I've just returned from my first trip to Brazil. I spent eight days of a ten day trip in the south of the country in a town called Ipaussu, which is in the middle of a large sugar cane area.
This trip was brought about as a result of my reassignment at work away from mower design into biomass related applications. As I typically do, I'll stay scant on the details, but the purpose of this trip was to help determine certain options for Vermeer in a developing market. I've been told the change is only temporary and I'll be back to the mower group in a year or so.
I had known I would be going to Brazil since my reassignment the second week in October, and the company began helping me apply for my visa, which takes several weeks. I'd expected to be going this week, but was told on the afternoon of the 5th that the visa would arrive the morning of the 6th, and to pack my bags. Just as an FYI, I believe my MSU tuition for a semester cost roughly the same as a day-of plane ticket from Des Moines to Sao Paulo.
I flew through O'Hare to Sao Paulo overnight, which took 10.5 hours, was driven to Vermeer Latin America in a nearby town called Valinhos, then caught a bus and rode for six hours to the largest town close to where our demonstration was taking place. I was told when I got on the bus to be sure I got off at the right place, or I'd wind up in Paraguay, a warning I'd never had aimed at me before. After another 45 minutes or so, I arrived in my first sugar cane field at 10:30 pm on the night of the 7th, after 28 hours or so of travel. The logic behind not letting me just go to bed made me scratch my head.
The Vermeer equipment for this demonstration was supported by about four VLA service personnel, Harold Gorter, who had managed the service department in Pella for forty years before moving to international sales, and myself. Two engineering technicians from Pella had also been there the preceding weeks.
I monitored and learned about the piece of equipment I had traveled there to see and to make function, but the majority of my time was spent working on balers. I commented to Harold at one point that I hadn't worked on balers so much since before I worked at Vermeer. Cliff Cox, it can be said your knowledge went to work in Brazil.
It's mid-spring in Brazil right now so it's the start of their "wet" season. It was in the 90s every day, and we saw no rain except for a sprinkle Monday afternoon. It was quite dry, and very dusty. The soil in that area was rust red, fine as flour, and got into and stuck to everything. This was hard on both man and machine. Clothes were instantly dirty once you got to the field and faces were comically filthy within minutes. I've never scrubbed off so much dirt in a shower only to still leave the towel brown. It's also proving to be stubborn if not impossible to get out of my clothes.
Tools were scarce. The VLA guys had some tools provided by the company, but these were pretty basic. We had no chains, no blocking, no pneumatic or electric impacts, no jacks, and no pry bars. We did everything out in the field in the rusty dirt. There was an old hacksaw blade in the toolbox that I used a surprising amount, most importantly to cut new threads on a worn but critical SAE bolt for which we had no hope of finding a replacement. A very helpful operator handed me a prison-shank-like sharpened piece of plate steel that I constantly used to cut net wrap out of pickups and off of rollers. I had thought ahead enough to bring my Leatherman, and was glad for it.
This was my first trip to a non-English speaking country. I don't count the Netherlands because almost everybody there spoke English. We were always with English speakers in the field to help get our points across to the locals with whom we worked, but Harold and I still did a fair amount of arm waving. I used every bit of broken Spanish I knew in the hopes something might match up, and it occasionally did. I didn't have too hard a time getting my point across in some way or another, though in the few times I was not understood, I felt a bit like a little kid. It gives some empathy for others in that situation.
I generally got along with everyone I dealt with. One Brazilian technician I talked to every day spoke some English and told me to 'speak in English. We like it.' Like most other Brazilians, he greeted us every morning with a good handshake, a slap on the back, and a 'bom dia!' (good morning!). He and I would teach each other a few words here and there. Our last day in the field, he asked to look at my Leatherman. Such tools are hard to come by in Brazil and expensive if you can find them. I had meant to leave it with him, because he needs it more than I do. My biggest regret of the trip was being off somewhere when the shift changed in the afternoon and I missed him before he left.
The two technicians from Pella had both gotten sick on their trips, so I was a little leery. I never got sick from drinking yellow rain water in Australia, and still don't understand how, but I nonetheless steered clear of tap water in Brazil, and never ate fresh fruits or vegetables for fear of how they were or weren't washed. Aside from a belly ache one night, I never got sick, which seems like an accomplishment.
Long days were spent in the field all week, but no one works on Sunday. Herb Waldhuetter from VLA graciously drove us into the hillier country south of where we had been working to see the coffee, cattle, lakes, and rivers. We had lunch at a restaurant on a deck by a waterfall, something I hadn't expected.
The demo ended Wednesday, and Harold's and my ride took us back to Valinhos on Thursday. My flight didn't leave until Friday evening, so I explored the area around my hotel for a few hours without incident. Herb took me to a Brazilian steak house my last night there, which had been the one item on my Brazilian to-do list. Twenty-one cuts of beef were offered to us on skewers by waiters, along with lamb, chicken, and wild boar. We were nearing meat comas when we left. It was everything I'd ever dreamed of.
There are plenty of other stories from this trip, but this post is getting plenty long. Drop me a line and I'll share some more.
It wasn't an easy trip, but I accomplished what I needed to, didn't get hurt, sick,or lost, and collected some more stories. I haven't experienced that much in ten days in quite awhile.
