Wafflings from the Marriott in Sao Paulo

I wrote this while hanging around at the Marriott near Guarulhos airport on Tuesday night with no internet connection and figured I might as well stick it on now.

This is mostly just waffle because I'm stuck in the hotel at Sao Paulo airport with nothing really to do. The executive summary is that I'm here and I have to be up early tomorrow morning (7am at the latest, ideally 6am) to get my flight on to Santiago.

It's about half past six on Tuesday 26th January. I just arrived at the Marriott at Sao Paulo airport. It's very nice, although extremely expensive and obviously because it's a business hotel they can't give you free wi-fi, you can pay BRL20 (about 6 or 7 quid) for 24 hours' wired access. (They do helpfully provide a cable, at least.) I may crack later, but to be honest I'm inclined to do without. The only possible 'urgent' thing I need to sort out is confirming that the payments went through for the flights and the hotel in Puerto Williams, and I think they can wait until tomorrow, when I will either have access in the Santiago hotel or if push comes to shove can go to an internet cafe there. As I say, I may crack and pay up, but I have to be out of here pretty early tomorrow, so I may be better without the distraction. (I did check my e-mail this morning at about 11am and there was nothing urgent.)

The flight to Santiago leaves at 10:25 tomorrow and I assume I need to be there about three hours early to check in. The hotel is very near to but not at the airport and the free transfer bus only runs every twenty minutes. It would also be good to have breakfast (partly to try to extract the maximum possible value from my $199 room ;-) ) if possible. So I'm looking at getting up at 7am at the very latest if I don't have breakfast, or 6:30am if I do. Actually, 15-30 minutes earlier would be better, if I really do plan to be at the terminal with three hours to go.

The flight over here from Rio worked out OK in the end but it was delayed by an hour or so due to bad weather in Sao Paulo. It could have been worse, while we were waiting on the plane they said some flights were being diverted to Campinas, which IIRC (I am not going to dredge the guide book out right now and check) is about 90km from Sao Paulo. I assume they'd have put us on a bus from there to Sao Paulo and at least I had the sense not to try to connect here on the same day with flights booked independently, so I would have probably made it OK, but still.

The weather is pretty miserable here right now, it's very overcast and still raining a bit. But as long as the flight tomorrow is OK I don't really care very much, there is nothing here so I doubt I will leave the hotel between now and tomorrow morning anyway.

Hmm, I just turned the TV on and there are the pictures of cars driving through flooded streets in Sao Paulo. The subtitle says "Urgente: Novo temporal alaga Sao Paulo", which I would be interested to have a translation of. (Re-reading that, I suspect the 'alaga' bit is mangled, but maybe not.) Oh well, fingers crossed. The window doesn't open very much here but as far as I can tell it's not actually raining that badly here right now, and we did manage to land after all.

OK, I just checked my e-mail on my phone. Amazingly Google Mail works on it even though it's so old, at least as far as showing the list of subject lines in the inbox. I know that worked as I could see some e-mails I hadn't seen before, just nothing urgent. I suspect that cost less than paying for the net access here. There's no e-mail from the hotel or airline re Puerto Williams, so I can assume things are going OK, and also perhaps not too surprisingly the hotel in Punta Arenas still hasn't responded to my questions submitted via their web form on Sunday night. I will check the credit card statements online tomorrow and chase up the Punta Arenas hotel then as well, although that isn't too urgent as there are alternatives in Punta Arenas, whereas the Puerto Williams stuff is all 'one possible supplier only' because it's such a small place. (Well, OK, there are hostel-y type places in Puerto Williams, but I don't think I'm up to that. The hotel I've booked there is the only proper-ish hotel, as far as I know.)

If I can get the Punta Arenas hotel booked it might be a good place to get my guide book forwarded to. I ordered it from amazon.co.uk to be delivered to a friend (hi JR!) at work at the last minute and due to lost text messages I never got to pick it up, so he's offered to post it to me. Until now I haven't really had anything fixed far enough in advance - well, to be fair, I suppose the hotel in Rio was fixed with nearly two weeks to go. But the Punta Arenas hotel will potentially be fixed nearly three weeks in advance, if they get back to me tomorrow and I can actually book. I have no idea how long international post takes but the more time the better I guess.

Further waffle at 10pm. I'm passing a somewhat self-consciously relaxed night here. I popped out earlier for a quick look around, just on the forecourt of the hotel. It's quite a pleasant night, a little cool but absolutely fine with a jacket on and I don't think that was really necessary. I may nip out again later and take a couple of photos for the hell of it. I think I saw a flash of lightning in the distance though.

Extreme cheapskatery follows. I am unapologetic though.

There's a coffee percolator thing (not sure exactly what they're called, the ones where you put water in and they heat it and drip it through a filter cone into a glass jug) in the room and a couple of plastic packets with combined filter-and-ground-coffee things in. I can't see a price anywhere for them so I was half tempted to use them, regarding them as the equivalent of the free teabag and sugar sachet you get in less upmarket places, but the entire place seems so oriented to extracting money that I decided not to chance it. I remembered I had those instant latte sachets which I've dragged all the way from Skegness (a last minute 'you might as well take these, they might be useful at the hotel in London' addition from my Mum) and which contributed to my awkwardness at Brazilian customs two weeks ago, so I've used the percolator thing to heat some water and had a couple of those.

(I will observe in passing that a small can of Skol is BRL6.50 from the minibar here. It was only BRL3 at the Hotel Regina in Rio, which - to be fair - is about what you paid at a little kiosk in the street. Good job I'm not thirsty. :-) )

To add to the 'camping out' feel, apart from a ham and cheese sandwich on the plane all I've eaten today are a couple of packets of biscuits I bought this morning in Rio. (I didn't get up early enough for breakfast, I just pushed it ridiculously late as always and although I wasn't exactly rushed, by the time I'd gone to the internet cafe to print out the Santiago hotel reservation and bought the biscuits, I only checked out about 20 minutes before the midday deadline.) It's OK though, I don't feel hungry and I still have half a packet of chocolate chip cookies here. A day of crap food won't hurt. Although I've mostly been subsisting on steaks (varying in size from moderate to enormous) with chips, rice and/or eggs, intermingled with the odd pizza, I suspect my diet is actually better here than in London. I'm probably drinking at least slightly less too, although it's hard to be sure as I'm used to measuring my intake in pints.

I've had a much better time in Brazil than I expected, although that in itself isn't saying much. But I am glad I came, despite my enormous misgivings around Christmas. It was oddly cool to be in Sao Paulo and the classic tourist stuff in Rio was definitely worth seeing. It is an attractive city (although I must note, presumably due to the heat rather than general lack of cleanliness, it wasn't rare to get that distinctive dustbin smell while wandering around near Rua do Catete). It will still be good to get to Santiago though, I feel my tourist IQ will soar from around 50 to maybe as high as 75 once I land.

As a completely pointless bit of trivia, the hotel got me an unmetered taxi to the airport in Rio and it cost me BRL50, which is better than I expected. I didn't tip the driver, just because I sort of forgot - I'm not quite that much of a cheapskate. (In fact, I've probably been tipping more than necessary as a rule. Quite often there's a service charge on the bill - usually 10% - and while in London I never tip if they put a service charge on, I've often left a small amount extra here. Not sure why, but I have.) As it is I think I've probably got about BRL100 cash left on me, maybe even BRL150, which I will probably end up holding onto uselessly forever, unless I manage to find a convenient bureau de change somewhere. Maybe I can spend it on a sandwich at the airport tomorrow. :-)

I'm not much loooking forward to tomorrow morning but I know I can get up if I know I have to. Apart from the risk of oversleeping, the biggest potential hitch is the immigration card they give you when you arrive in the country. I don't know if it's still true, but I read in my guide book that if you lose it you have to pay a USD75 fine and - this is the awkward bit - you can only do it at one bank in the city centre. I have my card, but it is a touch mangled after being in my pocket on the way to the hotel the day I first got here. If they cut up rough about it I could well miss the flight, but I should think it will be OK. The whole thing seems stupid anyway, if you don't have it then presumably you're effectively an illegal immigrant of sorts and you'd think they'd be keen to get you out of the country ASAP. I suppose it's a source of additional revenue though.

Wow, 1800 words! I can't think of anything else so I should probably be making a move out for a couple of photos and then to bed.