Brazil - August 2012

I made another work related trip to Brazil in August.  Just a one week trip and all work this time, no sightseeing just work.

I left Sacramento Sunday lunchtime to fly to Houston where later in the evening I caught my flight to Rio de Janeiro.  Flying through the night we arrived in Rio at 9:00 am and I did the switch to being a UK Citizen so that I could get into Brazil without a visa.  US Citizens need a visa to visit Brazil and that is a significant effort. 

At the airport there was a melee of drivers waiting to pick up passengers arriving on the flight – somewhere in the middle of the mass of people was my driver.   It’s not that I was some visiting VIP that warranted a driver, it’s just that that is what most companies do for there for their visitors.  Anyway after a couple of passes through the throng I located him skulking away at the back of the crowd and we were away on our way to Macae.   Macae is a town about 100 miles north east of Rio where a lot of the support activities for Brasil’s oil industry take place.

Of course the driver drove very aggressively the whole way – overtaking at every opportunity regardless of oncoming traffic or blind corners and following within a couple of feet of the vehicle in front whenever he couldn’t overtake.   It took a while to relax my grip on the edge of the seat and realize that this is the way everyone drives.

Macae from the hotel

Macae itself was very nice, not so congested as Rio, and I was taken to a very nice hotel by the beach.   Ocean views from the hotel room -  you can’t beat that.

The beach at Macae

The work was fairly uneventful.  The business meetings were pretty relaxed – everyone I met with was in jeans and a T-shirt or polo shirt - there never seemed to be any pressure to move things along or follow an agenda.  On my second day, I was kept waiting in the conference room for 2 hours before anyone came in to the meeting and it all just seemed perfectly natural to them.   By the end of the week I was quite used to just biding my time until someone came along to visit me.   Perhaps they would behave different if they were aware I was billing by the hour, but then, maybe not.

I was visiting two companies – Schahin in the first part of the week and Odebrecht in the second part.  Both are similar companies – large Brazilian conglomerates that have moved into the offshore drilling market to provide Brazilian content in a US dominated drilling contractor market.

At Odebrecht I was asked to visit one of their rigs undergoing acceptance testing just outside the harbor at Macae.  No problem I thought – I can see the rig from the shoreline here, it should be a nice short trip.   However I should have suspected something when they gave me some sea-sickness pills before I left the office on Wednesday evening.

Sure enough the next day the rig had moved further away and the promised 1 hr boat ride was in fact 1½ hours.   I tried to remain in control of my head and stomach, but after leaving the harbor area, we moved into some significant swells and the little boat was pitching about quite a lot.  I remained on the back deck, eyes glued on the horizon, trying not to think about how ill I felt.   We eventually made it to the rig – the imaginatively named ODN1 – one of the most modern dynamically position deep water drill ships around and truly a great piece of engineering.   I expected to be hoisted aboard without delay, but no.   Nothing happened.   We bobbed around like a cork in that sea and my distress continued.  

The ODN1

What I didn’t know at the time was that as I arrived at the rig, they started an Abandon Ship drill on the rig.  Of course no one can come aboard if they are rehearsing an exit from the rig.  Furthermore, the drill did not go so well.   They had to repeat it several times.   I remained on the boat for another 2 ½ hours for a total of 4 hours before they hoisted me aboard.   I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep.   Alas no, it was now 12:00 noon, and my return boat was at 3:00 pm.  I really am getting too old for this kind of work.

Hoisting onto the rig from the boat

The actual hoisting onto the rig was, as always, an exciting adventure.   Being hoisted off the deck of a boat bobbing around in the swell and lifted a few hundred feet up in the air.  That’s always makes for a trip to remember.  The trip back was not so bad, at least it was shorter with no wait to disembark at the other end.  The Santa Ana islands looked nice in the late afternoon light and there were lots of Frigate Birds and Terns skimming over the tops of the waves doing their acrobatics.   I must have been feeling better to notice the birds.

The Santa Ana Islands

The boat trip was on Thursday.   Friday was a partial day in the office and then the late afternoon I was driven back to Rio for my flight.  We came into Rio at rush hour and that slowed things down a bit, but it was nice to observe how things work (or don’t work) there.  When the freeway slows up with heavy traffic, vendors come out into the lanes selling various snacks and goods.  So here you are on a major multi-lane highway and there is a young kid with a tray of snacks selling them to passing motorists.   However, there are still numerous motor cycles that are lane splitting and traveling quite fast moving between the cars and the vendors.  A very high risk profession if ever there was one.

It was an uneventful trip home, flying through the night to Houston and then on to Sacramento by lunchtime Saturday.

A few more photos are here on my Smugmug site.