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Getting There and Getting Around in Brazil. If you are just here for the rocks, you can skip this page. Traveling to Brazil: We started our travels in Charlotte, NC around 4:30 pm March 5 and ended up in Teofilo Otoni, Brazil around 9:30 pm March 6. We flew from Charlotte, to Miami, to Rio, to Belo Horizonte. This part of the journy went relatively smoothly, if not comfortably. Everyone on the plane spoke Portuguese, except us and a very nice Christian missionary from Texas. Dev slept, and Beth watched "The Women" in Portuguese ..twice. When we landed Belo Horizonte, we had to go through customs and declare we had nothing to declare.. at least we hoped that's what we were saying on the form. Thank goodness for Portuguese/English dictionaries! Now, their customs is different from say...JFK. It's like a game show. There is a ticket booth type place you hand in your passport to get stamped & get a form, then you go to another spot with a big red button on the wall and light over it. You show the scary uniformed man your form, and then you punch a big button on the wall. If the light over your head turns green, you are free to go. If it turns red, then you have to go to a little room where they grill you about your reasons for being in Brazil and why you have a bottle of antibiotics in your suit case. I should say, we HOPE the green light means go.., because we went, even though the arrow on the floor to customs, and the sign over the customs window were green. We are Americans and to us green means go. Right? Anyway, no one chased us down, probably because we wore them out playing charades trying to understand what we were supposed to do in the first place. So far, so good. For the next leg of our journey we had to take a bus from the "international" airport to the even smaller local airport. Which would have been fine, except the bus folks wouldn't take dollars, and we couldn't find anyone that would exchange our money for us, or so we thought. (Everyone was actually trying to be helpful ..we were just clueless.) Lugging our tired selves and luggage to the first bank we saw, Dev stood in line and Beth played luggage guard. When Dev got to the front of the line, he was told no no no not here (in charade) and given a post card with some Portuguese writing on it and pointed to the right of the bank. We walked a little bit to the right and came upon a dozen ATMs. Ah ha! that's what they must of meant. Dev stood in line and Beth played luggage guard. We tried every single machine and none of them took our bank card which we had been assured would be no problem. Starting to get a little worried, but not knowing what else to do, we walked further to the right and found another bank. Dev stood in an even longer line and Beth played luggage guard. This line was our first introduction to the Brazilian way of "dar um jeitinho." It's a way of getting around the rules ...such as standing in line. We kept noticing people letting their friends in line, it would look like they were just talking, but then they would slide in next to their friend. Dev, being the rule following, orderly American, was not pleased. Beth was just getting hot hanging outside guarding the luggage. Dev finally got to the front of the line, and they wouldn't exchange his money. There is much miming and slow talking in Portuguese, until finally someone else in line says, "They are trying to tell you to go to the place across the street because they won't charge you as much for the exchange." There is much nodding all around. So, we went across the street to yet another exchanges that just happens to be right next to the international customs exit we came out of in the first place. Oops. Once again, Dev stands in line and Beth plays luggage guard. Then we notice the man in front of Dev getting very agitated. Luckily the man behind Dev knew some English, having been to soccer camp in Colorado. He explained that the computers were down. Now, we begin to be a little concerned. We still have to get to the airport on time for our next flight. Finally, after about 20 minutes, the computers come back and everyone is able to exchange some money. Before we leave, we grab some "hamburgers" at Big Bobs where everything is written in English, but no one understands it. Thank you to the nice gentleman who helped us place our order. Dois numero duas, por favor. We buy our two bus tickets for about $2.75 and head for the next airport. Did I mention this was a little airport? It started raining before our flight, so they handed us each umbrellas and we made a run for the plane on the tarmac. That might be a clue to the size. The flight there is a little turbulent, but not too bad. We land in Governador Valadares, and meet our taxi driver. We had been given a picture of him below a sign that said "Saida." So, we thought his name was Saida. Turns out saida means exit...hello, Mr. Exit, nice to meet you. His name was actually Raimundo, and he was an excellent driver. This is our first introduction to the highways of Brazil. Let's just say it's a good thing we were so tired, or we might have been scared by all the passing of trucks on blind curves and such. Instead, we just looked at the beautiful countryside and took a nap. Raimondo delivered us safely to our hotel around 9:30 pm. (Just a note for anyone following in our foot steps, if we go again, we will take the night bus from Belo Horizonte instead of the plane/taxi...much simpler!) 
Belo Horizonte Skyline from highway.  Our hotel in Teofilo Traveling from Teofilo Otoni to Ouro Preto: To get to Ouro Preto we took the sleeper bus to Belo Horizonte. This is a safe, easy way to make the trip. It is a bit like trying to sleep on a roller coaster, but it gets you there and you don't waste a day traveling. One tip, when you get off the sleeper bus in Belo Horizonte, you have to go up stairs, then across the street, then down stairs..no working elevators that we could find. So, if you have luggage with you, be prepared for some exercise. The bus trip to Ouro Preto is very nice, and the scenery is gorgeous..don't want to take the night bus for this part! Trip from Ouro Preto to Home: We left Ouro Preto around 12:30pm on Saturday. Which seems a little early for a 7:30 flight, but we wanted to leave room for any problems we might encounter on the road (see trips to mines to understand this more.) We are picked up by the taxi driver, who is a different guy than our guide introduced us to the day before, but he seemed to know us and knows where we are going. Everything was fine for a while. Then a motorcycle goes passed the car, and our driver started hyperventilating and pointing at it. He was obviously trying to tell us something. We finally understood that he used to ride motorcycles, but had been in an accident. To prove his point, he took both hands off the wheel and pulled up his shirt to show us a row of stitches going down his back. Yes, we can see how this accident might have happened, now if you don’t mind, please put your hands back on the wheel and remove your shirt from your face. As we approached Belo Horizonte, our driver became quieter, and seemed more anxious. From the back seat, we watch wide eyed as we drove past the exit for the airport. The driver sensed something was not right, so he pulled on to the shoulder of the highway where people were waiting for a bus and asked someone the way to the airport. They told him he just missed the exit, so he did what any normal taxi driver would do…he backed up on the shoulder of the highway until he got back to the exit, and then calmly merged onto the exit. He only has to ask for directions one more time, and only has to back up on the road one more time when he pulled into the wrong exit at the airport. (Note: If we do this again, we will either take the bus, or at least be sure the taxi driver knows the way to the airport. )  Devin tells the taxi driver "Muito mal! Muito mal!" Despite our driver’s lack of direction, we arrived at the airport in plenty of time for our flight. We check our luggage and get our boarding passes. We stood in line at our gate thinking we would find lunch on the concourse. We get to the front of the line and are told in charade to go away and not come back until 5pm. We find the only restaurant with air conditioning, and have a nice meal with a nice view of the surrounding country side. We even see a rainbow:  The rainbow we saw from the airport restaurant. After a few more delays and lines at the concourse, we go through outgoing Brazilian customs. They pause when they see the packages in Dev’s bag, but they decide they are too exhausted from the earlier charades and send us on through. So we find a seat in the little room near our gate, and wait. Then the plane is delayed. Then delayed again. Then they send us down to another gate, to go through security again, and get on a bus to our plane. The plane to JFK is pretty uneventful, accept for Beth having to crawl up and down the isles looking for Dev’s glasses. We have no trouble in American customs. We declared all our stones, and they just stamped our paper and sent us on our way. Maybe we just look honest? They only time we had our bags searched was in security to get on the course in NY. They checked out one of the bags of rocks, and then wanted to know how to get into the gem business. Because we miss our connecting flight in NY due to earlier delays, we had time for some amazingly wonderful pizza at Wolfgang Pucks. (See the Dinning Chapter) The flight to Charlotte was uneventful, and we were very glad to get home. Use the links below to check out other topics of interest from our trip to Brazil.
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