Driving home from Atibaia

Saturday's adventure

This morning we first went to the street market to get some fresh veggies.  Then we drove to Atibaia.  It was supposed to be just over an hour drive... of course, that wasn't true for us.  The first issue was missing an exit because our GPS told us to "keep left" and we should have kept right to be in the correct lane.  So, the GPS changed the directions and took us through city streets (instead of the freeway that we missed).  Besides all the traffic and traffic lights, there was also an accident causing a backup.  I kept looking at the GPS estimated travel time, and even though we were sitting in the car for an extended period of time, the estimated travel time didn't seem to reduce.  But... we finally made it to Atibaia. 
It was a nice town.  We spent some time walking around. 

Here are a couple of real estate listings we looked at.

There were two churches that we wanted to visit, but found both of them closed.  We found a plaque that explained that the one church would be open at 1:30pm and the other church would be open at 4:30pm (it was about 1pm at the time).

 So, we decided to go have lunch at a restaurant that we had passed in our walk around town.  It was a nice place with lots of outside covered seating.  We had a very good lunch and were serenaded by a two man band singing mostly American songs - Simon & Garfunkel, Elvis, etc.

 
We went back to the church after 1:30 and it was open (picture below).

We then went to the Municipal Park Edmundo Zanoni.  It was much smaller than we expected, but nice. 

They had these swan paddle boats.

 After leaving the park, we went to a winery.  It was very interesting.  We parked and went into the building, and all we saw at first was a bunch of barrels.  Then we found where we could go downstairs, which we did.  Down there we found a bunch of people taste testing the wine.  They had a table with a bunch of bottles of wine, and the little disposable cups (about the size of the cups on a bottle of cough syrup).  The taste testing was a serve yourself!  So, we taste testing many of the wines and ended up buying two bottles of red semi-sweet wine and a bottle of port.  All three were $15 (Brasilian Reals), which is about $10USD!!  And it's good wine!!!

After that we headed home, and the trip back was much better and quicker than the trip there.

Ice Cream Update

We took the ice cream back to the store (with a letter translated into Portuguese so we could explain the issue) and they gave us our money back.  We decided to buy another container of ice cream and surprisingly only two days later, the new container of ice cream cost slightly more than the first container of ice cream (but this one was full of ice cream!!!).

Brazil

This presentation was created for the going away party for another ISP that has headed back to the U.S.  It's an interesting display of Brazil sites (some we've been to and many we haven't been to).

GM South America PE Leadership

Look carefully and see if you can pick out Dave.  Our friend Shawn is on the very left in the black suit.

Ice Cream

We bought ice cream at the store yesterday.  Dave opened it tonight to have some, and this is what he found!!!

It's odd, half of the ice cream is missing, but the container was clean so it's not like it got warm, melted and leaked out of the container.

The Nods - Brazil Tour 2011

On Thursday, Dave and our friend Shawn were invited to a "concert" at the Club at work.  This is a bunch of Brazilians and one American (a guy we've known for many years, but hadn't seen for a long time before coming here).  This is a bunch of GM employees.  If you watch carefully you will see Dave (standing next to our friend Shawn) for a few seconds.
 

Charlie cuddling with his favorite items

For some reason, our crazy cat loves electrical cords and chargers.

Foz do Iguau Videos

This is videos of the falls from Argentina:

This is videos of the falls from Brazil:

A good bird park video

We have many videos from the bird park, but this is one of the best.

Foz do Iguacu - Bird Park

Here are some photos from the Bird Park in Foz do Iguacu.

Foz do Iguacu

Here are some of the photos from Foz do Iguacu.  The first photos are from Argentina and the rest are from Brazil.  We spent about 3 hours touring the falls in Argentina, and about 1 hour touring the falls in Brazil. 

Foz do Iguacu

We arrived in Foz do Iguacu last evening.  We spent the day today touring the Falls from both the Argentinia and Brazil sides.  Here are a few photos, more to be posted after we get back to Sao Paulo.

Another travelling day!!

Our trip back from Buenos Aires was just about as fun as the trip there.  We got to the airport in Buenos Aires plenty early.  As boarding time approached we noticed that there was still no plane at our gate.  We had about 1 hour and 30 minutes for our connection in Rio, which would include customs and immigration, so we didn't want to be delayed too much.  A plane finally arrived near our departure time.  It deplaned fairly quickly.  We finally boarded about 1/2 hour late.  Everyone got settled in and we were waiting to depart.  About 20 minutes after boarding finished, the pilot came on the intercom and said that our departure would be delayed for one hour (and no reason given).  Sometime later he came back on and said they had requested an earlier departure but were denied. 
We finally made it to Rio and had to clear customs and immigration, which actually went pretty quick.  Since we missed our connecting flight, we had to leave the international area of the airport and go to the domestic flights GOL office to reschedule our flight.  We rescheduled for our flight and were taken to the front of the domestic flight check-in (which was a very good thing since the lines were very long).  We had to re-check our bags and go back through security.  When we got into the terminal and looked at the board for the location of our flight, we saw that our original flight hadn't left yet and was on last-call for passengers, and we thought about trying to get on that flight, but our bags were checked for the later flight it wouldn't do much good.  Since it hadn't left yet I don't know why they didn't put us back on that flight, but we're guessing that if we had gotten on that flight our bags would not have made it with us.   We left our hotel at 8:30 am yesterday morning and got back to our apartment at 9:30pm last night.

Buenos Aires

Here are some more photos from our trip to Buenos Aires.

Sunday in Buenos Aires

Today, we walked alot.  I am going to post just a few of the many pictures we took, because I can't create the movie files from this computer.

This is in the Cathedral Metropolitana.  The three guard statues are representatives of Chile, Peru, and Ecuador.  The guy at the top (that they are guarding) is the guy that started the Revolution leading toward Argentina's independence.

This is the Pink House which is the Palace of Government of the city.  The President of Argentina works in this building.

This is the president's office.  The President is Cristina Elizabet Fernandez de Kirchner.

This is a bridge over the canal.

This is a theatre for a tango show.  We intend to go there tomorrow night.

These two photos are the interior of a shopping mall.

There are lots more pictures that I will post when we get back to Sao Paulo,

What a day!!!

Yesterday (Saturday) we travelled from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires through Rio de Janeiro.  And what a trip it was!!  We arrived at the Congonhas Airport at about 11:15am for a 1:18pm flight.  This is the smaller airport in Brazil and much closer to our apartment.  Apparently because it was Saturday, the airport was very busy.  They do check-in a little different than we are used to.  You have to get in certain lines based on your flight.  We got in a line but we weren't sure if we were in the correct line, so we found an employee to ask, and she took us to the correct line (and the line was very long).  A few minutes later she came back and told us that there was a problem with our flight from Rio to Buenos Aires. Due to the volcano in Chile many flights have been cancelled.  There was a guy in front of us in line from Australia that helped with the Portuguese to English translation.  He was very helpful and we were very grateful for his help.  In the end, we were told to go to the Information Booth in the airport.  At the information booth they told us that we could not get to Buenos Aires from Congohas airport but that they were still flying from Guarulhos Airport (the big international airport) and said we could get a free bus trip to Guarulhos.  Before going to Guarulhos, we wanted to make sure that we could get our flights changed, so we went to the GOL (the airline we were flying on) office.  The lady (who spoke little english) there looked at our flights, and was not sure if the flight from Rio to Buenos Aires was actually running.  She asked us to step aside for a while so she could confirm.  In the end, she told us that we could take our original flights.  So, after about a half hour of running around the airport wondering if we would get to Buenos Aires, we finally got back in the long check-in line and checked in for our flights.  It's a good thing we got to the airport early!  When we got to the airport in Buenos Aires, we went to the taxi stand to reserve a taxi and then to the currency exchange.  Dave waited in line for about a half hour to exchange money.  We finally made it to our hotel at about 10pm last night.