23 Hours in Brazil
In the end, that’s how long our trip in Brazil lasted. We had orginally planned on spending 3 weeks in Brazil, but the beauty of a long-term trip like ours, is you can change your plans and do whatever the hell you feel like. For a variety of reasons, we decided to skip Brazil this time: We ended up staying in Peru for longer than we expected, we would only have 10 days in Brazil and the visa would be really expensive, we were ready to get on another continent…
The night before our flight to Sao Paolo, Cristian, the owner of our hostel asked us if we’d be interested in going to an Oasis concert at the National Stadium. Oasis has been one of my favorite bands since their heyday, so I was pretty excited to be able to see them in South America! It was crazy by the stadium – we needed to get tickets from scalpers, who were constantly screaming and fighting over customers. We ended up buying tickets from an older lady, who lead us to the queue, and then, brushing right past police, thrust us into the front of the (loudly protesting) line and we got right in. I think all the Western backpackers thought we were about to get stabbed at any moment with that little stunt. Our little lucky streak continued, and instead of being ushered into the general admission area we paid for, we somehow landed in the small patch in front of the stage. 
The show was great and I was happily screamed along with my old favorites.
The next morning, and after a lot of hassle over our tickets (I remember thinking when I spoke with United a few weeks ago, “I know this chick is gonna screw it up…”) we got on a flight from Lima to Sao Paolo, with a connecting flight to Johannesburg. Brazil requires you to apply for a visa for any visits over 24 hours, and we just managed to dodge that bullet… our layover is exactly 22.5 hours. We arrived at 7:30pm yesterday, and our flight is at 6pm today.
I was preparing myself for a long, uncomfortable night on the airport floor, but thankfully I was directed to a little slice of heaven called “Fast Sleep” where you can rent a bed for a few hours. We got a bed and had a full night’s sleep! Score!! The day has actually passed by quickly – with the help of F’s gold class status on Singapore Airlines, we were able to use the Red Carpet Club, where we’ve been lounging about, mooching off free food and internet all day. The airports have been really empty, maybe due to swine flu? Lots of people are wearing masks too. Allz I know is there is lots of food in the lounge!!
I’m so excited for Africa. Not in the least because we are visiting a friend who we met in Argentina for all of 2 hours! David has kindly offered to pick us up at the airport and even shelter us! We’re both hoping this means we’ll have a travel buddy for the next few weeks.
