We’re stuck in Brazil

So Peter and I are stuck in Brazil. Seriously. We thought getting to Buenos Aires would be easy since it’s on the same continent and both Salvador de Bahia and BA are major cities. We’re were 100% wrong. It’s further than going from LA to New York. Brazil itself is a fucking gargantuan country, bigger than the continental US, and lengthwise is wider than the distance from London to Moscow.

Plus, unlike accommodating ol’ Europe, nobody here speaks English. Nobody. We have met one American. So it is literally impossible to do anything. We have spent two days trying to book a flight or a bus from Salvador de Bahia to Buenos Aires and have so far been unable to do so. We are constantly bombarded by challenges and obstacles that seem determined to keep us on Brazilian soil. First off, our hotel, if you can call it that, has no internet although it was promised when we made the deal on Craigslist. The owner, the French Agnes, has service, but it is so intermittent that it is absolutely useless. Plus, it’s wired, but just one, and we need to both use internet. So we bought a router, our second one in 6 months because Peters old roommate lost our first one. And while the router allows me and Peter to network, we got no juice to connect us to the web. So we spend our day wandering about the streets like total idiots. For example, yesterday we were in the shopping mall, going from the travel agent to the internet shop to the payphone and back around the loop 3 or 4 times trying to get something reasonable travelwise. We could get down there sure enough, for about 2 grand, which is more than we spent coming here. So we’re trying to avoid that option at all cost. We can also take a bus, which is a brisk 72 hours straight through the fucking jungle. We found a Brazilian airline, Gol, which can hopscotch us down to San Paolo and then onwards to BA on two separate trips. We were ready to book it, but they don’t take foreign credit cards and you have to enter your Brazilian tax info into the screen to buy, or so we think, because although some words are similar, Portuguese is nothing like Spanish. Plus, in the pulldown menu for country, every shit-can country in the world was listed, but not the Unite States, so we think maybe Gol has a separate sales dept for the US or something, but aren’t really sure. Then, in the middle of maybe half figuring it out, our hour of web access died and we lost all the progress we had just made. We decided to call Gol, but Skype didn’t like their number and wouldn’t dial it. So we buy a phone card, and even figure out how to use it, only to hear a message repeating in Portuguese when we get through. And nobody can translate for us because nobody speaks a lick of English or Spanish German.

So it’s our third day here today, and we are just as close to getting a flight out of here as when we first arrived. But, like I have always said, this is the kind of shit that will give me stories to tell for years to come, so a part of me just chuckles at what hopelessly courageous dumbasses Peter and I can be sometimes.

I swear, sometimes I think we need a chaperone.