Going Back to Brazil: 30 Hours of Travel for Time With Family

Destination / route

Brazil

Travel dates

2025

Trip type

International family trip

Stress level

High

Going Back to Brazil: Family, Flight Problems, and 30 Hours Without Sleep

Brazil is different from most of the places we write about on The Family Departure.

For us, Brazil isn't just another destination.

It's going home to family.

Hellen grew up in Brazil, so when we travel there, we're not arriving with a checklist of tourist attractions we need to see. We're going to spend time with people we don't get to see nearly enough.

Our most recent trip was our second time traveling to Brazil as a family. The first was years earlier, when Ollie was only six months old. That was my first trip to Brazil and Ollie's first international adventure at an age when he obviously wasn't going to remember much of it.

This time, Ollie was older.

And while the trip itself was wonderful, getting there was an adventure we could have done without.

It Started in Indianapolis

We left Indianapolis expecting the usual long travel day that comes with flying internationally.

Our itinerary took us from Indy to Dallas before continuing on to São Paulo.

Nothing unusual there.

Then our flight in Dallas was delayed.

A delay by itself isn't necessarily a disaster. But when you have connecting flights stacked together, one delay has a way of knocking over everything behind it like dominoes.

By the time we eventually arrived in São Paulo, our original plans were gone.

And we still weren't at our final destination.

Welcome to Brazil. Now Find Another Airport.

Our final destination was Vitória, where Hellen is from and where her family lives.

Because of the delays, we had to be rebooked onto another flight.

There was just one small problem.

The new flight wasn't leaving from the airport we were standing in.

Imagine finally arriving in Brazil after an already exhausting international travel day, only to learn:

"Good news! We found you another flight."

Great.

"Bad news! It's across São Paulo."

Not so great.

We were given taxi transportation and had to drive across São Paulo to another, more regional airport to catch the rebooked flight to Vitória.

At that point, we weren't sightseeing.

We weren't admiring São Paulo.

We were basically three exhausted people being transported through one of the world's largest cities thinking about one thing:

a bed.

By the time we finally reached Vitória and were able to go to sleep, we had been awake for somewhere around 30 hours.

There are travel days.

And then there are travel days.

And Then the Trip Actually Started

The funny thing about terrible travel days is how quickly they become stories once they're over.

Once we finally slept, the nightmare of getting there started fading into the background.

Because the reason we'd traveled all that way was waiting for us.

Family.

We don't get to see Hellen's family nearly as often as we'd like. An international flight separates Ollie from a big part of his extended family, so these trips aren't simply vacations for us.

They're opportunities to reconnect.

We spent a lot of the trip doing something that doesn't always make for a dramatic travel itinerary:

spending time together.

And that was exactly what we wanted.

Seeing Hellen's Hometown Differently

This trip also gave me more time to explore Vitória, not simply as a tourist destination but as Hellen's hometown.

There's something different about visiting a place when the person you're traveling with grew up there.

A park isn't necessarily just a park.

A neighborhood isn't simply another neighborhood.

These are places connected to someone's childhood.

We explored parks, visited different attractions around the city, walked around, ate, and experienced a little more of the place Hellen called home long before she and I ever met.

For Ollie, it's also part of understanding where his mom comes from.

And for me, each trip gives me another piece of that story.

Brazil Is Still Mostly Unexplored for Us

Here's the strange part.

I've now been to Brazil twice, Hellen is Brazilian, and we still feel like I've barely seen Brazil.

Brazil is enormous.

When we visit, family naturally takes priority. We only have so much time together, and it doesn't make much sense to fly thousands of miles to see family and then immediately disappear on another trip.

So most of our experience has centered around Vitória and Hellen's family.

But next time, we'd like to change that a little.

Not by replacing the family part of the trip—we'll always want that—but by adding a few days to venture farther away from the city.

I'd love to see more of the Brazilian countryside and experience parts of the country I've never seen.

There is still an enormous amount of Brazil waiting for us.

Sometimes the Journey Really Is the Worst Part

Travel articles love the phrase:

"It's about the journey, not the destination."

Whoever came up with that clearly never spent approximately 30 hours awake while rerouting through São Paulo with a kid.

Sometimes the journey is terrible.

The destination is the good part.

Our trip to Brazil started with delayed flights, missed connections, a rebooked flight from an entirely different airport, a taxi ride across São Paulo, and three people desperately needing sleep.

But that's not what we remember most.

We remember Ollie getting to spend time with family he rarely sees.

I remember getting to know a little more about Hellen's hometown.

We remember parks, meals, conversations, family, and simply being together.

And hopefully, when we return, we'll finally venture a little farther beyond Vitória and see another side of Brazil.

Although next time, we'd happily take a slightly less interesting travel day getting there.