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On a trip near the southern border of Brasil, about 12 hours away from where I had been living for a couple of months, I decided to make a jaunt down to Uruguay and Argentina. When I entered Brasil via Rio de Janeiro in February I was given some kind of immigration form, a little white piece of paper. When I left Garopaba for Porto Alegre, I wasn't planning on leaving the country so I didn't occur to me to make sure I had everything I'd need. Naturally I need this form, the Policia Federal officer was a real asshole about it too. He said I could continue on to Chui to spend the night and then head back to Garopaba in the morning, and that if I tried to keep going into Uruguay he would see my name on the immigration list and then (at this point he makes finger cutting.

So I get to Chui which is this weird town with the border running right down the middle of the main avenue. On one side is Uruguay and the other side is Brasil. Both sides are crappy. There's trash everywhere and dilapidated buildings. I wander around in the dark eventually finding a hotel on the Brasilian side for R$18 a night and check into a sad little room.

In the morning I wake early and go to the bus station to get a ticket back to Porto Alegre and meet frustration #2 (try to keep count). The man there refuses to sell me a ticket out of Chui BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE THAT FUCKING PIECE OF PAPER. I was starting to feel like I was in a Jim Jarmusch movie as I walked out of the bus station and wandered around trying to figure out where the Policia Federal building was. Early morning wandering around deserted streets in this Tex-Mexish border town with piles of trash blowing by like tumbleweeds. Soundtrack: Cowboy by The Sugarcubes.

I find a taxi and the guy drives me to the immigration station just outside of town. I'm able to explain my situation to both him and the officer there well enough in Portuguese, but I can't understand what they're trying to tell me. Eventually it comes out that I can pay a fine of R$165 (about US$65) and then I'm golden, I can even go on to Montevideo. I can't just hand him the cash though (so much for the bribery stereotypes of Latin America), there's some complicated procedure involving going to some website and filling out a form, then going to a bank and paying them the money, then going back to the immigration station with a receipt. I guess. It's not really all that clear. We spent a long time trying to make me understand all this, eventually a traveler came through who spoke enough English to explain the above to me, although he was also unclear on exactly what was entailed.

So great. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, today is Sunday and the banks are closed. That damn christian mythology again. So I have at least another 24 hours in this purgatory which seems to be leaning to the hellish side. The taxi driver takes me back into town and shows me the cybercafe, which is closed of course, and then takes me to the hotel. I was planning on giving him a healthy tip since he spent time inside the Policia Federal station trying to help out, but as he was running off the meter he named his own price when I left and made sure it included some extra. No biggie though, it was about what I was planning on giving him anyhow.

I spend the day drinking beer, watching Brasil beat Peru on TV, and wandering around town. There was plenty of siesta time thrown in there too, which is probably about the best way to pass the time here. The town is mostly just trash blowing in the wind and outlet-factory-ish shopping. I walked for a bit out of town to the east hoping I'd get to a beach quickly, but gave up after I realized I could see the tops of trees way off in the distance. There's a sad little kiddie park on the Uruguayan side, a lot of beat up looking dogs and rusted out cars puttering up and down the main avenue. It gets old fast.

Eventually as the sun is going down I find an open Internet cafe on the Uruguayan side, which is where I am right now. Of course the first thing I try to do is type in the URL printed on the document they gave me at the Policia Federal station. Of course it doesn't work. I fiddle around a bit and manage to get a form to come up which looks like it is probably the right one, however it has several fields to fill in that I cannot, such as CPF/CNPJ # which is like the Social Security number for Brasilians. GREAT. FIGURES.

I realized that some of those weird codes that were required fields were also in the address my landlord had given me for the Internet company on the first floor of the building I live in back in Garopaba. I have no idea what they mean, and suspect that they have something to do with taxes or other official identifiers, but I copied in all the fields from the address and hit the submit button. This gave me a completed form with some bar code data on it. I printed it out and hoped for the best.

As far as I knew, all I had to do now was go to Banco do Brasil in the morning and give them this form along with some cash and they would give me something for the Policia Federal. Then assuming I could figure out where the bus station was on the Uruguayan side of the border I could get my ass on to Montevideo. So feeling a little celebratory I wandered out of the Internet cafe and smack into some sort of political/music rally. The was a sidewalk cafe next to the rally stage so I sat down there and enjoyed a truly delicious fried fish in shrimp sauce dinner along with a number of beers.

I felt much better with the printed form in my pocket and some good food & alcohol in my gut, so I enjoyed this precious hour or two in Chuy. Not enough to forgive the sorry excuse for a town, but enough to stop bitching for the evening. I didn't know what the speakers were saying, but some of them were such great orators I wanted to clap and cheer along with the crowd. The live music afterwords wasn't bad either, a mix of acoustic and electric Uruguayan rock.

In the morning I showed up at Banco do Brasil and managed to pay my fine and get the coveted receipts. Next step was another taxi to the Policia Federal station (this time I inquired about the cost first, it was 4 times less than last time, R$5). The cop at the desk there wasn't too happy that I didn't follow the directions (which I couldn't read of course) to photocopy the receipt first but after making me sweat a little he went in the back and made a copy for me and made sure I understood that I needed to keep a hold of this if I didn't want more problems. Yes sir. I got out of there as soon as I could, before he changed his mind or something, and had the taxi driver take me to the bus station on the Uruguayan side of town. The ticket was purchased with no problem and soon enough I was on my way! Never to return, I hope.

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uruguay , stranded , brazil , brasil , immigration , passport troubles