Once upon a time, Feng and I travelled across Central and South America by bus, eventually entering Brazil (yes, it took us a few months). We repeated the adventure a few times before Mark joined us. Taking a baby to South America seemed crazy enough, so we stopped using chicken buses and started flying directly to Chile, Argentina, or Brazil with Air Canada.

Then Air Canada and all direct flights from frozen hell got stupidly expensive, so we got creative. Our idea was to escape Canada via a “sun destination” (Cancún, mostly) and then take one of the many South American budget airlines.

It’s more tiring, but it’s much cheaper too. In essence, it’s like embarking on a prelude to your main journey… or this is what I keep on telling myself.

We flew to Lima with Air Canada Rouge, the low-cost subsidiary of Air Canada. I took the Cancún-Bogotá-São Paulo drug smuggler route, and I discovered that Avianca sucks. Last year, we tried the Cancún-Lima-São Paulo route with Sky Airlines.

This year, we found the Cancún-Brasília-São Paulo route with Gol Airlines. Hey, why not.

I like Gol but I only took it in Brazil, for domestic flights. I was curious to see how good it was for an eight-hour overnight flight. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. No built-in entertainment system but free Wi-Fi and a QR code to access a selection of movies. We were given blankets and offered a basic meal, chicken and rice with a piece of cake.

We landed in Brazil’s national capital at 6:35 a.m. It was already hot and steamy. We went through immigration easily, then hung out outside for a while before boarding the short Brasília-São Paulo flight.

We landed in Congonhas, my favourite São Paulo airport—not only it’s not an hour’s drive from the city, looking at you, Guarulhos, but you literally land in a sea of skyscrapers, seemingly centimetres from houses and buildings. Yes, it’s a bit dangerous. Yes, it’s an awesome landing experience.

Brazil, here we are, finally!