Today started when yesterday ended, at midnight in the Manaus airport. The flight left a little before 1:00, and after takeoff it was a little less than four hours until landing in Rio de Janeiro.
Let me make something clear: TAM Airlines could not run a redeye flight properly if someone's life depended on it. For one thing, the seats are unusually hard and uncomfortable, which made it almost impossible to sleep. For another thing, they kept turning the cabin lights on and off. After about an hour of lights mostly off, they turned all the lights on and served a drink and snack. I thought they could have done that without every single light. What's more, the snack boxes were wrapped in NOISY FOIL GIFT WRAP! Yes! On a redeye flight! I have never seen that kind of wrapper on airline food. I just had to laugh. I can't believe TAM thinks that's okay, let alone beneficial, on a redeye flight.
(Lest anyone think Brazilian airlines are low quality in general, my flight from São Paulo to Manaus on GOL a few days ago was great.)
But I made it to Rio just fine. So far, I'm annoyed with pushy taxi drivers, which I encountered to a small extent last time I was here. I'm also annoyed because the company put two of us in one hotel and the other of us (me) in another one, in different neighborhoods miles apart. That makes it difficult and/or expensive to get to the work site. I tried Metro plus a bus today, at the end of which I still had to catch a taxi for a few miles. That wasn't bad but probably not as efficient as I need to be.
I'm working on about 48 hours without sleep, so I'd better close it up. I wish I could say something good about Rio aside from the fact that I had a great time in Manaus. But I'm sure I'll feel better when I've had a decent night of sleep.
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