World Cup Live: Gotta Go, Gotta Go!

Attending the World Cup means committing to travel. For the truly dedicated Yank fan, that involves a journey into the Amazon.

That's not me. We were four nights in the Natal area, and now eight in the Recife area. The transport options in Natal were limited to cabs. In Recife,  there are more choices, so more things to figure out. The first, straightforward leg of the trip was the 4-hour bus from the Rodoviario (bus station) in Natal to its counterpart in Recife. Our flight home is out of Natal, and we had booked our return on the 9am bus out of Recife on June 27. Because that is a little tight for catching our flight, we wanted to shift it to 7:45.

This made for a creative conversation with agent who popped out Google translator. The translation was "transfer a ticket from REEF to CHRISTMAS". The modern world.

After dropping 1 Real to use the restroom, we were on our way. My friend sat next to a woman from Recife who now lives in Bolingbrook. She was a great help in assisting during the unexpected lunch stop halfway down as well as getting us information on how to get to our final destination, Porto de Galinhas, who's about 17735012677km south of town. (Actually 50 kilometers, but it felt much farther.)

Porto de Galinhas is a beautiful little beach town, but getting here affordably required some luck and faith. First, the Recife Metro line took us to the airport. From there, there's a bus to PDG. But, finding that bus stop was not obvious. But a deus ex machina emerged, in the person of a Uruguayan named Diego. For all we knew, he was some Brazilian con man preying on hapless World Cup tourists. But, he was just a budget traveler like us. He negotiated a private car to take us to PDG for half of what we expected.

So, one big travel day done. The next day was Italy-Cost Rica and that would prove to be just as busy. Getting around Brazil is an adventure, always, it seems.