There is no easy way to go from Foz do Iguaçu to the Nordeste. You can walk to Paraguay, easily cross to Argentina, and get a direct flight to São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro but most other destinations involve a layover or a connecting flight somewhere in Brazil.

Last year, I flew through Porte Alegre.

This year, my best option was a flight to Natal with a connection in São Paulo.

The only issue was, I only had one hour between both flights.

“Same airport?” Feng asked when I booked the flight.

“Well, duh. I don’t think there would be an option to land in GRU and take your connecting flight in Congonhas… wait, let me check. Nope, GRU, same terminal.”

So I booked the flight. At least I had an hour—Azul offered a similar flight with a 35-minute connection.

And of course, I started worrying about it right away. I had no plan B. Spending the night in São Paulo in the worst-case scenario, I suppose. Or being rebooked for the next flight to Natal but possibly landing at 3 a.m. Yeah, no.

Once again, I packed, slept too little, woke up, left keys in a mailbox and took an Uber to an airport.

“I’m a bit worried about the connection…” I announced when I dropped off my backpack.

The GOL employee looked at my booking. “An hour? Tranquilo! Plenty of time! See the people right in front of you? They have a twenty-minute connection. An hour… no problem.”

Okay, an hour is plenty for Brazilians. Gotcha. However, time is probably what stresses me the most in life, mostly not having enough of it to accomplish things, so the perspective of having only 60 minutes to catch a flight and being unable to control anything about the timing was stressful.

So I slept. May as well use my downtime wisely.

And when I woke up, we were in São Paulo, it was raining, we were 15 minutes late and another family behind me was stressing out about a connection in Spanish.

GOL employees were waiting for us at the door.

“Connection?”

“Natal.”

“Gate 112, this way.”

I rushed to the gate.

Made it.

Amazing.

And I fell asleep again—this time my dreams didn’t include me running after a plane.

We landed in Natal on time, right after the Nordeste 5 p.m. sunset.

It took another 45-minute Uber ride to get to my Airbnb in Natal but I still had plenty of time to shop, cook, work and plan the next adventure. I even had energy after sleeping most of the day.

Made it to the Nordeste, my favourite corner of Brazil!