GOL Airlines

We navigated our way through Sao Paulo airport to the GOL Airlines counter to check in for our flight to Manaus. We (i.e. the company coffers) had to pay a bit more for excess luggage since the weight allowance for the flight from Japan was much more than the 23kg limit on GOL flights. I was surprised to see the counter attendant have to run off to another part of the airport to get change for the money I gave her. It took her nearly 10 minutes, during which the people behind me grew increasingly impatient, although I get the feeling that this is not entirely uncommon here.Well, eventually we made it to Gate 17, which was actually divided into 3 sections--A, B & C--and people were lined up to board shuttle buses to take them out to the tarmac and to their respective airplanes. As we gave the attendant our boarding tickets, which looked like a printed receipt you'd get from a grocery store, I realized that there was no ticket stub. This would cause big problems for recordkeeping/bookkeeping, so I stopped and tried to negotiate with the guy to get the receipts back. He was nice, but had to continue doing his job so he immediately called over a girl with a walkie-talkie to hear me out. After almost 5 minutes of speaking with her in broken English (yes, a very useful language to know when you're overseas!), she wrote me a note to give to the GOL counter in Manaus, where they would issue me another receipt.
On the flight to Manaus, we were served juice, crackers and a little chocolate muffin, which I scarfed down--realizing this would be lunch--and then immediately fell asleep. A few hours later we landed, I picked up my luggage and dashed out to the GOL counter.
While waiting in line, a guy, Armando, from our counterpart agency here in Manaus found us and waited with me. He was a nice guy and we chatted about the weather (hot and humid), sports (I'm American and know nothing about FIFA), work (yes, we'd like to stop at the office today), not to mention why we were waiting in line (needed a receipt). After about 10 minutes, it was our turn at the counter and the woman printed up a receipt for us immediately after a few words of explanation. Armando apologized for this unfortunate first experience in Manaus, but I told him, "Hey, it gave us an extra 10 minutes to chat, didn't it?" Below, on the way out of the airport, a picture of the line we had waited in.