Archive for October 2007
Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, not the same during winter...
Copacabana Beach
View of Rio
View of Sugerloaf Mountain taken from Corcovado
Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado mountain, appearing from the mist
Thursday was a early morning, I had to go up at 0430 AM to get to the airport to take a flight to Rio for the customer meeting that we had been preparing for during Tuesday and Wednesday. The flight left from Congonhas (CGH) which is one of those airports that are heavily criticized for different safety problems. In Congonhas case it has to do with slippery runways which caused a big accident back in July when a landing plane skidded of the runway and crashed into a warehouse killing more than 180 people.
After having a customer meeting in Rio during Thursday, my colleagues continued back to Sao Paulo. Since the weekend was starting in Dubai and my flight didn’t go back to Dubai until late Friday evening I stayed behind in Rio to do some sightseeing during Friday. The weather wasn’t the best since it was still spring in Rio so you didn’t really see any of the hectic life around Copacabana Beach which you are used to seeing on movies and on pictures.
Still, I rented a taxi for a couple of hours to drive around in Rio and despite the weather I managed to see some of the more famous sights in Rio, and especially Christ the Redeemer which was voted as being one of the New Seven Wonders of the World back in July, 2007. I think it was actually the first time I had a unbooked extra day whilst traveling so it was nice to be able to see something else than airports, hotels and meeting rooms.
Having spent a full week back in Sweden hunting, I was supposed to do some work in Sweden also. This however got changed on Friday and I was requested to go to Brazil next week to do a demo for a potential customer. So, trying to get the trip organized I made some new bookings so the return trip to Dubai went over Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
This also meant that the flight for Brazil left at 0530 on Monday morning with a transfer in Paris. And with some standard delays I ended up running through the terminal and jumping all the security queues to be able to get on board in time.
You realize that South America is a long way from Europe after spending roughly 15 hours traveling before reaching the destination. Since I had to work first thing the day after I had booked a hotel close to the office and took a cab straight from the airport to the hotel. The general recommendation was not to walk between the office and the hotel after dark due to the high crime rate, even though it only was 1 km between the two places…
Since I had been for vacation in Sweden, I hadn’t brought any suites or black shoes so after the first day of preparations I had to make my way to the local shipping mall to find dark trousers and a pair of black shoes to have something to wear for the customer presentation.
Today we went out to Husa to do some more moose hunting. This time we where done in 6 hours. It seems like there are a lot of moose this year, well, at least where I hunted. This evening Charlotte and I where invited to dinner at Fredrik and Erika’s new apartment in Vasastan. They finally got around to book a trip to Dubai in a couple of weeks so we had some planning to do around this. Also, Tass and Alonso joined in on the dinner and as usual Alonso liked to settle down in the sofa so you needed to keep a eye on him… It’s going to be fun having some friends on visit in Dubai again.
Since the hunting at my parents place was over for this time and yesterday was the day we hunt on our place in Östergötland, Friday was a day off before the moose hunt at Husa in Stockholm on Saturday. Managed to get some shopping done and luckily found a iPod Touch 16GB. Also got a new hunting radio since the old one always died on me and it was getting really irritating.
Lafayette Micro 4
iPod Touch
No tags
So, took the day of during Friday and on Saturday it was time to do some more moose hunting in Stockholm. Charlotte have also arrived back in Stockholm so it was nice to just get the day of.
On Friday also, my boss called and wanted me to go to South America during next week to do some demos. So, had to quickly re-schedule the way back to Dubai over Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro…
No tags
Today we continued to Östergötland to hunt at my brothers and my place. Unfortunately we didn’t have that much luck over there. We where allowed to shoot one moose calve and even though we saw a lot of animals, we didn’t manage to shoot any. It’s however good to see that there are a lot of moose in the area and overall it was a really good day out in the forest.
No tags
Arrived at my parents place early Sunday for a week of moose hunting.
On lookout for some action
We managed to shoot some mooses
These animals are big and not easily moved
Tass and Alonso on the way out for some moose hunting
All in all it was a really good week. The weather was excellent during the whole week and we managed to shoot what we had planned to during the first three days so the hunting was cut short. However, Tass and Alonso really liked coming out in the forest to do some hunting so I’m glad I flew them home to Sweden for this.