I had a new bank card sent (by my bank) using DHL - it arrived in Sao Paulo then got held up. I contacted them and there was a minor problem with the CEP, which I corrected over the phone, so it set off again. Apparently DHL do not deliver to my city, so they handed it over to the Correios. It got to a city 140 kms from me (which is the feeder postal office for my area), then got sent 500kms south, and started yo-yoing back and forth between the two cities! I contacted Correios and they basically wouldn't talk to me about it, and said my bank (in the UK) had to deal with it. Two months later the bank gave up and sent another by normal mail and it arrived in 2 weeks!
I also ordered some things online and paid for UPS delivery (expensive!), and that too fell foul of the "we do not deliver to your city", so Correios again took over, and I got it in 4 weeks. I had to pay duty (still cheaper than buying here) and had to collect it in person - "too big for the delivery bike"! So much for paying for Express door-to-door delivery!

Forget about sending anything between October to the end of Carnaval. Most likely it will turn up 3-4 months later or never. Either way, you would have forgotten about it already.