Brigadeiro e Outras Aventuras em São Paulo: How To Get A Brazilian Visa

Yesterday I got back from my Foz/Paraguay Trip (#2). Hang on, I can hear you saying, didn't you already blog about this, Shiva? Well, yes, I went there about 6 weeks ago, and now I've just gone back to get a tourist visa, as my student visa was going to expire. On Sunday we went on a 16 hour bus trip to Foz do Iguaçu. When we arrived at 8am, we hopped straight on a bus to Paraguay. At this point it was already well above 30 °C. A girl even fainted in the seat behind me on that bus ride. We crossed over into Paraguay within an hour (normally it takes about 20, 30 minutes - it was peak hour), by just passing over a river. On both ends of the bridge there are customs offices but...nobody (really, nobody) stops at them.

We made it to the consulate office in Ciudad del Este a few minutes walk later. I showed the lady my documents. She said, "oh, where is the stamp to say that you left Brazil?" Oh, fuck. Seriously? I had totally forgotten about that. Isn't the fact that I am here in Paraguay proof that I left Brazil? "Go back to Brazil and pretend you are entering for the first time", she told us.

We walked about 30 minutes back over the bridge to Brazil, had breakfast next to the bridge, and walked back. I entered into the Federal Police's office (naturally, Guillaume and I were the only two people in there) and asked for an exit stamp. Guillaume asked the employee if it was usually this quiet. Hoje está tranquilo, mas normalmente tem bastante gente, she responded, "Today it's quiet, but normally there are quite a lot of people". We left with an exit stamp in our passports, wondering if by bastante gente she meant two, three, or possibly four more people. We walked across the bridge to Paraguay. While walking, Guillaume mentioned that the consulate in Bolivia had written back to him after he made some enquiries about my visa application, saying that in order to come to Bolivia to get a visa from them I would have to first get a visa to enter Bolivia. "Imagine that!" I chortled. Arriving at the end of the bridge, Guillaume grabbed me to go into the Paraguay customs office. I went and asked for an entry stamp. The man pointed to me and said (in Spanish, of course - on this whole trip we spoke Portuguese at people and they spoke Spanish at us), "She needs a visa". F**k. Up until this point I had thought that my temporary visa for Brazil gave me the rights to enter countries in the Mercosul area just like Brazilians had. For some reason I had just assumed it was like the Schengen Agreement. And I had been advised that (by a tour guide) about 6 weeks earlier when I crossed the border into Paraguay from Foz. "You can go to the Paraguayan consulate in Foz do Iguaçu, or you can pay me $20", he suggested. (Paraguay uses US dollars because their currency is shit.) "You can get me a visa for $20?" I asked, not understanding that he had been asking me to bribe him. "No", he said. "Let's just walk out", I said to Guillaume, and we simply walked out into Paraguay.

Walking from there to the Embassy we debated how to get around the problem of me having no entry stamp to Paraguay. When we arrived, the lady first approvingly looked at my exit stamp, then asked, confused, "But where is the entry stamp?" "They didn't give me one", I shrugged, "They said I didn't need it with my visa...I don't know why..." She looked confused but then took my documents for processing. Perhaps she was dumb, or perhaps she was just being nice because when we had first arrived at the embassy I had explained my sob story about how we were running on limited time and had had just enough time to come there with our holidays from Carnaval. Anyway, the important thing was that I had an exit stamp from Brazil. Basically, the Brazilian consulate in Paraguay gave me a visa even though I was illegally in Paraguay. Hah.

They told us to come back the next day, so we went and found a hostel on the Brazilian side. Foz do Iguaçu is motherf***ing hot, so made sure it was one with A/C. We went to the waterfalls and went to a rodízio de churrasco for dinner. Rodízio is a (as far as I know) uniquely Brazilian style of dining. It is like a buffet where the waiters come to you to offer food. There is a salad buffet in one area of the restaurant, but the 'main' is served to you by waiters who walk up to your table and announce "(insert-name-of-meat-here)!", to which you say "Yes, please!", or "No, thanks", and they put it onto your plate. So far, I know of rodízios of churrasco (barbecue, meat), pizza, and sushi here in Brazil. This is something that Australia could take some advice on: all-you-can-eat type restaurants simply don't exist there anymore. I remember them as a child, though, up until about 1996... Eating out here in Brazil is great because rodízios and 'kilo' restaurants are very common - In a rodízio you pay a flat price (often at the equivalent of AUD 10) and can totally stuff yourself, and in a 'kilo' restaurant you can choose from a buffet and pay for the weight of your own plate, so you only eat what you want. In some places, they do it a little differently: you pay a flat price in a 'kilo' restaurant and you can take a plate full of whatever you like, but you if you leave anything on your plate you have to pay an extra 'fine'. Reasonable, right? I digress, back to visas.

We came back the next day, already sweating furiously under the 9am sun, and payed the visa fee. I was supposed to get my visa that afternoon but ended up getting it the next morning due to *coughtheconsulateputtingupaclearlymisleadingsignregardingtheiropeninghourscough* a misunderstanding. On Wednesday morning, after at least 8 trips in and out of Paraguay, I got the ~~bastard~~ visa, and we decided to try to go to the bus station to see if we could change our tickets to leave from the Brazilian side instead (I had had to show proof of entry to Brazil at the consulate). We walked for about 40 minutes, much deeper into Paraguay than the average Brazilian-Moambeiro-Shopping Tourist probably has ever done, to find that bus station. To get to the entrance, we had to walk through a tent community. Yes. Anyway, we changed our tickets, got out of there, bought cheap European chocolates in US dollars, and 'entered' Brazil.

Illegal in Paraguay

A 'pub' that we passed every day on the way to the consulate. The sign reads: DUBLIN. THE AUTENTIC IRIS PUB. (sic) ...And what do they serve in this 'authentic' Irish pub? Sushi, of course. Yes, seriously, WTF?