The last 24 hours I have spent travelling from my home in Devon to Uberlandia in Brazil. It has been a period of fascinating contrasts. I started my journey from Exeter with my colleague Martin Blackwell on the train. We met up with fellow travel companions Kathy Snars from Rothamsted Research and Helen Gordon from Lancaster Univesrity (Helen is doing her PhD supervised jointly by Richard Bardgett and I; Kathy is a collaborator of Martin and I). The 11 h night flight was plain-sailing and I got ca 5 hours sleep. Arriving in Sao Paolo was an eye-opener, what a city; it is always thrilling arriving somewhere completely new in the world and becomes more-accentuated when one is jet-lagged in early-dawn. Clearling immigration and customs at international Guarulhos airport was simple, but then we had to cross the city (it is huge) in a taxi to the domestic terminal, this took ca. 45 minutes and the traffic was surpisingly busy for 6 am on a Sunday. We did this ok and spent 3 hours loafing around the domestic Airport (CGH), drinking Brazilian coffee and simply watching the big city wake up. The flight from Sao Paulo CGH to Uberlandia was only ca. 1 hour and the sun emerged during this flight, when we arrived in Uberlandia it was baking, 25 degrees C and clear blue skies, an initially surprisingly dry heat. It is a savannah region. The conference bus picked us up and took us to the Hotel – we are in the ‘Plaza shopping hotel’ (sounds bizarre but it is very nice!) see www.plazashoppinghotel.com.br (if you can tolerate the cheesy music on the web site). Just had a lunchtime snack with colleagues an returned to my room to speak to my family over MSN (now that is a mind blower – chatting on the web cam – whilst they had tea!). And then I uploaded some of the day’s photos onto the Flickr site and write the blog….have a look..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50992354@N00/tags/may14brazil2006/
Obrigado
Phil
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