Varig is driving me nuts! I swear to God, if I had the ability to pop, I would have today. Maybe I do have that ability but more tolerance for complete absurdity than I previously thought...

Yesterday I called Varig to look into the availability of space on the flights I might change to in order to accommodate the cat issues. They told me there was space available on eight flights on the 18th. I would not be permitted, however, to make a reservation for the space until I had changed my ticket. After a long conversation with Meuamor's friend in Sampa who is now in cahoots with me, I had come to the decision that I would delay my arrival to Bahia by a day and stay in Sampa overnight to give the cats a break from being in crates and me time to rest and shower outside of an airport, airplane, or related apparatus. This seemed the best decision at the time. So the plan today was to call the airline and find out if there was space on the flight I intended to change to, and if so, change my flight and reserve the space.

So today I called Varig again, to check the space availability on the flights on the 19th that I felt would accommodate my time frame. Upon explaining the situation, the woman on the other end of the phone told me that they had no way to check the availability of space for pets on these flights. I explained to her that I had gotten the information quite clearly yesterday to the contrary, but she insisted and insisted she could not tell me anything. She constantly would go back to the standard phrase "I cannot request a reservation for you because we don't have access to that information."

I finally got aggravated trying to deal with her, since she didn't seem to understand the information or how I was going about trying to acquire it. So I asked to talk to another person. A new woman get on the phone and told me the same thing! I was almost in tears at this point, thinking of the prospect of paying to change to this flight, requesting the space, and then finding out there wasn't any and having to pay to change my flight again, then finding out there was no space yet again.... Much like my experience with getting the documents from the vet to the USDA, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...

At this point the woman seems to realize I am seriously about to loose it (despite having yelled over the phone at these people for half an hour), and suggests I make a request to reserve the space on the flight to see if it is available. If it is, I can book the flight, and if not, I can change to another flight and request that space. So, I in fact CAN reserve space for animals on a flight I am not booked for. I have just been given the exact opposite, TO THE "T", of the information I received yesterday! Why this information changes from day to day, I don't know....

So now I am holding a reservation on my new flight, awaiting this information from Varig. And there are still no documents from the consulate.