Fleeing the Country: Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay

To resolve my visa problem, a few days before Christmas, as detailed below, I left the country. I found that the cheapest flight was to my beloved Buenos Aires, through Montevideo. Flights to Montevideo itself were more expensive, and Juan wasn't going to be there anyway.

(The formulation "my beloved Buenos Aires" is accurate and descriptive, but it's also a reference to "Mi Buenos Aires querido," a tango song made famous by Carlos Gardel.)

Some assorted thoughts from the trip:

The Uruguayan airline Pluna deserves my thanks for its low prices, especially for last-minute flights. However, I have two gripes. First, the displays and the announcements for flights to or from the largest city in Latin America refer to "San Pablo." I understand that this is a direct-to-Spanish translation of São Paulo. For the sake of consistency, however, one should then call my present home "Río de Enero." See how odd that sounds? The airline also flies to a city that might be called "Puerto Alegre," but they don't call it that. Be consistent! Second, they charged for everything, down to the water in-flight (US$2 for a 500 ml bottle). I wouldn't mind this, except that neither the Carrasco Airport outside Montevideo (pictured below; about the size of the Manchester, NH or Grand Rapids, MI airports), nor Aeroparque Jorge Newberry in Buenos Aires has a single drinking fountain. I am an entitled American (and a cheap bastard)! I demand free drinking water!





It must be noted that Rio de Janeiro does have drinking fountains in both its airports. Because I was delayed by my good friends at the Federal Police, I wasn't able to fill my bottle before the flight.

To its credit, however, Buenos Aires has something that is nearly impossible to find in Rio de Janeiro: peanut butter!



I once had the following conversation with the Secretary of Planning for the State of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Ruy Barbosa:

Him: "I'm traveling to the United States next week; can I bring you back anything?"
Me: "Well, my girlfriend's coming soon and bringing me some things. Um... do you know what peanut butter (in my best approximation, manteiga de amendoim) is?"
Him: "No, what is it? Is it good?"
Me: (explains peanut butter)

Note that the peanut butter is right above the dulce de leche. I was in a Carrefour in Buenos Aires to buy bottled water. I thought to buy dulce de leche for Bethany, but didn't know if my credit card would work. I also figured that I could come back later for the dulce de leche. When I passed the supermarket again, it was closed.

So I took the local bus (only 1 peso, 20 cents, inserted into a cool rotating meter onboard the bus) to Retiro station into town from the airport, and passed along the Costanera Norte. Once upon a time, seven years ago, I went running and got lost near the Aeroparque. Passing the sights now, I considered that the run must have been pretty long, and I wondered why the large industrial blocks around the Aeroparque didn't dissuade me and make me turn around.

I had arrived after 9 PM, and the city was dark. Most of my photos didn't turn out. I can assure you that little has changed; the grand train station still sits next to the seedier-but-crowded bus station at Retiro. I set out to check the city against my memories.

I was first struck by how wide the boulevards in Buenos Aires are. Rio de Janeiro, the third-largest city in South America after Bs. As., has nothing approximating these wide streets. I don't even count Avenida 9 de Julio; I already knew how wide that was. (It requires two stop light cycles to cross.)




Buenos Aires strikes me as much more of a urban place, much more of a city. Rio de Janeiro is a marvel, and is also a city, but at most points you can look up at green hills or out onto crystal water, and you feel less enclosed by the urban edifice. By contrast, while in Buenos Aires, you never forget that you're in the biggest city in the country, an urban construction.

I walked up Avenida Santa Fé, a street I knew well. The Burger King was still there, as was the 24-hour cafe I was planning to use as an after-hours spot. I remembered the cafe - La Madeleine - from a particularly late night in which Karim, Pedro and I left Buenos Aires News (a disco now called something else) at about 5:30 AM, and stopped to eat breakfast, despite my grumpy protests. While I put my head down on the table and generally acted sourly, they ordered breakfast, made fun of me for the benefit of the waitress, and finally got up to go home at 8 AM.

Santa Fé seemed to have a lot more pizza and Italian places than I remembered. I was in search of a steakhouse (parilla), though I soon began to feel that I wanted to eat everything the city had to offer. The Italian food is very good, as are the various Argentine selections. The gelato is what I'd imagine Italian gelato tastes like, and on a muggy night there was a line at the most popular chain in town:



Given my previous experiences, of course I ended up at a mall, specifically at Alto Palermo, the mall closest to our dorm in the summer of 2002. Alto Palermo now has a Benihana, or, in the words of Michael Scott, "an Asian Hooters." This makes Buenos Aires even classier than Scranton, which in fact doesn't have a Benihana. I also noted that the new marketing slogan for Alto Palermo is "Pasión de la mujer." Sexist? Please! This is Argentina! There are far more sexist things in this country!



I ventured up Avenida Coronel Díaz to find the old dorm and see the neighborhood. The pizza chain Ugi's has been replaced by another pizzaria. The corner cafe still has a banner that reads "Quilmes - El sabor del encuentro." I couldn't find the local empanada shop that was on the way to the gym, but I didn't look very thoroughly. I was getting hungry. For the record, however, as I've told people, I used to live at the corner of Paraguay and Coronel Díaz. It exists.



I did eventually find a parilla that had filet mignon (bife de lomo) for about fifty pesos. I'd recommend this restaurant; it has a salad bar that comes free with dinner! Now, this is innovative for two reasons. First, orders at Argentine restaurants take anywhere from forty to ninety minutes to arrive. Although I could (and did) chew on the provided rolls and breadsticks, that becomes dull. Second, most Argentines' concept of a salad doesn't go beyond iceberg lettuce, chopped onions, and tomatoes (unless you add globs of mayonnaise to disguise the vegetables). This salad bar had much more variety. The place is Aires Criollos, at Av. Santa Fe, 1773 in Barrio Norte.

And the steak! Oh the steak! I took one bite and all the memories came flooding back. I love Brazilians, and I love Brazil, but nothing can dim my passion for Argentine steak. The steak was delicious, the house red wine was delicious, and the combination of the two made me sing out the following response to the waiter who asked how my meal was (in broken Portuguese/Spanish): "Lad (rapáz), I came all the way here from Rio de Janeiro just to eat Argentine steak, and it was all worth it."

After dinner, I went back to La Madeleine - which advertises with a neon "24 Horas" sign out front - and found the awful news posted on a flyer on the door: "closed for cleaning and fumigation until 6 AM." It was roughly 12:30 AM.

I instead found another cafe, and sat down to write. I ordered an espresso and a medialuna - a sweet croissant - according to plan. In the thrall of steak memories, good coffee, and another medialuna, I wrote for two hours or so.

The cafe closed at 3 AM, and I was forced onto the street. It was then that I concluded that my romantic vision of Buenos Aires as an all-night city was a little off. Santa Fé was closed except for a few pharmacies, and the street was quiet except for the trash-pickers. I walked a few blocks in search of a place to sit and snack, but without luck.

In defense of Buenos Aires, it was early Tuesday morning. All reasonable people should have been asleep, or at least at home.

I took a taxi back to the bus terminal, and a bus back to the Aeroparque. I tried sleeping on some seats and couches, but was awoken twice and shooed away by employees opening up restaurants in the food court at 5 and 5:30 AM.

In the early light at Aeroparque, I satisfied my interests in politics and travel at the same time. I snapped a photo of the Argentine President's official plane. As the United States gives their president's plane the codename "Air Force One," so Argentina gives theirs the name "Tango One." (You can see T-01 on the tail. "Tango Three," a smaller plane, was also parked there. News sources I found later confirmed that Christina Kirchner was in Buenos Aires.)



My flight took me back to Montevideo, where I used my last Argentine pesos to buy Bethany an alfajor, and gave the change to flight attendants collecting for a charity for premature Uruguayan infants. In the terminal lounge in Montevideo, I sat reading La República (depicted below, with a headline about the outgoing President's Lula-like high approval ratings) when I was approached by a woman with a clipboard. She asked me if I had a moment, and I did. She then asked me whether I had "Pluripass."

"Have what?"
"Oh, are you Uruguayan?"
"No, sorry, American."
"Oh, excuse me. Sorry to bother you."

It's okay. I'm still very flattered to be mistaken for a local.



I'm content being (legally) in Brazil for now. As I've known all along, Buenos Aires and Montevideo warrant future return visits.

Kafka in Brazil

I've now figured out that the most painful, terrible moment in the life of a prisoner is not when he or she has heard the sentence. The worst moment is the one right before the verdict is read. In that moment, one faces either purgatory or freedom, without knowing either possibility for certain. It's agonizing.

So after some mix-ups with Orbitz, I made a reservation to go to Buenos Aires last night, to leave the country, stop the clock on my expired visa, and restart the process.

The story of Montevideo and Buenos Aires can be told next. For now, I'll detail experiences with the Federal Police.

Yesterday, I arrived at the migration control at about 2:45 PM for a 3:30 PM flight. I was bound for Buenos Aires by way of Montevideo, flying the Uruguayan state carrier, Pluna. This wasn't ideal timing, but I hadn't been sufficiently organized to get out the door after my morning interview.

I explained to the official that I was there on an expired visa, I was leaving the country, and I had to pay a fine. She went to get a supervisor. The supervisor asked me why I overstayed my visa. I explained. She frowned, and asked what I thought was going to happen. I explained that I had gone to the Federal Police (in the adjacent terminal) and they had explained that I had to pay a fine. She frowned again, and walked away. A second supervisor appeared in a minute, and ushered me to a chair outside an office.

The time passed, and my mind started to wander over the idea that maybe I'd be hauled off in handcuffs, maybe I wouldn't be allowed back in, maybe I'd miss my flight.

At about 3:10, I started to pace outside the office. Other cases, probably simpler ones, had been whisked in and out of the office, as I sat there looking pitiful and worried. Through the window, I could see the second supervisor chatting with two agents, occasionally laughing.

At 3:20, I stopped the first supervisor and pleaded with her that my plane was leaving in ten minutes. She said, "Um minutinho."

"Um minutinho" sometimes drives me up the wall. It means "one small minute," but it's never one minute. It can be up to half an hour.

Five minutes later, I knocked on the door to plead with the second supervisor. He assured me that "it's coming up." He didn't explain what "it" was.

In the end, I was only to be fined, and my future left up to agents upon re-entry.

So at 3:31 PM, I signed the paper acknowledging my guilt and my willingness to pay (or appeal) the fine. I rushed to get an exit stamp, and into the waiting company of Pluna airlines staff, who brought me, the last passenger, onto the plane. I would pay the fine the next time I entered Brazil.

===

Fast forward to this afternoon, after 8 hours of flights, little sleep, little water or food, and endless confusion over how exactly one speaks Spanish. (I think I used to speak it.)

I arrived at immigrations and confessed that I needed to pay a fine. Again, the officer took my passport to a supervisor, who came out and invited me to sit in a chair outside another office.

As I waited, the rest of the plane filed through passport control, and the room emptied. A representative of Pluna arrived, and sat across the room. After a few moments of awkward silence, I noted aloud that I spoke Portuguese and understood the rules, and that I would be fine and she could go.

She went to speak with the supervisor, and returned.

"No, he's trying to figure out whether you can disembark in Brazil, or whether you have to return."

Oh, that familiar sense of sinking, and that familiar adrenalin rush returned.

"Have to return?" My thoughts immediately went to the astronomical costs of going back to the US instantly, and the concern that I didn't even have my computer or a toothbrush, let alone a change of clothes.

The supervisor emerged.

"We've determined that you have to go back. Your visa has ended."

"But ... it says multiple entries, valid for one year!" I'm sure I said a lot more than that. I was stammering, trying to maintain composure. I hope it was respectable Portuguese. I was exhausted, with a racing heart.

He flipped through the pages. "Oh, so it does. My mistake." With that, he returned to the office.

The airline representative and I chatted for a bit, and I explained what I was doing in Brazil and why I was in this spot.

The supervisor returned about ten minutes later. "We've determined that you can't stay in Brazil, for another reason. You've already spent 180 days here."

"But I've only been here since August!"

"Well, you came here on a tourist visa in April, June, and August."

"No, I was here as a tourist in April and May, and I've been on a temporary [work] visa only since August! I was in the United States for all of June." My mind was frantically trying to think of evidence I had, besides a long list of potential witnesses, to show my presence in the US for June.

He flipped through the passport, and said, "Oh, I thought I saw extra stamps." He returned to the office.

About half an hour passed. Limbo is miserable. I need to write to the airline and praise the employee for her kind words and for being a good listener. I may have been babbling. It was nice to have someone there, and it may have prevented me from going crazy with my own thoughts and imagination.

It later turned out that she was there, and she kept getting walkie-talkie messages because they were holding the plane - the same 3:30 PM flight - just in case they had to send me back to Montevideo.

Finally, the same supervisor emerged and said that, if I paid the fine, I could stay. The Pluna representative and I walked down the stairs through customs, paid the fine, and returned. Another Federal Police agent emerged, and spent a good half hour consulting the supervisor, entering my information into the computer, and repeating the process.

In the end, I'm now here on my tourist visa. Apparently, and somewhat to my relief, they've been having similar problems with Consulates, particularly in the US, not adjusting to the new visa system and only granting 90 day stays. For now, the Federal Police doesn't care if I conduct interviews or research; no one's going to stop me. In two months, when time comes for renewal, I need to go to Itamaraty (which is square two in this madcap game, I believe; square one is the Federal Police's foreigners' section at the Rio airport) and ask them to change the visa term for the temporary work visa. The Federal Police will be in contact with the US Consulates to clarify their directives.


===

Oh, and there's a punchline.

So after two hours this afternoon with the Federal Police, I said goodbye to the Pluna employee, and went downstairs to turn in my customs form and declare nothing. I had only my backpack, filled with books and now empty of a wad of ~R$400 in bills. I handed my slip to the agent, who asked, "Where's your luggage?" I replied that I only had what was on my back.

He asked me to follow him, and went to see a supervisor. The supervisor emerged and asked me why I didn't have any luggage.

I was being interrogated to see if I might be a drug or child trafficker.

I think I told such a ludicrous and bad potential cover story (expired visa, dinner, no hotel, and a night of wandering around Buenos Aires before crashing at the airport) that he let me go without further questions.

View out my office window

NOTE: This post was written days ago, and never published. It is currently sunny, humid, and hot in Rio.***************


It is currently raining. Spring brought a cycle of sunny days, increasing clouds and humidity, rainy day, sunny day, increasing clouds and humidity, rainy day, and so on.

However, the above shots were taken out my living room/office window on a sunny day. This view makes being back home in Rio a little more special, and makes me feel a little emotional over my impending move to Salvador. The views from Salvador are fantastic, too, but they're not iconic. (The two potentially iconic views of Salvador that come to mind are of the Elevador Lacerda and the Farol (Lighthouse) da Barra. Many Brazilians might recognize these - the Farol is often in Petrobras's overly-patriotic ads - but foreigners would have difficulty.)

The spring of road trips that began September 20th in Porto Alegre has come to an end. I'll be here in Rio de Janeiro (or at least in the state) through New Year's, continuing to set up interviews and trying to put everything I've collected and considered in order.

Some loose thoughts from the travels:

1. Curitiba did turn out to be a very enjoyable city, for two main reasons: the buses do go everywhere, and the food is cheap. The bus operates as a metro would: you enter a tube and wait for your bus to arrive. At other tubes, you can connect to other lines (which are announced while the bus is en route) and eventually reach your destination. One can get all the way across Curitiba on a single fare of R$2.20, much as one can go anywhere in New York City for whatever the subway toll now is. They call it "metro on the surface," and had once proposed it for Rio de Janeiro. (Rio has a long, long list of transportation problems, all of which will be magically solved by the Transit Fairy before the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. It's mentioned in the bids.) In addition, I found a buffet for R$5.40 that included a drink (Tang) and dessert (pudding) for lunch. If I stuffed myself at lunch (and I did), I could buy dinner at the grocery store for R$5.00. Success! I ate like this multiple days in a row.

2. The governor of the Federal District (read: Brasilia) has been caught in a scheme to pay off legislators, and the opposition is demanding his ouster. Multiple people were shot or killed in celebrations of Flamengo's win here in Rio, and a college student shot in a robbery remains in intensive care. Two police assigned to guard the president of the state water company, who I'm interviewing next week, were shot and killed a few weeks ago. A study today found that only 40% of anti-corruption lawsuits against public officials go unresolved, and others are resolved with "laughable fines" (from Globo).

I can't figure out whether the Brazilian media wants us to be genuinely shocked and appalled at every scandal and crime, or whether I'm allowed to take in this string of crimes as a low background buzz. I don't know how most Brazilians consume the news; it would be an interesting psychology question. There are certainly protests against individual outrages, but these individual acts are not often sustained and used to enact change. (One might say the same thing of the contemporary United States, with exceptions such as Sarbanes-Oxley, campaign finance reform, three-strikes, etc.) For example, José Sarney and Renan Calheiros are still in the Senate, still living it up. The war in Rio continues, and homicide is still the leading cause of death for males aged fifteen to twenty-four. The term "scandal fatigue," invented by silly pundits in silly Washington, D.C., comes to mind - it's difficult to become outraged every night while watching Jornal Nacional. It would be exhausting.

Sometime soon, I'll lay out my pop-sociology metaphor of how Brazil is like Disneyland. I've now been to four of the five regions, with just the North (read: the Amazon) remaining.

3. I can now go back to an accent that's turning more carioca with each day. On the phone, when giving out my phone number, I had to monitor and cautiously treat the way I said "83." It gave away my time in Rio.

Chris and I watched the new Almodóvar film last night at the nearby Odeon, and we both had to rely on the Portuguese subtitles. That Madrileño accent is a bit difficult, and whatever Spanish I once knew lies very dormant in another part of my brain. Spanish words only emerge at inappropriate times when I'm searching for or trying out a word in Portuguese.

4. Bethany comes back in fewer than three weeks, and she'll be here for New Year's Eve. Hooray! I hope she brings peanut butter. I think of Jeffery Tambor when I eat the Trader Joe's crunchy peanut butter she brought me: "I am having a love affair with this ice cream sandwich."

Fugitive from the law

Oh dear.

If the next post comes from the United States, here's the explanation.

I learned today that I've overstayed my visa by a month. Long ago, when I applied for a year-long visa from the SF Consulate, I received an unusual stamp that said "Duration of Stay: 90 Days" and "Validity: 1 Year." I pointed out to the US Consulate in San Francisco that I needed a year-long visa, as specified on my form; they assured me with a wave of the hand that it was fine. I left.

Upon arriving in Brazil, after registering, I was given a stamp which reads "Permanencia: 13/11/09." I was also given a protocolo, a precursor to an ID card that read "180 Dias." I assumed that my visa was valid for 180 days, at which point I'd ask to extend it.

I recently lost my protocolo, the little slip of paper, and went back to the Federal Police to ask for a new one. The official at the desk took a look at my passport and said, "This is expired. You have to leave [Brazil] now, and pay a fine." I was shellshocked, and asked for a clarification.

It turns out that the visa only is valid for a stay of 90 days; the protocolo itself is not a visa, but is valid for identification purposes only for 180 days. The assurances at the SF Consulate were wrong, and I was wrong not to try and correct them.

I pointed out that I had applied for a year-long visa in San Francisco, and showed him the original paperwork. He went behind his desk, consulted with someone else for a few minutes, and returned to say that my other option was to go to Itamaraty, the Ministry of External Affairs, to plead with them to change the visa.

So I stopped by Itamaraty, which has perhaps the most laughable business hours in the entire Brazilian bureaucracy: 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM, weekdays. They were closed when I arrived.

I'll go back tomorrow; I'm at their mercy. I don't know what I need or what it costs, but each day in Brazil (since 13 November) is now costing me an additional R$9.90.

Sigh. In the words of my brother Valmore Henrique, "ah, meu povo, me mata, me mata" ["oh, my people, you kill me, you kill me"].



For no particular reason, here's a photo of a deer defecating at the Federal University of Mato Grosso's zoo.

Well, shoot

The 47th Travessia Mar Grande-Salvador, to be held in January in Bahia, is by invitation only. The list is here.

I can't qualify as a write-in entry because I only swam one event (an 8K on July 4th) in 2009, and it wasn't officially sanctioned.

Oh well.