However, this was only the beginning. We were flying with Lufthansa from London to Frankfurt and then on to Sao Paulo and the first leg of the flight was fine, however due to Varig (the major Brazilian airline) having some financial problems and canceling flights, the second leg from Frankfurt had been over-booked and while our flights had been confirmed, we were still put on standby. This time Nick dispensed with the sweet-talk and ‘insisted strongly’ that we be put on the flight – not only were our bags already on the plane, but we had two more legs to go which we couldn’t make if we had to wait for the next flight. Again, Nick came through and we got possibly two of the best seats in economy – exit row with loads of extra leg-room. So great that I slept through most of the 11 hour flight.
We arrived in Sao Paulo early on Wednesday and then flew to Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, the state of Brazil where Melissa and Will live. From Belo Horzionte we caught a cab from one airport (Tancredo) to another (Pampulnha) to take our final flight to Governador Valadares on a tiny 50-seater plane. Finally after 24 hours of travel and transit, Melissa and Will met us at the airport and we met Una Bella, our soon-to-be-official goddaughter, for the first time. Melissa, Will and Una -
Our final destination was Itabirinha, two hours from Valadares by car, however rather than head off straight away we stayed overnight in Valadares so we could recover from our long journey and acclimatize to small-town Brazil. Although Valadares has a population of around 250,000 and Itabirinha has a population of around 12,000, both are considered very small by Brazilian standards. Once arriving at the hotel in Valadares we immediately hit the pool – even though we are in the southern hemisphere now and it’s technically winter, it’s a technicality only as temperatures during the day still hover around 30 degrees. Melissa keeps telling me that it gets quite cold at night and it does…of course cold to Nick and I after a London winter means something quite different to cold in Brazil! After a visit to the local shopping center where Nick and Will played giant scaletrix -
- we went to one of Melissa and Will’s favourite restaurants where everyone went crazy over Una (which happened pretty much everywhere we went) and we had some fantastic garlicky rice and steak.
We got up early the next day and had our first Brazilian breakfast (including Nick’s new favourite food, Pao de Queijo – cheesy bread balls). We then strolled around some shops and tried some (very!) fresh coconut juice –
After some more shops, we had lunch at ‘Mister Kilo’, one of the many ‘por kilo’ restaurants in Valadares which specialize in serving food buffet style and pricing by the kilo. Very standard over here but a novelty to Nick and I. After that it was time to head for Itabirinha.
