(Santiago, Chile)
Lonely Planet say you can do it. LAN Chile left me here specifically to do it, so let’s play: “GET YOUR BRAZILIAN VISA IN JUST THREE HOURS”
RULES: Stuffed if I know, beyond being REALLY obsequious to bureaucrats strainght out of Fascist Europe Finishing School.
WARNING: Small pieces may cause choking.
Now to play:
It’s 9am on your first business in Santiago. Your airport transfer is booked for 12.30.
GO!
Walk from your seedy hotel (one armed guard) past the Department of Educacion (Five armed guards and one mangy dog) and past the Ferretaria (Closed. What is it?) and head to pedestrian precinct where the photo shops cluster.
Aim: Get a passport photo by 10am.
The Kodak Expresses (those open before 10.30) play an interesting game of referring you from one to another< NONE of whom do passport photos.
Give up on this game and plunge into the arcades where “US VISA” signs can be seen in te murk. Photos get done (MOST unattractive!), using up rather a lot of the spare Chilean change. This is a mistake.
Walk back past the Ferretaria (still closed) and businesses such as “Optic Leper” to Avenue Bernard O’Higgins and find the pink and yellow confection which is the Brasilian Embassy.
At 10.05, two armed guards (no mangy dog) question your presence. They understand “visa” and proceed to lock you out onto the street.
At 10.10 a short and portly, harassed-looking official in a shiny black suit appears, waving a slip of paper with the address and phone number of the Brasilian CONSULATE. It’s half way across the inner city.
Traipse back past the Ferretaria (still closed) and the “Nuts 4 Bolts” stand, then a further 6 city blocks. Find the building. Find the 15th floor. Exit lift to be confronted by one unlabelled door with a small peephole. Press doorbell. Loud bleeping sound emits. Door is opened by Mini-Lurch who does the security screening and waving of the electric wand before handing you on to an alter-ego. He thumbs the passport dubiously, squints at the very lovely (and still warm) passport photo, then hands you on to another official lurking behind a low, dark counter. He is the image of the portrait of the Brasilian President (hanging on the back wall to his right) only jowlier, and grumpier. It is now 10.30 and the end appears in sight.
But not quite.
Here is the application form and you need photocopies of your passport photo page and your yellow fever certificate and your air ticket and here is a bank draft for the IBC bank which is just around the corner and all of this is needed before we even look at issuing a visa.
Around the corner. Find the bank. It’s only auto tellers on the street. Find a security guard (no mangy dog) who directs you to the depths of the basement. Queue. Arrive at counter. Find this is the only bank in South America which does not recognise dollars or visa. Need money changer. Fast.
In South America there are always blokes in waistcoats of varying degrees of cleanliness and probity offering to change money (or to clean shoes). Not today. Not for 3 blocks. Then back to the bank. Teller cracks a dark smile as 24,000 pesos change hands. Photocopy man upstairs greets with an even broader smile. Don’t even need to ask” he’s seen it all before. Fill out form with borrowed pen while copies get done. Harge back past “Nuts 4 Bolts” and up 15 floors to the mystery door. This time it does not open. It seems only one victim at a time is allowed past Mini-Lurch’s special screening and then to the dark, low counter beyond. DHL courier comes out. You go in: get Lurched, Greeted and Checked then handed on to the Jowly One.
Jowly thumbs distastefully through the documentation, inserts paperclip through copies of the passport. Jowls part to force an encouraging smile” “Gracias Senor, that will be ready for you in two days.”
Long pause.
Consider implications of this most encouraging statement.
At this point you may consider a friendly, polite but firm explanation of the circumstances, including your postponed flight this afternoon. You try, in your best “speaking to uniformed officialdom” respectful voice.
The jowls settle, cocker spaniel-like, and the body heaves off the low chair to consult with an even more stooped and jowled official behind the friendly smoked-glass screen. (Images of stooped Dickensian clerks on small stools with quill pens dipped into musty ink wells may come to mind. Dismiss them immediately).
The Jowls return: “for you, senor, we can have the visa ready at 10.30 mahana, tomorrow. Special Deal.
At this point you pause (briefly) again.
This is the best option on offer.
Accept.
Smile gratefully. Thank even more obsequiously. Clutch the annotated receipt. The back out through Lurch’s door, contemplating an afternoon of adjusted airline tickets and again rearranging all of your bookings in Rio.
And on the way back to the hotel to start the afternoon’s fun and games you again pass the Ferretaria (it’s a place where blokes buy tools) and “Nuts for Nuts: Slow Roasted”… and contemplate just how you might use the the products of one to achieve the other… on certain sensitive parts of your travel agent when you return home.