Brazil, Flight Test, Caipirinha, and the Fine Art of Saying “Obrigado”

I arrived in Brazil on Saturday, March 21, after the kind of travel day that sounds efficient on paper and feels like a minor act of endurance in real life: DFW to Miami, then overnight to São Paulo. I had chosen first class, thinking I needed to arrive rested, polished, and ready to represent SFTE with dignity.  But if you're not going to eat the food, well, maybe premium economy is good enough... I did start watching a great movie, titled "The Life of Chuck."  

Landing in São Paulo, I stepped out of Terminal 3 at GRU, requested my Uber Comfort as planned, and made my way to Hotel Heritage on Rua Fernando de Albuquerque in Consolação. The airport-to-city transition was easier than expected, which is always a pleasant surprise when arriving in a country where your language skills are mostly limited to hope, pointing, and “Obrigado.” 

From the airplane window, São Paulo looked endless: towers, neighborhoods, green corridors, haze, density, motion. It was not a city that politely introduced itself. It sprawled. It announced itself. It said, “You may have arrived, but you have not yet understood me.”

This particular hotel receptionist spoke no English.  Surprising to me. But Google translate filled in nicely. That first afternoon, I wandered near the hotel and had my first Brazilian meal: feijoada, the famous black bean stew traditionally eaten on Saturdays. Beans, beef, rice, greens, farofa, and enough cultural weight to make the dish feel less like lunch and more like initiation. It was interesting.  Not my Mediterranean fare.  And it came with steak, which I have been eschewing.  This particular cut wasn't worth eating.

That evening, I met Pedro, an FTE instructor colleague, along with his wife Ivi, their young son, and Pedro’s mother, Liege. Pedro is a Brazilian Air Force Test Pilot School graduate, and I first met him and Ivi at the NTPS graduation. Now here I was, halfway across the world, being welcomed into their family evening at Le Jazz Brasserie in São Paulo.

Pedro advised me it was a short Uber ride.  But feeling adventurous, I walked even as dusk was approaching. 

This may not have been the smartest decision, but it was one of those choices that felt necessary. A city cannot be understood entirely through a windshield. I wanted to feel the sidewalks, hear the traffic, watch the shops and apartment buildings, and people passing by. It was about a thirty-minute walk, and uneventful—my favorite category of urban adventure.

Dinner was fantastic. The food was wonderfully eclectic: blood sausage, squid curry, soft white cheese baked with honey, corn and pork fritters, local baked cod with green beans, beef tartare, steak and fries for Pedro’s five-year-old son.  We started off with Negronis.  But then, I was also introduced to the caipirinha.  

Let me state this carefully and with due respect to Mexico: caipirinhas may be better than margaritas.

Pedro’s mother, Liege, was warm and kind, and although she spoke only a little English, hospitality rarely needs translation. We made plans to meet again the following weekend when I returned to São Paulo for a classical concert. That became one of the quiet gifts of the trip: not just formal meetings and institutional visits, but personal connections. Meals. Walks. Invitations. Conversations that stretch across language gaps with goodwill doing most of the work.  

On Sunday, I walked for about an hour through São Paulo toward Ibirapuera Park. Along the way, the city opened itself in layers: street vendors, Sunday festivals, coconut carts, families, music, and the textured black-and-white wave patterns of Brazilian sidewalks. I drank fresh sugarcane juice pressed from stalks right in front of me and ate a hearts-of-palm fritter. At the park, I bought coconut water straight from the source, straw inserted into the green shell, which is both a beverage and a small tropical engineering achievement.

I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo and stood in front of paintings that were intense, strange, muscular, and unsettling in the way good modern art often is. One image in particular—a surreal, fragmented human-and-horse composition—felt like Brazil itself had whispered, “You came for flight test, but don’t forget the human animal.”

That evening I traveled to São José dos Campos and settled into Hotel Ema Palace on Rua Jorge Barbosa Moreira. São José would become the working center of the trip: IPEV, EFEV, Sirius, and the bridge into Brazil’s flight test community.

Monday, March 23, began the formal purpose of the visit. Dr. Nelson picked me up and brought me to IPEV, the Brazilian Air Force’s flight test center, and its associated flight test school, EFEV. I had come as SFTE President, but also as a fellow traveler in the strange and wonderful world of test and evaluation—the world where disciplined curiosity becomes airplanes, data, risk management, and occasionally very long meetings.

At IPEV, I met senior military and civilian leadership, toured facilities, and gave a presentation to more than seventy flight test professionals and students. The turnout was impressive. More than that, the engagement was real. These were not people attending out of obligation. They were curious, technical, proud of their institution, and eager to connect globally.

There was also a moment that delighted me: I met a Brazilian flight test engineer who looked like a younger version of me. This was either charming or deeply alarming. I’m choosing charming.

The history of Brazilian flight test was visible throughout the visit, including references to early aviation experiments and a remarkable painting of a trial airship in France. Brazil’s aerospace story is not an imitation of anyone else’s. It has its own lineage, its own constraints, its own ingenuity.

On Tuesday, March 24, I visited Sirius Flight Test School, founded by Luiz Munaretto. Sirius offers a hybrid academic and practical training model, including postgraduate work in engineering and flight test operations, ANAC test pilot certification, simulators, virtual reality, and access to a diverse aircraft fleet. It was a compelling example of how high-quality flight test education can be delivered efficiently and creatively. 

After the formal tour, Luiz drove me about an hour to the small private airfield where Sirius keeps its aircraft, near his home. There were gliders, training aircraft, hangars, murals, and the unmistakable feeling of someone building something with both technical seriousness and personal passion.

Then Luiz showed me his home jut 50 feet from the airfield. Behind it was a tropical fruit garden: mangoes, guava, bananas, dragon fruit, and things I could not name but was very happy to admire. He introduced me to cachaça on his porch, along with fruit from the orchard. Luiz presented me with a special bottle of cachaça. It had a custom flight-test-themed label warning about “post-combustion,” which seemed both humorous and technically prudent.  What I also learned was that cachaca is the liquor caipirinhas are made from. 

Not a bad way to live.  Actually, that is understating it. It was a lovely way to live.

Wednesday, March 25, was a day off in São José dos Campos. I walked to a nearby park and later had lunch with Dr. Nelson and his wife. I tried pirarucu, a freshwater Amazon fish that can grow up to nine feet long. Nothing makes lunch more interesting than realizing your entrée once had the proportions of a canoe.

On March 26, Embraer provided ground transportation from São José dos Campos to Gavião Peixoto. The drive took several hours, passing hillsides marked by enormous ant mounds, some rising three feet high. The day before, I saw one in Luiz's casa that he had turned one into a stove, which is exactly the kind of practical improvisation I respect. Nature builds structure; humans add fire and dinner.  The other thing I saw was sugar cane fields without end.  

The Embraer Flight Test Center at Gavião Peixoto was one of the professional highlights of the trip. It is an extraordinary facility, with a 15,000-foot runway, expansive airspace, and the infrastructure to support one of the world’s most capable flight test environments. I met with Embraer leadership, flight test engineers, and pilots, and we discussed SFTE, professional development, recommended practices, and ways to deepen Brazil’s engagement with the international flight test community.

That evening, Jens, Embraer’s senior flight test engineering manager, and Alex, the T&E vice president, took me to dinner in Gavião Peixoto. The food was Italian, excellent, and deeply appreciated after a full day of technical conversations. The best professional relationships rarely form in conference rooms alone. They form over meals, shared stories, laughter, and the gradual discovery that people separated by geography often care about the same things: excellence, safety, pride in craft, and the next generation.

On Friday, March 27, I returned to São José dos Campos. Dr. Nelson and his wife took me to Bar Coronel, a lively tapas-style restaurant with music, small plates, bolinho de feijoada, pastel, and more caipirinhas.  The music was bosa nova and Elvis.  The band leader was fantastic and a friend of Nelson's.  His son was a high school exchange student in Texas.  He dedicated some songs to me.  It was special and what I was looking for.  I had planned to try and find a place like this on my own.  But having a host like Nelson is priceless.  By this point, I was developing enough caipirinha experience to be dangerous—not dangerous in any dramatic sense, just dangerous in the “I may confidently order another one” sense.  At the hotel, I met a 40-something American, who had a company that recycled jet engines.  He and his Brazilian partner seemed to be doing quite well.  So many choices in life. 

On Saturday, March 28, I returned to São Paulo, this time staying at Quality Suites Oscar Freire in Jardim Paulista. That evening, Pedro had arranged tickets for me and his mother (a classical music afficianado) to attend a classical performance at Sala São Paulo, with his mother, the city’s iconic concert hall built in a restored train station.

I normally enjoy classical music in small doses.  That night surprised me. My seat was behind the orchestra, giving me a clear view of the conductor and the musicians. From that angle, the performance became less abstract. I could see the labor, the attention, the drums and instruments in the back rows, the cues, the breathing, the coordination. It was so engaging.  Also, the hall itself was beautiful. São Paulo has a way of hiding elegance inside scale.

On Sunday, March 29, I had lunch with Giuseppe and his fiancée, Renata. Giuseppe and I had known each other years earlier in Italy, when I stayed in Arona. He had since moved to Brazil to work in marketing for Leonardo Helicopters and isn't planning to return to Italia. There we were, reunited in São Paulo over food, conversation, and yes, more caipirinhas.

The world is large until it suddenly isn’t.

That evening, I went to a laser light show called, "Luminiscence and Genesis" inside the downtown cathedral. The images washed over the Gothic arches in blue, red, white, and violet, transforming stone into movement. I have seen many cathedrals in my life, and many of them ask visitors to look backward—toward doctrine, empire, sacrifice, permanence. This one, at least for a night, looked forward. Light replaced incense. Projection replaced stained glass. It may have been the best use of a cathedral I have ever seen.

A contrarian may argue that turning sacred architecture into a light show is a little tacky. Fair. But I found it strangely moving. Maybe reverence does not always need to whisper. Sometimes it can use lasers.

On Monday, March 30, I took a guided tour of downtown São Paulo before heading back to GRU for my flight home. The tour showed me another side of the city: the cathedral square, Japanese sector, surveillance systems, police presence, fruit markets, street art, and the complicated social arrangements that make the city function. São Paulo is multicultural in a way that feels lived rather than advertised, with deep Japanese, Italian, German, Portuguese, African, and Indigenous influences braided into the place.

It is also a city of contradictions. Beautiful and rough. Sophisticated and improvised. Global and local. Wealthy and poor. Orderly in places, chaotic in others. It has magnificent food, serious institutions, intense traffic, visible poverty, strong civic pride, and fruit displays that look like stained glass made edible.

Near the end of the tour, I visited an artists’ street covered in murals—birds, eyes, color, geometry, imagination spilling over walls. That felt like the right visual ending: Brazil as an argument against beige.

At the airport, waiting for my flight, I had dinner in the American Airlines lounge and met an amazing woman, named Rosanna , a blind CEO who had once been a pilot when she ran her company. Her presence commanded confidence and authority.  She now lives in San Diego. We shared caldo verde, a Portuguese-style green soup that I definitely need to try again.

That conversation reset my perspective. After a week of aircraft, institutions, professional networks, and carefully scheduled rides, I found myself sitting with someone whose life had taken turns I could barely imagine, yet whose presence was confident, capable, and generous. Travel does that when it is at its best. It rearranges your assumptions.

Looking back, the Brazil trip was professionally valuable. SFTE strengthened relationships with IPEV, EFEV, Sirius, and Embraer. We identified real opportunities for collaboration, virtual participation, training partnerships, and broader use of recommended practices. Brazil’s flight test community is highly capable, collaborative, and ready to connect more deeply with the global community.

But that is the official version.

The personal version is this: I went to Brazil expecting meetings, presentations, and aerospace facilities. I found those. But I also found coconut water in a park, cachaça on a porch, a cathedral dressed in lasers, a symphony viewed from behind the orchestra, giant ant mounds, Amazon fish, street art, tough steak, generous hosts, and the deep human pleasure of being welcomed by people who did not have to do so.

I learned that Brazilians often address people by first name with “Dr.” or “Sr.” in front—Dr. Nelson, for example—which felt informal and respectful at the same time. I learned that Brazilian Portuguese looks enough like Spanish or Italian to fool you, then sounds different enough to humble you. I learned that “Obrigado” is a useful word, but insufficient for the amount of gratitude I felt.  I learned that Brazil is a BIG country, as big as the continental U.S. but with much less bravado.  They don't need to flex their muscle.  They have what they need and have an attitude that that is enough...

And I learned, once again, that being a sojourner is not about collecting places. It is about being changed by the people who meet you there.  

Brazil did that.

Obrigado.