Rio Olympics Day 1 - The Arrival

After enduring what may be the longest flight i ever experienced (late departure from Singapore, bad sleep to DBX and 5 hours lay-over at DBX) I finally made it to Sao Paulo Airport. Expecting to get priority movement to the counters for my transit but only to find that it's in a pretty quiet state...
Quiet being there were nothing much available.

Yes there were volunteer, notice the singular form and it's intended, and a "special lane" for athletes and officials transiting from Sao Paulo to Rio but there is absolutely no system in place to assist and speed up the process.

1. Once I touched down, there were armed 2 plain cloth officers standing just at the entrance after the aero-bridge checking passport of each passenger 1 by 1 and questioning them. As i was the last passenger (yes as i can see cleaners going in and out of the plane and no soul behind me) it took me 1 hour to clear the less than 50 meters walk way. Damn i was upset. And upon understanding that i was here for the Rio Games, they started to apologies and hurried me to catch my connecting flight.

2. Along the way as i was trying to get to the counter to get on my way for transit, i met another volunteer and with her limited English she pointed to where i should go and kept saying " Follow the blue line" So i did, of course!

3. Upon queuing on the supposed express lane, there were many more people in our queue than those normal queues for normal passengers. Only 4 counters were opened available to us and more than 10 for the rest of the passengers. Of course, the normal passengers queue went very much faster and in 20 minutes, there were no more queue in the other line and about 40 of us still waiting patiently at the express queue to get through ours. Luckily I met a few familiar faces joining the line and it all got better.

Myself, Deon (Floppy) & John Wright (Bongo)

Feeling a little crazy with Michelle Joubert (Joobs)

4. So we finally got through the counters after the wait and even though we have 4 hours of transit time, we are now left with 2 hours! So off to the Accreditation Counter and get those cards validated for our access to all the Olympic venues and our village. 

Getting out to the terminal (1) with our luggage, we are now informed (okay we found it out ourselves by asking and roaming around looking at signboards) that we must go to Terminal 3 to catch our connecting flight. What an adventure! 

Fingers crossed... hopefully Rio will be easier to outmaneuver and get to the village as quick as possible as I am floating on my feet with 4 hours sleep in total.