Despite the alarm clock being set for the wrong 12-hour period, we still woke in time for breakfast. Not quite knowing what to expect, we ended up gorging on bread, jam, fruit salad, watermelon, pawpaw, honeydew, bread rolls, ham, cheese, banana cake, lemon cake, chocolate cake, chocolate wafer biscuits and five different types of juice.

After breakfast, we went for a walk (read : waddle) around the city, since we were apparently right in the central business district. It is a loose term, since many houses and shops are located right next to one another, and everything is a big mix. It’s nothing like Melbourne or Shepparton where all the shops are located in one place and all the houses in another. Quite charming in a weird sort of “glad I don’t have to walk all over town looking for something” way.

The footpaths in the town are of two quality levels - incredible or none. It seems that if you want to have a nice bit of footpath in front of your house or shop, you do it yourself, and if you don’t, well, don’t expect the city to do it for you. As you might imagine, Di was enchanted with the prospect of uneven and loose bricks to walk on, given her eyesight, and expressed herself on the subject a few times by the end of the walk.

We could see one ornate building out our hotel room window (after looking past the immediate shambles) and went to see what it was. Turns out to be a school, and the large dome is the church part of it. Most shops were closed because it was Sunday, so we went back home.

Watching a little TV, we were amused to find “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” on the box, with the voices dubbed over in Portugese. Only one little problem - the songs. They could not alter the voices in the songs and still get them to rhyme so they left them in English and provided subtitles. This has to be the only movie where you are ever likely to see written on the screen:

DUMPA DUMPA DUMPA DI DOO

Fell asleep again, as it seems we were more affected by the jetlag than we thought. Got a call at 6:30pm telling us the bus to take us to the cocktails was there and if we wanted to be on it, we’d better get down there in the next two minutes. We raced down to the lobby and then sat in the bus for 10 minutes before it left.

Arriving at the Hotel Fazenda Fonte Colina Verde (the congress venue), we checked in and received our name tags, with Di very chuffed to get one as well. The drinks were due to begin after some opening speeches. Taking advantage of a very jetlagged audience, the monotone of both speakers actually put some people to sleep in the crowd, while many others wanted to just give up and do the same. Not overly exciting, I have to admit.

In the IGC proceedings, I got a bit worried when I could not find my paper. It turned out to be in a different section to what I’d been told, and I found it eventually, but there was a minor feeling of utter horror when believing my first published work was not able to be found in the text. Fortunately this feeling went away soon enough, and I was able to get back to becoming numb at both ends during the presentations.

After the speeches, the drinks and nibblies appeared and we got stuck into them. There was a very odd pink drink that seemed to be some sort of local beverage, or at least, some sort of local beverage served to tourists. Went down very well and tasted very sweet.

Took the IGC shuttle bus back to the hotel, arriving after midnight. Falling back into bed, I looked forward to the 5:30am alarm with a measure of trepidation.

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001