Brazil Day 1

Brazil – Day 1I was elated to get my hand luggage through checking, but my mood soon plummeted as I boarded the TAM airlines Boeing 767 for Rio. I’d purposely put myself towards the back of the plane in a window seat so I could take some pics out of the window without a wing in the way. All good so far, but the seat itself was somewhat old in both design and comfort. Worse still was the legroom. I expected it to be tight with a 32” pitch, but the stupid magazine holder stuck out about 3 inches into that space and was impossible to squash forwards as it was in some sort of wire surround. Marvellous. My knees were rammed up against it in not too comfortable a fashion.  Oh well, only 12 hours of torture to worry about.The plane filled up and there were two empty seats behind me and the American chap next to me. This was a bit odd as the plane was packed. We waited until we were sure the doors had closed, and the American moved into the spare slots leaving both of us with a free seat next to us. Lo and behold a couple of very late (and drunk) England fans turned up late and turfed him out so we were back to being squashed in again. Unfortunately for these two guys, their luggage didn’t turn up in Rio which is a disaster for them and I really hope they got it sorted before they get the same plane as me up to Manaus.Gravity was on the seat-back video so I watched that (very good), followed by getting through about 9 episodes of Breaking Bad. I’ve got to be disciplined and leave Vikings for the way back, but I’ve got a fair few Breaking Bad shows still to go. Happily my Asus 8” tablet ran for most of the flight apart from 2-3 hours when I managed to catnap. Earplugs are a big bonus! Trying to work out the best moment to disturb the guy on my left so I could go to the loo was less enjoyable, but we managed to sync our bladder movements quite nicely which indicates how long we'd been together on the flight!Arrival in Rio was before dawn. I snapped (Sony RX100 mkII) a few pics out of the window as we approached Rio which was lit up with plenty of streetlights and a bit of low cloud. I’d have thought the pilot would loop around the Cristo statue for me but maybe that’s one for next time. It was a super dawn - shame I was stuck in an airport terminal as the light was beautiful. The passport queue was about 30 mins which, at 5:30am, doesn’t bode well for when it’s busy, but all the desks were manned and they were zapping people through as fast as they could.I collected my bag and headed for the “goods to declare” channel. The rules are that if you bring in “stuff” worth more than $5000 you need to declare it ahead of arrival using an online website, which I’d done, and then present it to customs on arrival along with a special piece of paper with a barcode on.This I did, and the poor chap in customs promptly had his computer system crash on him. Stilted Portuenglish then followed as I stood there like a lemon for about 20 mins, getting a bit worried. Of course, nobody else had gone through goods to declare so that’s the last time I do that! Eventually we decided that writing my name and the date on the bit of paper and signing it, with him stamping it with a rubber stamp, would suffice and I was cheerfully on my way again.With 7 hours to kill before the Manaus flight, my priority was initially to get a SIM card, then to check out where the England team were going to be flying from (they depart to Manaus today as well), and taking pics inside the terminal of branding other world cup stuff. And getting something to eat. And brushing my teeth.Mobile comms seems very expensive, or I got ripped off which is more likely. $80 got me a prepaid SIM valid for some indeterminate number of days with an indeterminate amount of data (though I suspect it is very small). Anyway, I’ve got my Brazilian number sorted so that’s all good.I then had to check in for the Manaus flight. Unluckily they weighed my Peli case which was at 20.5kg for an allowance of 5kg. I'd been extremely polite to the nice check in lady up to that point so when I suggested I put stuff in my jacket pockets she was quite OK. I subtly also put a 70-200 and 1D body plus some other stuff into my little shoulder bag so all that was left in the Peli was the 400. I put it on the scales and it was still 11kg. I opened the case and showed her it was empty apart from that lens, and took the opportunity to point out my official FIFA accreditation letter, and smiled very nicely. "OK, no problem, here's the luggage tag". Whoop-de-doop. 5 mins later it was all back in the Peli again :-).Rio airport is full of fans heading to Sao Paulo for the opener, and England fans heading to Manaus, and Aussies heading somewhere else etc etc. It’s a real melting pot. I've managed to get myself free wifi, bought another mains adapter as mine are the wrong size, and had a bite to eat. Now just another couple of hours to go before I fly to Manaus...And lastly...