So after leaving Catherine at Heathrow airport reunited with her parents and sister who were very pleased to see her again after 2 years away, off I went to find my bus to get back to the hotel. I found it very quickly got straight back to the airport and was relieved to see that my car was still there! Always a good start, it still had all it's windows, wheels and I gave a little woop of delight as I turned the key and the engine started first time, now I just had to stay awake for the journey home.
But it wouldn't move, I reversed, it moved an inch and stopped. I put it in first, moved a little, then stopped again. I got out looked around the car, kicked a few tyres and got in to try again. I repeated this routine quite a few times, I looked under the car, I kicked it a little more and I started to get a little stressed about what I was going to do- I just wanted to get home and was getting very tired after already having travelled for the last 17 hours.
I then couldn't find my phone, I panicked, I panicked a little more, I looked around and under the car and panicked. Then I decided to go into the hotel, borrow the phone and ring the breakdown. I managed that but not without tears, when the guy told me it was going to be up to 3 hours I cried, I cried when he asked for a contact number and I told him I'd lost my mobile, I cried again when I gave the phone back to the man at the hotel reception, then I retreated to my car to cry some more and wait the 3 hours...
When I got back to the car, I looked under the car next to me and saw my phone!! One less thing to cry about. I then rang the breakdown people to tell them I now had my mobile and they could call me on that, they then said it would be 1.5 hours for someone to get to me. I rang Sally to kill some time and then getting off the phone the breakdown man rang me and said he would be 30 mins!! So finally he arrived, took a wrench to one of the nuts on the wheel and 2 seconds later it was all fixed, maybe if I'd just kicked a little harder and more targeted I might have achieve that myself a few hours earlier.
Anyway finally I was on my way home, after a lovely 2 weeks in Brazil, slightly more drama (and crying) in the hours after landing than I would have liked and I was back on the road, now to plan the next holiday.
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Another flight or three?
Thursday morning we were up early for the eighth flight of my trip back to Belo Horizonte. We had some instructions from the travel agent lady to ask for her friend at the airport and he would let us have all our bags on the flight without having to pay excess baggage - and it worked! Apparently in Brazil it's all about who you know and if you are a friend of a friend of a travel agent it can be quite useful when you are about 3 bags over your luggage limit.
Arriving in Belo we were straight back to the same hotel we'd been in twice already so we were recognised when we arrived in reception. We had a walk down to the supermarket for a few last minute things to squeeze into the suitcase.
Friday was lovely and sunny so we took the opportunity to have a last day of sunbathing - always a mistake.... Mum said make sure you don't get sunburned before the flight back, and we did. Mine although painful was at least on the tops of my feet, whereas Catherine burnt the back of her legs which made sitting down fairly uncomfortable. The only relief we had for the pain that evening was to try and cool down with cans from the fridge!
Suddenly it was Saturday and time to get back to the airport - although as the flight was at 11.55pm - we managed to persuade the hotel to let us stay in our room until 5pm instead of checking out at 2pm so that we could just get to the airport and have a leisurely dinner while killing time before check in.
The flights home were relatively trouble free - and much easier travelling with someone who spoke both English and Portuguese! But after another two flights and a few hours at Lisbon in between it was nice to land in Heathrow on Sunday afternoon. All I had to do then was get back to the car and drive home - which turned out to be as easy as I thought...
Arriving in Belo we were straight back to the same hotel we'd been in twice already so we were recognised when we arrived in reception. We had a walk down to the supermarket for a few last minute things to squeeze into the suitcase.
Friday was lovely and sunny so we took the opportunity to have a last day of sunbathing - always a mistake.... Mum said make sure you don't get sunburned before the flight back, and we did. Mine although painful was at least on the tops of my feet, whereas Catherine burnt the back of her legs which made sitting down fairly uncomfortable. The only relief we had for the pain that evening was to try and cool down with cans from the fridge!
Suddenly it was Saturday and time to get back to the airport - although as the flight was at 11.55pm - we managed to persuade the hotel to let us stay in our room until 5pm instead of checking out at 2pm so that we could just get to the airport and have a leisurely dinner while killing time before check in.
The flights home were relatively trouble free - and much easier travelling with someone who spoke both English and Portuguese! But after another two flights and a few hours at Lisbon in between it was nice to land in Heathrow on Sunday afternoon. All I had to do then was get back to the car and drive home - which turned out to be as easy as I thought...
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Packing and Goodbyes
Tuesday we were going to go shopping but as we'd been to the shopping mall on Sunday and Monday we decided we'd had enough of shopping and I was happy to sunbathe while Catherine started to think about her packing and sorting out the rest of her house before leaving. We had a walk up to the children's nursery where Catherine has been helping out and teaching some English to the children of the students and staff. The kids were all very keen to point out their pictures on the wall and tell me the words in English for some of the things that they had drawn.
The rest of the day generally consisted of me lying in the hammock reading! We had a brief dinner and went upstairs for the evening to see Erika, bake brownies and eat them with ice cream and watch a film.
Wednesday and the packing really started, Catherine pulled everything out of cupboards, drawers and wardrobes onto the bed in a huge pile and then produced two bags to fill. I took one look at the pile and the bags and decided the best thing to do would be to take the larger bag and use it to pack my things in and let Catherine use my suitcase. Somehow (and I put this down to my superior packing skills) we managed to fit everything in - almost, monkey only just made it. I did manage to roll and squeeze things into tiny corners, every bag and shoe had as many things packed inside them as possible. The suitcase was almost entirely full of presents and Brazilian things to bring home for people with a very small bag for clothes. The rest of the clothes were then taken up to the girls dormitory to be distributed.
Catherine had invited people to pop down to the house around tea time where lots of people came to say goodbye. We thought it was then going to be a fairly quiet evening and as we sat in the house at 10pm having out nightly cup of tea we heard some noise out of the window, a little knock on the door and then a guitar strumming. Opening the door there were about 15 of the students all singing goodbye to Catherine - again it was so lovely to see how much they were going to miss her.
The rest of the day generally consisted of me lying in the hammock reading! We had a brief dinner and went upstairs for the evening to see Erika, bake brownies and eat them with ice cream and watch a film.
Wednesday and the packing really started, Catherine pulled everything out of cupboards, drawers and wardrobes onto the bed in a huge pile and then produced two bags to fill. I took one look at the pile and the bags and decided the best thing to do would be to take the larger bag and use it to pack my things in and let Catherine use my suitcase. Somehow (and I put this down to my superior packing skills) we managed to fit everything in - almost, monkey only just made it. I did manage to roll and squeeze things into tiny corners, every bag and shoe had as many things packed inside them as possible. The suitcase was almost entirely full of presents and Brazilian things to bring home for people with a very small bag for clothes. The rest of the clothes were then taken up to the girls dormitory to be distributed.Catherine had invited people to pop down to the house around tea time where lots of people came to say goodbye. We thought it was then going to be a fairly quiet evening and as we sat in the house at 10pm having out nightly cup of tea we heard some noise out of the window, a little knock on the door and then a guitar strumming. Opening the door there were about 15 of the students all singing goodbye to Catherine - again it was so lovely to see how much they were going to miss her.
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