I have already flown just under 140,000 miles in 2011 but a large amount of this travel was on award tickets so I'm still a few thousand EQMs away from 2012 1K re-qualification. If I'm going to spend 10 hours in a plane I should go somewhere cool, right?

IAH-GIG and GIG-IAH are red-eyes in both directions which allows around 12 hours on the ground in Rio. It is possible to earn 10K EQM, 20K RDM, and a full day in Rio in a mere 32 hours!

Of course my mother found out and said I should take her along for her birthday present...something about how I owe her for giving birth to me.

Brazil has a reciprocal visa policy so US citizens must purchase a 10-year tourist visa for $140. My visa has already paid for itself after 2 mileage runs to GRU in May but my mom needed to get one. The application process was simple enough and soon we were ready to go!

Due to some really complicated scheduling issues I had to start this trip from MAF, which meant a nice trip on one of Colgan's Bombardier Dash-8 Q400s. Fortunately I was able to get seat 1B, which is an exit row with unlimited legroom.

Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 operated by Colgan Air dba Continental Connection in United Express colors - it doesn't get more complicated than this!



The trip went by rather quickly and we landed in IAH about 90 minutes later. Colgan uses Terminal A so I had to take the TerminaLink to Terminal E.

TerminaLink and the IAH Marriott



EK and QR 777s going to DXB and DOH



The Terminal E President's Club United Club was really crowded but there wasn't a waiting list for the shower rooms. After showering we grabbed a quick dinner before proceeding to the gate. Boarding began with Elite Access Premier Access and included a badly butchered list of statuses. Presidential Premier, 1K Gold, 1K Silver, etc. We boarded as soon as they said 1K and the BP/visa checker didn't complain!

Continental's 767-400ERs are in a 2-1-2 configuration in BusinessFirst and a 2-3-2 configuration in Economy. We booked a pair of seats so we wouldn't have to gamble with the possibility of a 3rd seatmate and this strategy paid off because the flight was completely full!

The IFE didn't really work and I don't think they've been putting much work into it since announcing the addition of new BF seats by the end of 2012. We'll see how that works out over the next year...

After boarding was completed we took off...

Houston about 10 minutes after takeoff



Meal choices were chicken or beef. We went with the beef. CO offers an expended drink selection on international flights but they were out of Glenlivet, Jack Daniels, and Bombay. They still had some Crown so I was happy.

Dinner



Breakfast was served about 90 minutes before landing in GIG. The meal was similar to IAH-GRU - bread and some fruit.

Breakfast



Our route went over Brasilia before continuing to Rio.

Flight Map



The weather was cloudy but we could see land after descending below 20,000 feet.

In flight IAH-GIG



Touchdown was very smooth and it only took about 3 minutes to taxi to the gate. CO still uses Terminal 1 (UA and other *A carriers use T2) and we were the only flight arriving at that time. Immigration took only 10 minutes.

The first stop was Cristo Redentor and we decided to take the tram to the top. I think the ride took about 30 minutes.

Rio is visible during parts of the ride but trees always get in the way. Shooting at 8 fps doesn't help - there are always more trees!

Trees



More Trees



And More Trees



If you don't want to take the tram you can take a taxi to a parking lot and a van to the top.

Parking Lot



There are several stops along the route but we only saw these being used by people who live in houses on the mountain.

Station



As the tram climbed higher there were fewer trees, so we could see stuff like this:



And this: