time our flight to Buenos Aires actually boards, it will be the first time I’ve hit 5 dots on my FitBit and gone absolutely nowhere.

One interesting nugget of information that has come to our attention is that Canadians require a visa to visit Brazil. Oops. Not sure how we missed that one (especially since one of us has highlighted it in the Lonely Planet book), but fortunately, Rio is planned for the end of our trip and not the beginning, so we have some time to fix it. It does mean scrambling in the morning to get some passport photos and other required documents together before our 12:15 appointment at the consulate, but fingers crossed, by late Friday we’ll have visas in hand.

If only it were all that easy….

Fast forward a few hours as we stroll confidently up to the gate for our flight. Our boarding passes were originally issued in Seattle, so the agent pulls us to the side and asks us to get new ones printed at the counter. A minor inconvenience as we see the line building behind us, but no need to stress, we’re on vacation after all.

After punching in our reservation number, the desk agent looks up and asks us for the form showing we paid our reciprocity fee. Umm, there’s a form? Turns out that recently Argentina changes the way they charge incoming travelers and now require them to pay online and print out a form showing they have paid before they fly. Good information to know but not exactly helpful for a flight scheduled to leave in 25 minutes.

We make a valiant attempt to complete the process while standing at the gate, but struggling with a creaky, overburdened, public internet connection, we just don’t have time, and before we get the confirmation, the gate closes and we are stranded. Literally. Like the movie Terminal.

In theory we will be able to rebook on the same flight tomorrow, but since we have no Brazilian visa, we can’t leave the terminal to go to the check-in counter to have a booking agent change the reservation. Even if that worked, we can’t go to a hotel for the evening since they are all outside the terminal.

The story is long and painful, and too much for me to live through again here while the wound is still raw. With literally no one willing to figure out how to get us out of purgatory (the flight was Turkish Airlines, but they can’t do anything because it was issued by United. United can’t do anything because the purchase was through Air Canada, and so on, and so on, and so on). We finally find a helpful person at the airport lounge who helps us book a ticket on the last flight of the night to Buenos Aires (3AM and $1,200 later).

Are we having fun yet?

One Response to “Stuck in Sao Paolo”

  1. Laura Says:

    that. sounds. awesome.

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