The Return: Last-Minute Luck

When I left Brazil a year and a half ago, everyone wanted to know when I would be back to visit. Not knowing exactly when I would get a chance to return, I picked Carnaval 2009 as a date that seemed as good as any. Far enough away that we will have had time to miss each other, but not too long that we will have all forgotten.

By mid-January 2009, we still hadn't done anything to action this plan (except for a clever heads-up vacation request for two weeks in February, made in June 2008 when we were asked to put our summer vacation requests into "the system"). By January 15th we hadn't moved on anything and I figured that the Plan was as good as gone. What were the chances of getting any kind of reasonable price on a ticket to Recife for lead up to Carnaval, bought a mere three weeks ahead of time?

Just to satisfy our lack of options, we hopped on expedia and did a quick ticket search. We entered our locations and dates, the timer twisted and turned, twist and turned, and we were informed that our round trip ticket from Ottawa to Recife and back - via three days in Rio no less - would cost a grand whopping total of $980 each - taxes in! Just to put this in perspective - I just bought a ticket for a trip to Saskatoon in April, and it cost EXACTLY the same price! Yup, a three hour trip to Saskatoon or a 17-hour trip to Recife and Rio.... Also in comparison, while I was living there, we never even managed to get a ticket to Sao Paulo for that price, let alone Recife (another three hours away) and Rio. It was too good to miss. We hopped on email and the phone, confirmed that all our friends would be around, verified that we could have the time off, and, after a grand total of 24 hours of contemplation, booked the tickets, clickety-click.

That was it, the grand adventure of The Return was about to begin!!