South America (Last Day) Part 31 - New Years Day / Rio Airport / Return of the Gastro / Bling

As we woke up early on NY's Day - we flipped on CNN at the hotel bedroom. We were hyped when Rio's NYE came third after NYC and Las Vegas in a selection of NYEs from around the world. We were especially hyped when we saw a bit of the Sydney fireworks - from the sounds of it - Richard Wilkins was doing the countdown... and they played the Black Eyed Peas - Don't Phunk wit my heart... so I don't think we missed out on much. We have been watching a bit of s£££ tv here in Rio. We watched the "Rebelde" show (see Part 7 for more info including a web link) - but this time it was dubbed in Portuguese - which it made it look even more lame. There was some plot line involving a baby going missing during a babysitting job. There has also been this really appalling ad on TV - where it shows different scenes (eg: a baby crawling and a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle on the screen would reveal a baby rattle or something) all set to the music of "It's a Wonderful World". In one scene - you see a tank rolling down a street... When the piece of the jigsaw is revealed - you see a protestor standing in front of it... revealing that it is the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing (remember - all set to Louie Armstrongs "Its a Wonderful World"). Well - you might think it could be OK to use this footage if it was for Amnesty International or some sort of charity - but we found out it was for a South American Bank (Banco Bradesco).... Nice - makes the National Bank in Australia look cute and fluffy. We headed down to breakfast (which would be our last chocolate cake breakfast ever). We were happily minding our own business when suddenly - a guest (middle aged white man) appears in a black t-shirt to breakfast with big white bold letters - "FU£K BLACK TIE" (with a C where the £ should be). Ant and I turned to each other and just cracked up laughing. We had a bit of time to kill (it wasn't until 5pm until we had our flight) - so we wandered around a bit in the 36 degree / 80% humidity weather trying to look for places where we could catch the cheap bus back to the airport. After about 20 minutes - we gave up and ordered a taxi (at the not so low price of $60 reals) at the hotel. Royalty Hotel has the most bizarre concierge people around - they take your bags (after you check out) and put them in some strange location in the building... It takes them 20 minutes for them to retrieve it. After hanging around for 30 minutes in the lobby waiting for our taxi to come despite the fact that there were 50 taxis which passed outside the front door (all empty) - we got in "our" taxi and headed the long way to the airport (because most roads had been shut for NYE celebrations). Ant had been feeling not so well on NYE (he was getting another bout of the dreaded gastro). During our trip to the airport - I suddenly felt really rancid - I had also come down for the third time. This is like the Star Wars trilogy of Gastro - A New Gastro Beginning, The Gastro Strikes Back and Return of the Gastro. When we arrived at Rio Airport (aka Slum Airport) - Iberia (our favourite airline who lost our bags for 11 days on our last trip to europe) hadn't open their check in (despite there being a queue of people wanting to check in). As I could barely stand and Ant being somewhat hungry and getting his appetite back - we went to the food trough where I passed out on the table. Ant thought it might be healthy in ordering a Sandwich - but it was more like a Hamburger Chilean style with added greasy chips.

After waiting around for 3 hours - we finally boarded our flight with Iberia to Madrid, Spain. At the gate - the flight b$$$hes pulled me and Ant aside and said - "your seats have changed". It occurred to Ant that our numbers were "very low" - and he thought that we would be sitting up around the front of economy. However it was better than that - we were upgraded to Business because of Ant's silver Frequent Flyer status (and maybe because we pulled a sob story with the check in guy saying that I was sick and needed lots of room)... plus the fact that the flight was really full.

Ant thoroughly enjoyed his first international business flight - and I enjoyed it because it was Ant's first international business flight! The food was plentiful (despite my bout of gastro) and the legroom was excellent. Finally - Iberia has gone up in our opinions (after being in our "Airline" poop hole with our lost luggage experience).