Brazil Day 7 - off to Sao Paulo

I'm writing this on a FIFA media bus heading to my hotel from the Sao Paulo stadium.Today was a travel day. I had to get from Rio to Sao Paulo which is about 250 miles, but is deserving of a flight rather than driving as everyone says "don't drive". There is apparently an excellent overnight coach service though, but I'd already booked my flight which is only 55 minutes long.I started the day as has become customary by checking the newspapers. Yes - that shot of Rooney on the back page of The Star actually was mine. Excellent news - two back pages in two days counts as a good result for a small agency like ours. Virtually leafing through the other papers I found another shot of mine in the Telegraph of Sturridge and Welbeck from training yesterday. More good news - it's rare for me to get anything in the Telegraph, especially a decent size with a credit as well.I trotted off for breakfast downstairs after a shower and mentally went through my checklist of what gear to take. The packing and repacking of kit is a big concern as it's very easy to leave an essential cable or suchlike behind. I've got a sort of mental checklist that I go through but even then it's fallible. Today I was travelling hand luggage only on GOL - another Brazilian airline I've not been on before. I had no idea what there hand luggage rules were but decided to stuff all the main gear into my Peli 1510, and some socks & pants and a toohbrush into a shoulder back along with my FIFA vest, credentials and some other bits.By the way I'm using a Photoshelter plugin for my Wordpress blog which is why the images now have proper captions. It works quite well actually and saves a bit of time.A last minute check of the Sao Paulo weather revealed 19C with a high chance of rain. I added my raincoat to the bundle.Getting a taxi is a piece of cake as the road outside the apartment block is pretty busy and at any given moment there are approximately 50 taxis driving past. I jumped in one, keeping my gear in with me rather than putting it in the boot in case somene popped the boot at a set of lights (not that they'd have been able to lift my Peli out though!) and R$50 later (about £15) I was in the Rio International airport again.Running alongside the approach road to the airport is a brand new bus-only road. This looks like it has been constructed at vast expense as it has to cross a lagoon on stilts for about 2 miles, and I only saw one bus on it. Good job I don't understand Portuguese as the driver was clearly having a good old rant about it.On to the nerve wracking checkin. I used my FIFA cred to go in the VIP lane at the GOL desk and sort of snuck my Peli out of view of the checkin clerk. "No bags to check in" I said, waving my shoulder bag at him. They don't seem to use any sort of bag tags to indicate that hand luggage has been verified unlike TAM. I asked for my now customary seat at the back of the plane seeing as they board the back first usually and I have my pick of the luggage racks. As it happens non of the flights so far have board in row order so I just get up there at the head of the queue.Oddly, I almost found myself on a flight to Salvador, having misheard a gate announcement. Nodody seemed that bothered that I'd gone through the gate check and was in line at the jetway. Also nobody was bothered that I could just wander back into the departures area again with no checks. I had an odd feeling and scoped the boarding pass of the person in front and saw they had a different flight number to me. Oh well not to worry. There was a lot of confusion there as they kept changing gates for flights and people were wandering around in a state of general bafflement.The flight itself was the usual no-kneeroom affair and I folded myself into my aisle seat with the dexterity of a landing albatross. There was just enough time for the flight attendants to race down the aisle with some odd nuts and Coke/water before the plane landed in Sao Paulo rather bumpily.Once at the airport I had to change some money. I had some US$ and wanted some Brazilian Reias (R$). I tried to change some yesterday but they needed to see my passport which I didn't have with me, but now I did and found a "cambio" in the large foyer of the airport. "Foyer" is a word Mrs T loves. Foyer foyer foyer. For no specific reason it took 15 minutes to change US$300 including needing my passport and the receipt printer breaking down and requiring a tech to fix it (just turn it off and on again dammit). The people behind me in the queue died of boredom and were carried away on luggage trollies.On the flight I'd figured out that the airport was nearer to the stadium than to my hotel, therefore it would be cheaper for me to get a taxi to the stadium than to my hotel. This then allowed me to get there just in time to cover the England open training session at 5:30pm. I've found it better to pre-pay the taxi at the official taxi booth at the airport. This way I know exactly what the fare is and the driver is less likely to rip me off. So I did just that, with a fare of R$96 to the stadium (about £30 which isn't too bad I suppose).The taxi driver however was useless and as we approached the stadium, a massive white edifice with floodlights on and FIFA branding all round, he insisted on following his satnav and turned right at a key junction with the stadium looming on his left. "What are you doing?" I asked in my best Queen's English, along with lots of hand gestures. He pointed to his satnav and shrugged. We then proceeded through a very dodgy part of town which I wasn't all that happy about, so I unsheathed my monopod to use as a weapon should anyone fancy a go (though in all likelihood I'd have thrown my throwaway wallet at them and screamed blue murder). However, we were unmolested as we drove around this shanty town (why they built a stadium here is a mystery - you can see why the locals are unimpressed).Oh well - at least I had a fixed fare :-)Finally after another set of directions we made it to the media entrance and I piled in, just missing the Uruguay open training session. However I did manage to spare a bit of time in between finding a desk, preparing my captions and sorting my gear out to take a pic of the media centre for you. It is HUGE!There has been a spate of thefts from media centres, primarily of camera gear, which is simply not good form at all. FIFA sent an email around saying so, and advised everyone to secure their gear. I've been doing that from the start anyway, with 2 padlocks and a steel cable, and everyone in Sao Paulo was being much more careful. I bagged a locker and replaced their padlock with mine. I mean, why give you a numbered key so that if you lose the key the finder just needs to look at the number on it and then go to that locker to alleviate you of all your gear.After a short time we took to the stadium to actually make some photographs. I decided to go against the grain and shoot from the "media tribune". This is the area where all the print journalists and TV commentators sit and there are photographer positions up there as well. I was thinking that it might be worthwhile shooting the match from up there, but once I got there it was obviously too high for decent match coverage unless you are one of a team including a couple of photographers pitchside.After some time the team came out and I decided to focus on Rooney and Sturridge, and some of Hodgson as well. It's quite tricky shooting from up top so I tried to mix up some long (400mm) and short (70-200mm) shots.There were only 3 of us up in the tribune so at least I was getting some different pictures to the rest of the photographers.Additionally, I wanted to test out my backup remote editing upload setup. This involves my 8" ASUS tablet running WinSCP and AutoCopy, with a card reader attached, and logged into my portable battery powered wifi router. I plugged the TP-LINK router into a nearby LAN cable and it broadcast a nice hotspot for me. With my tablet running in my pocket and the card reader dangling near to hand, all I had to to was pop the card out of the camera and into the reader, and the pics were automatically uploaded to the Focus Images global publishing centre. The fact that there was nobody at the other end tonight is neither here nor there. I also had my headphones plugged into the tablet so I could hear the beep that AutoCopy makes every time it strips a pic from the card - very reassuring. I'm also hoping to run a live Skype session to global HQ so we can chat about the weather during the game. All worked delightlfully so that's me set for tomorrow - this now becomes my primary match setup - nice and small to avoid the problems in Manaus.After 15 mins the stadium announcer announced extremely loudly that the session was closed. I made my way back down a thousand stairs to edit and send my pics, and confirmed that the remote auto sending had also worked as planned. All excellent. Pics sent, it was off to find the FIFA media bus stop which was just outside the press entrance. I'd have taken a pic of it but the bus arrived so I got on.We drove on the most atrocious main road and I looked out of the window at Sao Paulo going by. Not the best looking city I'm afraid. It has a different sort of air about it. Its a huge place and has none of the glamour of Rio (beaches, monolithic mountains, private parties). I'm going to keep myself to myself on this leg of the trip, and hide within the FIFA "bubble". I definitely got a bad vibe from the place driving through it - nothing I can put my finger on (apart from bad roads, roadside shacks, beggars, rubbish all over the place).Tomorrow is game day so I need to be on the ball. Up early to get to the media centre early and put my monopod (or alternative virtual queueing device) in the queue to choose my spot, get some GVs of the stadium, some England fans, and then "do" the game. I'm staying in SP again tomorrow night and flying to Rio the following day, so will have a little time to decompress. Here's hoping they don't lose and go out like Spain - hahahahahaha adios amigos!!!