So, I’m currently on a bus hurtling down the MH-356 highway from Belo Horizonte toward Sao Joao del Rei in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.  I’ve barely been in the country two days, and it’s been an interesting trip thus far.

Long flights are never terribly newsworthy.  I cashed in some miles to upgrade to business class on the way down.  For the record, it’s a complete waste on a flight as short as Austin to Dallas, but it came with the upgrade on the much longer flight to Sao Paulo.  The flight to SP was the usual clusterfuck—departure time came and went, and we sat at the gate waiting for passengers coming from late connecting flights because, as the captain in his Texan drawl explained, “This is the last flight down to San Paulo tonight and we don’t want ‘em to have to wait.”  Tudo bem, as they say.  Pushed back from the gate 40 minutes late and taxied out to the end of the runway just in time for a squall line to hit and the captain to decide that it was too risky to take off.  Our 7:45 pm departure finally got off the ground at 9:30.

Natalie had warned me about the airport in Sao Paulo.  I’ve definitely been in nicer airports, but I’ve been in worse.  My big rant is the following: once you leave the customs area with your luggage and enter the airport terminal proper, it’s astonishingly unclear where you’re supposed to go from there if you’re connecting to a domestic flight.  I wandered around for a couple of minutes until I saw a big sign that read “CONEXIAOS DOMESTICOS/DOMESTIC CONNECTIONS.”  Aha! I thought, and trundled my luggage over there, only to find that the entire counter was taken up by agents working for GOL, one of the Brazilian domestic airlines – just not the one I was connecting to.  And, of course, there was no one to ask.  I wandered around a little more before I finally found someone who was wearing a badge for TAM — “my” airline, so to speak, who directed me to the other terminal.

Bah.

Anyway, I got to Belo Horizonte in one piece, and gratefully handed over the box of easel sized post-it notes to Natalie before heading off to my hotel to check in, where I discovered that I somehow had a two bedroom/two bath apartment with kitchen.  Not bad!

Belo Horizonte is, in many ways, similar to Ankara, Turkey – people from Brazil don’t seem to think very highly of it, but it’s a perfectly pleasant city nestled in the mountains (OK, the fact that every walk I took in town managed to be uphill in both directions did get a little old), easy to get around, the people are friendly, and it’s pretty safe.  I’m not complaining.  Also, since it’s winter down here in the southern hemisphere, the warmest it got was 80 degrees yesterday while Natalie and I were trekking all over creation.  And we did trek all over creation.

So I had it in my mind that I would do what I’ve done in every other country I’ve traveled to in recent years – when I arrived in Brazil, I wanted to get a SIM card for my international phone that I carry everywhere.  Since tonight in Tiradentes is the only time I’ll be staying in the same place as the rest of the group – and, frankly, I don’t even know if where I’m staying in Rio has a phone at all – I thought it would be a good idea.

Well, here’s the thing.  Brazil is a bit different.  I tried to do this at the airport in Sao Paulo, but I was told that I’d have to go to an office of the cell phone company, one of their stores, to take care of it because as a foreigner, I lack a CPF (the Brazilian equivalent of a social security number).  So, after our visit to Grupo Corpo yesterday, Natalie and I set off for the TIM store at the shopping mall about four blocks from her hotel.  The woman at the store took my passport, put me in the system, gave me a SIM card, and sent us on our merry way.

Well, I thought, that was easy.

The problem is that the SIM card doesn’t actually have any credits on it to make calls –Natalie needed to buy recharge minutes, so we went to a kiosk where I was the only one who could be a recharge because Natalie’s phone has a Sao Paulo area code (mine is Belo Horizonte).  So, as i’m waiting for Natalie to discover that none of the ATMs at the Banco do Brasil will take an international card, I dial in the number to recharge my phone.

Natalie comes out of the bank.

“Um,” I said, “I’’m going to need you to listen to this message – it sounds like it’s asking for my CPF.”
She listed to the message.  “Yup, it’s asking for your CPF.”
”I don’t have one.”
”Nope.”

After a couple of minutes of dithering, we went back the store (uphill in both directions) where the helpful woman from before listened to the message and announced that, yes, indeed, the phone wanted me to input my CPF.

We all stared at each other.

“He doesn’t have a CPF,” Natalie said.  “He’s a foreigner.”
”Yeah, I can’t help you,” she said.  “You’re going to have to go the big TIM store.”  She gave us directions (uphill both ways) and off we went.  The directions were wrong.  We realized this about 10 blocks away.  We stopped at a gas station, got water, asked for directions, and headed back past the post office, the huge HSBC bank, the massive Banco Santander, and the municipal building before finally arriving at the TIM store which was exactly where the woman would have said it was had she said to make all left turns instead of all right turns.  It was also about 5 minutes away from where we started, but it took  us nearly an hour to get there.

At one point I just started giggling because it was reminiscent of Egypt – in fact, the only major difference was that we were never offered tea at any of the stores (I’m still on the fence about whether this is good or bad because the tea is strong enough to turn your teeth brown and sweet enough to rot them out of your head).  At the big TIM store they did get it working, and we parted ways for an hour before meeting back up for dinner with members of Grupo Corpo.

The Portuguese thing is either more or less bewildering than I thought it would be – it really depends on who I’m talking to and how fast they’re talking.  But I won’t lie—when the Cuban guy from Grupo Corpo showed up with his Spanish speaking wife, I was so excited to actually be able to communicate with someone properly that I probably came off as insane.  Fortunately, since I am insane, this wasn’t too much of a problem.

Anyway, the road is really bumpy now so I’m going to turn off the laptop and concentrate on not getting sick for a while!