Our next adventure would take us down to the wilds of the Pantanal and the Amazon in Brazil. Just like all the explorers of old you might have seen in the newsreel footage, we headed off to LAX in a Lyft for the first leg of our new adventure whilst women waved handkerchiefs and men tilted their hats in farewell. There had been some back-and-forth about the possibility of flying to Houston to chase some Polaris business class seats on United to São Paulo, but those quickly vaporized and it also would have made our day significantly longer. And thus, we found ourselves checking in for a standby listing on Latam on a direct flight from LAX to São Paulo, an 11.5 hour slog down the length of the continent.
The check-in process was admittedly a bit confusing — flying on a pan South American airline whose ticket agents wanted to speak Spanish to us while the flight crew would be entirely Brazilian and spoke Portuguese. We were relieved to get seats together back in 35B and C on a 787. However, that enthusiasm quickly dissipated about 15 minutes after takeoff, when the people in front of us reclined. There is a special place in hell for such types of human flotsam. This type of thing seems to happen to me regularly as a passenger, but Nicole thinks it’s the worst she’s experienced. There were squawking babies behind us, a man with smelly feet next to us, and the dregs of society sitting in our laps. For an inflight meal in economy, I thought it was fairly respectable. Nicole is trying something new where she doesn’t eat airline food as she thinks it makes her ill.
Nicole had reached her breaking point four hours into the lengthy flight somewhere near Nicaragua. We hung out in the galley for a spell just to move our legs. Quick geography lesson! Brazil itself is a massive country. It is larger than the contiguous United States. The Amazon alone is the size of France. As we would have to fly across virtually the entire country of Brazil to get to São Paulo, it is worth noting that Brazil’s most northern point is closer to Canada than it is to its own southernmost point. And that’s why it takes 11 hours.
We were given a choice of snacks later on in the flight, but the wankers in front of us took the last Kit Kat bars…and all the other options. Straight to hell. Both of them. Eternal damnation is too kind for this insufferable lot of societal waste and excrement. I watched The Lost City of Z on the plane, a story about British explorer Percy Fawcett, who launched numerous expeditions into the Amazon and Pantanal in the early 20th century. Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple, would be loosely following his footsteps, but thanks to advances in vaccine technology and satellite navigation, we expect to actually return in one piece. Follow this blog to see that we do.
passports & pepto bismol 