6/18 - Day 5

Dear Dick,

I'm on vacation. I had really meant to be in touch sooner but it has proven exceedingly difficult to find a stagecoach out of town to carry my letters. Or so that is how it has seemed here as I've been trying to connect to the world.

I mean to say, today is the first day I've been able to fully enjoy myself here in Brazil. It is my fourth day here but the logistics have not worked out, not the least because it's proving difficult to get a working phone or reliable internet.

Today is the first day in which I have been able to reliably connect to the internet. And as a bonus, I got my phone to work with a Brazilian SIM card. Now I can boast email and phone communication!

We're off to Manaus for a day and then we'll be heading out to the Amazon forest for a three day/two night stay. Bill and Charlie went down to Rio so it is just Neal and me. The group gets back together again on the 21st.

6/17 - Day 4

Dear Dick,

Today Bill and Charlie are flying to Rio. They're leaving in the morning, while Neal and I will be checking out of the airbnb house around noon and going back up to Natal for on night. We have no way of contacting the guy who is supposed to meet us to get the keys, so Bill is sending a message to the owner, Monica, via the airbnb site in hopes that she can get word to him to meet us at noon. You can pretty much anticipate that this is not going to work out.

Neal and I went into a store to get a SIM card to try with our phones. I put it in the two old ones I got from Dawn's daughter, but it would not work. I think it is because they are locked.

You know, I'd like to be able to enjoy this vacation without worrying about technology. I wouldn't mind it if I could get by without a phone or wifi, but there are a lot of things that we need to coordinate with others. This is really a shitty way to spend a vacation, wasting hours dealing with technology problems. I would setlle for a pay phone if such a thing were available here.

So the guy was not at the house at noon. We found an internet cafe that had phones we could use, so there's that. I called the guy and had an ambiguous exchange that seemed like it might end in us meeting him at the house. The cafe was 10 minutes from the house, so by the time we got back there he was not there. Neal put the keys in a plastic bag, rolled it up, and threw in in a planter like trash. Back to the cafe, this time Neal left a message for the guy and Monica both, hoping they would coordinate and take care of it.

Frustrated, we ditched Pipa and drove up to Ponta Negra, which is the upscale area south of Natal along the beach. we had a reservation at Nautilus Apart Hotel, and apartment bulding that was rented like a hotel. We found it with little trouble and lugged our bags up the narrow spiral stair to our room.

If I can say anything good about this day, it is that we found some good beer. We wandered out to watch the first half of the Brazil-Mexico match at a bar. at halftime we decided to get some beers and go back to the hotel to watch the second half. The store we stopped in had imported some American ales. Without looking at the prices, grabbed two Anderson Valley (CA) IPAs, one of their double IPAs, and a Founders dry hopped pale ale. At the counter we were surprised to learn that they were $15 each. Well, we deserved them.

How about Ochoa's goalkeeping? He was amazing in that game. We watched the second half while connected to the semi-reliable hotel wifi.

6/15 - Day 2

Dear Dick,

Police escort. Neal and I asked for directions from the police and because they didn't speak English, they escorted us 30km to our destination. More on that in a bit.

I slept for about six of the nine hours of that São Paulo flght. I took Benadryl and melatonin pills, so that may have helped. It was great to arrive in the morning having slept.

Let me apologize in advance for what is going to be a long letter with detail about our troubles here. Things have not gone well and it has not been very fun.

In Natal, we had to pick up a rental car and somehow connect with Bill and Charlie at the airbnb place in Pipa, about two hours to the south of Natal. Neal also wanted to take care of giving over the extra tickets we had sold to another group of US fans. This all was the beginning of our technology troubles for the trip.

There was free wifi in the airport, but it was at best only good for checking email. Cell phone coverage was nearly useless. Neal and I have T-mobile with their excellent international roaming, but getting our phones to connect rarely worked.

I had tried to download a Northeastern Brazil map to the nav software on my Nokia, but it was never going to finish in a reasonable time. So we set out with only a pdf copy of a google map Neal had managed to load on his little netbook. We rolled the windows down on the bare bones Fiat Uno from Budget rental and I drove us off.

The roads didn't seem to match Neal's map, so after several minutes of driving we decided to turn back and try to get a map and directions at the airport. It is here where we learned that Natal had opened a new airport a week or two prior to the World Cup. It had the same name as the old one and the change had not really been communicated to travelers, at least not to us. So with a map and some new directions from the car rental place, we headed out a second time.

Neal wanted to try to connect with people once we got into the city, so we drove the hour or so in and looked for anything hospitable enough to have wifi that travelers could use. This was a major waste of time because we drove around and around and couldn't really get anywhere. The streets are poorly marked and it was dark (it's winter here so sundown is around 5:30).

We were finding that we could sometimes receive SMS messages, but not send them. Neal could make calls, but not receive them. Neal's extra ticket contact, Pam, was able to send him a text about her arrival, but he had to respond by voice call. It was a mess. From the vague exchanges we somehow guessed that she might be going to the fanHQ thing that US Soccer was hosting. We drove over there and parked, while Neal went in with the tickets. Ten minutes later he comes walking out empty handed. It was the first thing that had gone right for us. she happened to be standing at the entrance and he recognized her from a picture she had sent him.

So off to Pipa we went, but not before stopping to get something to eat. We got burgers and fries at Habib's, a Brazilian fast food chain. We managed to get a call in to Bill at some point too, so they knew we were on our way. Neal was driving at this point. We headed south to try our luck in Pipa.

After an hour on BR101, we came to a sign that our directions said we should be watching for. It was a directional to the town of Arés. So we turned off there, getting passed by a police car with flashing lights on the way.

There was some sort of a road block at the road to Arés so we went around the roundabout there and stopped. We decided this was a good time to ask for directions from the police. There were three or four police cars and a few civilian cars parked there. It was not apparent what was going on, but it did not appear threatening at all. No one there spoke English though, so the police offered to lead us to Pipa by car!

We got on the road, following the car with its flashinglights. You'll be happy to know that I got video of it, Dick. The police led us to the Pipa highway exit and another 10km before waving us along. Nice!

Another 60km to go and we would be in Pipa. We didn't know where the house was, and further attempts to call Bill failed. But when we rolled into town, around 12:30am, there was a throng of people in the street drinking and dancing to loud music at the surrounding bars. As Neal encroached on the party, threatening to run over toes with the Fiat, I heard Charlie call my name from a balcony at one of the bars.

We made a plan to drive through the crowd up to a hill and meet Bill and Charlie there. They got in the car and Neal slipped the clutch to get a start up the steep incline. A squeal of the tires and we were moving.

The house was a small two bedroom cabin within a gated small community. We unloaded there and then headed back out to finally relax and have a couple of beers.

6/16 - Day 3 - USA vs. Ghana

Dear Dick, 

GAME DAY! USAvGhana at 7:30pm. We planned to go down to the beach in the morning and see the dolphins that swim there and then we would drive to Natal for the match. We managed to get some wifi access at one of the cafes that had the party last night, so I was finally able to get some email action.

Pipa is sort of a touristy surfer town. It reminded me of the Southern California towns like Encinitas, not for the layout so much as for the stoner beach bums who seemed to be eternally planted there. There were lots of Americans walking the streets too, and it had the feel of a town that was about to be vacated of a large number of them.

The dolphin sighting area is a beach on a lagoon that is only accessable during low tide. Charlie had figured out that low tide was from 11:30 to 2:30, so we had some time to check it out before heading in to Natal for the game. After a ten minute walk along the shore,we arrived at the lagoon. The sun was high in the sky, albeit slightly overcast. We went for a swim, saw a pair of dolphins that smartly had no interest in interacting with people, and took in the beautiful ocean view.

On to the next event of the day, we set out for Natal with the goal of getting there early enough to find parking and hopefully have a couple of beers before going into the stadium. We found a big lot that was a 15 minute walk from the stadium and set up.

The lot was free and there were several bus loads of Ghana fans rolling in. Once they saw us there was a constant stream of them coming over to get pictures with us. It was fun at first, but after the 20th or 30th one we decided to get away so we wouldn't be late for the game.

Just outside the stadium we camped out with our last beers and tried to sell the stock of 13 scarves we had taken with us. We sold 12 there and Neal gave one to a Brazilian kid inside the stadium.

I'm starting to see a different type of American fan group showing up to World Cup games. With the american Outlaws supporters group it seems like there are a lot of idiot American sports fans. They want to get drunk and yell and act entitled. It is starting to feel embarassing to be from the same country when I'm around these bros.

We met a guy who wanted to buy 200 scarves from me to resell around the games. I had 275 of them with me on the trip and I would gladly have cut him a deal. Lugging them around was inconvenient. Unfortunately, without access to reliable technology it was going to be difficult to arrange anything. I gave him my email address and phone number and hoped he would somehow get in touch.

Enough on that though, the game was nearing! The sun had gone down and the buzz outside was waning as people went into the stadium. The security check was a breeze and we were in.

Neal commented that the stadium was cheap. The materials were low cost concrete and corrugated steel, and there were a lot of unfinished fixtures and unpainted surfaces. the new airport was like that too. All of this just for four World Cup matches.

I guess I would describe the match as a few minutes of euphoria followed by 90 minutes of nervous anxiety followed by more euphoria and celebration. The Dempsey goal scored in the first minute was surreal after all the talk of Ghana having our number. The bulk of what followed was suspenseful, often like we were barely hanging on. The Ghana equalizer was reality setting in, and the last minute John Brooks go ahead made it amazing again. It was a blast.






Neal took issue with the ref giving five minutes of stoppage at the end. As you know, he takes meticulous notes in his little black book. He counted four subs and no injuries, so that is two minutes. When Neal disagrees with another ref, it is serious business.






You will be proud to hear that I displayed the scarf high for the Biden motorcade as the VP was departing the area. The highway was closed down while we were siphoning through the path back to the parking lot, and I noted that we would probably be in the middle of the pedestrian overpass when the motorcade came through. Indeed, as the flashing lights appeared a couple hundred meters down the road I was able to position myself front and center with the "United States" side of the scarf stretched overhead. There were at least 20 vehicles and I'm sure the VP was in one of them giving the thumbs up.






Back in the parking lot, Charlie found a Ghana fan with a scarf, so he made a trade. Ghana scarves are so rare, I'm thinking we should make some next time around to sell just so they have some to trade.













We won our opening match, and now we are in good position to advance. We talked about our chances and the surreal experience as we drove back to Pipa for a little bit of partying.

6/14/14 - Day 1

Dear Dick,

Neal and I arrived at the airport for our departure to Brazil at about the same time,

2pm or so. We would fly to Newark and transfer to our nine hour flight to São Paulo there. The final leg would take us to Natal in the morning of the 15th. I'll write you when we're in Brazil!

Andy

Dear Dick

Dear Dick,

Neal, Charlie, Bill, and I are going to Brazil for the World Cup! Neal is writing a blog so he won't have time to write letters to you, so I am going to try to fill in. And I will be posting them on a blog myself. I hope you don't mind.

When we went to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Neal recorded videos of things like baboon scat for you. We'll be doing that again. Neal is excited to get some scat videos for you.

I'll send letters as time and technology permit. access to the internet can be hard to come by here, but I am writing on my iPad and sending the letters when I get access. Please remain patient!

Sincerely, Andy