Day 4 -- Movement...Dissolving Pulp....Traffic....and WOW

This was a busy day.  The group had to get up early to depart from Sao Paulo on TAM Airlines, headed to Salvador -- a city on the southern coast of Brazil.  So it was a bus to the airport, a plane ride, and another bus to pick us up and drive us to the Bahia Specialty Pulp mill about one hour outside of Salvador.  We were anticipating traffic, lost reservations, and other disasters...but everything went smoothly. 

The tour company provided a guide, Roberto, for us at the Salvador airport.  On the ride to the mill, he told us some of the history of Salvador, as well as the enormous industrial complex that the mill is a part of -- the largest in South America.

Hospitality at the mill, as with the other mills we have visited, was outstanding.   Students were greeted with amazing goodies, including a variety of exotic juices and, of course, meat-filled pastries.  After an orientation to the mill and a review of dissolving pulp requirements and uses, the students had a nice tour of the facility.

The ride back to Salvador was awful.  We somehow timed our depature from the mill to coincide with normal commuting traffic, Friday afternoon traffic, and some weekend festival celebrating a local woman whose work with the poor had earned her the first stage of beatification.  A drive that should have taken one hour took 3.5...in bumper to bump stop and go traffic (including horses and mules).   The students were getting restless and hungy.  As we approached our hotel, the traffic came to a complete stop, due to some concert being held in the city center.  So it was almost 8 o'clock when we finally checked into the hotel.

It was hard to tell much about the hotel in the dark.  We could tell it was on the ocean (on the bay, actually), and we could tell it was perched up high on a cliff over the water.  It had a nice pavilion area out back, and a nice little pool.  The rooms...well....they were clean enough, but they looked like they had been decorated in the early 1970's -- orange curtains, orange striped trim, and orange bed covers. 

Our guide had suggested a traditional Brazilian barbeque place a bit outside of downtown, and he arranged for the restaurant to send a shuttle to pick us up at the hotel.  Traffic turned out to again be horrendous, so it was pretty late when we arrived at the restaurant.  But it was worth it....this place as enormous and loud, with a gigantic salad bar and endless skewers of grilled meats of all kinds.  Everybody ate until they could not move.

Another jam-packed day.  Another great day!