Finally in Rio de Janerio.

So I am in Rio, I am staying near the beautiful Botafogo beach (it is the beach immediately north of Copacabana) in a hostel where the staff are insanely friendly and helpful (and somewhat disapointed I won´t be here for Carnaval). I just had a belated World Vegan Day lunch at a place called VeganVegan so am content and have a full belly. Oh and did I mention it is warm? And I have Reals in my pocket. And IVU Congress looks to be great (400 delagates from 35 countries!).

But yesterday wasn´t like that. No, yesterday was sadness and badness. This is what happened... (it involves the use of the word fuck alot)

Yesterday morning after breakfast I packed up (pack is down to 15kg now- yay!) and caught the metro out to Madrid Airport, not too many people around due to a public holiday (for All Souls Day), and eventually found the Iberia check in desks. Walking past I saw two desks that had really big lines and avoided them. As none of the desks seemed to have flight numbers above them I walked up to one where there wasn´t a line and tried to check in. The nice man said he couldn´t issue me my seat at the moment, printed out a form and told to go wait at desks 226 or 227.

Of course, 226 and 227 were the two desks with really long lines that I had just walked past. Thinking "just my luck" I got in the line and realised they weren´t moving all that quickly, people seemed to be going to the start of the line and then back to talk to their travelling partners. After about 5 minutes I asked the nice man in the line ahead of me if he spoke english and when he said yes (with an London accent, I might add) I asked what was happening. It turned out we were all on Standby.

You see Iberia Airlines for some reason belives that if you book a ticket with them and pay them large amounts of money it means that you will probably not want to actually travel to the desination you have paid for on the day that you have selected. No. That would just make sense. They belive that you might like to travel within the week to some place that may be near where you booked to go. So I was standing in a line with alot of people trying to get to Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Brazil. Most of them were not happy. Pretty fucking pissed off would be a more accurate description.

On the upside I got to talk to the nice English man who was trying to go to Peru with his wife. They had come from the Canary Islands a day earlier and that flight had been over booked as well. He also had been a vegetarian for 30 years and travelled quiet a bit so at least the wait had enjoyable conversation. During this conversation it should be noted that the flight they had booked actually left. Without them and several other people (including a couple who´s luggage had gone but they hadn´t).

When I finally made it to the front counter I was told I had two options (I might add no explaination or apology, I worked out the overbooking thing from one of the pieces of paper I was given). A flight in just over an hour on another carrier (Varig) that was via Sao Paulo or a flight with Iberia that would get me to Rio on Thursday. I took the flight in just over an hour. To do this I had to take paperwork to the Varig counter to get a ticket. Then wait in the line to check in my luggage. Then to the Iberia counter to claim my renumberation for them fucking me about. Then through customs and passport control.

Of course the lines for each of these things were at least 15 minutes each. And full of mostly fucking pissed off former Iberia passengers trying to make flights in a short amount of time. Met four really nice Irish people who were in the same boat as me, though about two steps behind. After checking everything in I had 15mins to get through the passport and security line which looked to be half an hour wait at minimum, not the line was that orderly. I also figured I could pick up my renumberation at another office (it did say it was valid at any office and I really didn´t have time to stuff about with it then as the line for that was huge and full of angry people). So I followed the lead of a couple of other ladies and went straight to the front.

You see for the last month I have had people push in front of me at every possible chance. The line in the supermarket, the line to get on the bus, the line to buy a train ticket, you name it in Europe you can cut line for it. I figured I at least had a legitimate excuse. But still after fighting my way through I got to the x ray scanners and realised I had 2 minutes to get to my gate. So I grabbed my bag as soon as it came through the x ray, almost left my jacket behind (they threw it too me) and ran.

I can tell you I have never been happier to be physically on a plane in my life. I can also say I am fairly unfit. Of course then we had to wait on the plane for no less than 45 minutes. So I really didn´t have to run. Was also nice to see the Irish people made it on the plane as well and I ended up chatting to them for a few hours of the flight. Turns out they were also supposed to take a flight that got them into Rio early in the morning but it had been cancelled as well and their flight from Dublin was also fucked about.

So it was a lovely almost 10 hour flight to Sao Paulo (which is west of Rio so we actually flew over where we wanted to be). With bugger all food because of the flight switch. Spiderman 2 wasn´t too bad though. And and I managed to get a look at the Brazilian coastline (in the dark- though the lights were pretty) as we flew over it. Then a wait at the airport (where after 20 minutes the girl still couldn´t figure out what to do with travellers cheques so I gave up) then a 50 minute flight to Rio de Janerio. Where I got less of a grilling by immigration than I did at Heathrow. Of course by this time there wasn´t a money changer open at the airport so I took the taxi becuase they accepted credit to the hostel and arrive there just before midnight. I mean 1am, daylight savings just kicked in.

So the morals of the story:
* Iberia are the most fucking hopeless airline, never book anything with them if you plan to get there on time.
* Vegetarians are everywhere.
* Make sure you have digestive biscuits with you when travelling and dried fruit.
* Nothing is really a major problem- I am in one piece, I have a full belly, I am in a really friendly hostel, I didn´t loose important paperwork...

And I have a really funny (in retrospect) story about trying to get to Rio :P

Did I mention it is warm? And there´s a beach? And tropical fruit?