Day 54: Seeing my dad in Sao Paulo — Departing South America for Africa

by Ted · Published February 28, 2019 · Updated March 3, 2019

Day 54 was our last in South America.

We hit the Tivoli buffet and then spent the morning on a few admin projects before our 5:30pm flight to Johannesburg: a few emails, new downloads for our devices and FedExing a bag of accumulated goodies and packing cast-offs home to DC. Here’s a sample of the contents of the FedEx :

The homemade blow gun and three darts made by our Amazon guide (only the essentials!)
An artisan wood bowl from the Amazon
Ceramic bowl from Peru
Willa’s two insta-famous ponchos
These Olukai shoes (I like them but they are sorta heavy and I wasn’t wearing them enough to warrant the extra lbs.)
An extra laptop charger (our Android phone chargers can charge the MacBook)

We felt lighter literally and figuratively. So nice to be back to our 1 backpack and 1 roller per person.

In one of the most amazing coincidences, my dad, who almost never travels internationally for work, had a business meeting in São Paulo scheduled for the ONE DAY that we would be there. We headed to his hotel lunch at Nonno Ruggero. He was delayed by traffic coming in from his the airport so we overlapped for literally 20 minutes before he had to go to his meetings and we had to head to the airport for our flight to Johannesburg. Definitely a trip highlight!

After lunch we swung back by our hotel to pick up our luggage. It was a 5 minute stop but timed perfectly to see the Tivoli hotel Consierge and a FedEx driver packing a blow gun into a FedEx box, destination: Washington DC. [Jim: If you are reading this, I grant you permission to open a long, thin FedEx box that will — fingers crossed — arrive at Huntington Street at some point in the coming days / weeks. I recommend target practice with Focker. Enjoy!]

We headed to the airport around 2:30pm, starting a long journey over the Atlantic. Destination: Cape Town.

I took the above shot of Willa and James in the São Paulo airport. The record must should show that they hadn’t been on their best behavior and they were being particularly difficult to each other. But I asked for a picture and they had this one moment. It is one of my favorite pictures of them.