Day 1 - Whirlwind

Before I tell about the events of the last few days I have to apologize since we have had spotty internet service, so this is a little delayed. Hopefully, our luck will be better the rest of tour. Also, many of the phone cards we bought, do not work and AOL service was not working at the hotel. So although we may not have contacted you,
we are all fine.

We arrived in Sao Paulo just after 10 am local time. We were already late for our connecting flight. Even though the flight we needed to get on was right next-door, we had to take a semicircle around the airport to get to the gate. The sea of green shirts sprint walking through the airport, dodging in and out of the crowd, was quite a scene.

After our short flight to Rio, we then went through the arduous task of getting our entire luggage through customs. Two pieces of luggage were temporarily “lost”, but the airport officials told us it had been placed on another airplane, but they managed to rescue it before it took off.

Once through customs, we met our courier Juan Joseph and our two local tour guides, Rosy and Renata. They then gave us a brief tour of the city. We drove by some of the fovelas which we would call slums, where many of the poorest Brazilians live. Then we saw the beautiful Guanabara Bay and the Atlantic Ocean as it book ended the city of Rio. Many of the boys may have used their whole roll of film on that first trip. Other sights we saw were the WWII memorial, different statues commemorating the previous mayors and various statesmen of Brazil.

For lunch we ate at a Churroscoerria, which is a buffet with different barbecued meats and a salad buffet. This apparently is the most popular form of buffet in Brazil and really is quite good. Some of the boys were even brave enough to try the barbecued chicken hearts. The most interesting thing that happened to us was the appearance of the street merchants. As we stepped off the bus there was a man with a printed license plate saying Kantorei, Singing Boys of Chicago. Now, how they got our name, we don’t know and they have been following us ever since. They seem to know our itinerary and now show up at all our stops and at the hotel. They have a license plate printing press a quick turnaround time, so they can take orders. Thus, as we left for our next stop at Sugar Loaf Mountain, they had printed a license plate with Mr. Ross’ name on it.

Sugar Loaf Mountain is at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, which is the 3rd largest Bay in the world behind San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. This is a pair of mountains/rock formations connected by cable cars. However, these cabs can hold up to 50 people and the first hop is to the first rock which is 1800 feet vertical trip and the second a 2400 feet hop. It is not for the faint of heart, but did give us great views of the city and the surrounding areas. At the top there were multiple observation points and at a picnic area in the woods, there were friendly monkeys chattering back and forth. Mr. Ross arranged an impromptu concert and was rewarded with wild applause from a throng of parents, friends and other tourists.

Dinner took place at an Italian restaurant, and the Baer’s bought and presented to Mr. Ross his personalized Brazilian license plate. Encouraged by their success, the street vendors then sold bracelets, zippable purses and knockoff Nike soccer jerseys. Bedtime was next and the boys were in their beds and almost asleep by the time bed check rolled around.

Larry Prabhakar