(The title is a reference to a story by my friend Euromad.)
I'm in Rio de Janeiro this week, in a hotel overlooking the Copacabana beach. But I almost didn't make it here.
We planned this trip a few weeks ago, at the invitation of a possible client here in Rio. To get a visa you need a plane ticket and an invitation from a business in Brazil. On Friday, February 22 we got the faxed invitations and booked our plane tickets for Monday, March 10. We knew this would be tight for the visas, but we use an expediter - you send your application to them overnight, then they go to the consulate and hand it in, they pick up the application, and they send it back to you overnight. We collected our applications and passports and mailed them on Monday, February 25. We also asked them to use the San Francisco office, since we have had better luck there in the past.
The first problem was that the expediter claimed that we had to use the Chicago and Boston consulates, based on where we lived. On top of that, they don't have a Boston office, so they forwarded my application to another expediter. So we lost a few days there.
The next problem was the turnaround time of the consulate. The new expediter told us that it typically took 1-2 weeks to get a visa, which meant we had almost no chance of getting them in time to fly. The reason for this is that Brazil has a reciprocity law, according to which they treat applicants from any country the same way that country treats Brazilians. Since the United States is one of the worst countries at the world at processing visas (waits for Brazilians now are in the 3-4 month range), they take their time with our applications. (It could be worse; we could be from Spain.)
On Tuesday, March 4, we got a senior executive from our Brazilian hosts to call the Chicago and Brazilian consulates, and they said that we would get the visas in time. But by Friday, only the Chicago visas were done - not mine. We called the Boston consulate, the expediter called, and our hosts called, but no one could get a response.
So I woke up Monday morning not sure if I was going to Rio. My flight left the Hartford airport at 4.10 pm, which meant I had to leave home by 2.30. At 12.30 we found out that the visa had been processed and someone needed to pick it up. We told the expediter to pick it up and then got a courier to deliver it to my house. But because of traffic in Boston, there wasn't time to make it to my house by 2.30, so we then arranged to meet at the Hartford airport, outside the Delta ticketing area. Finally the courier pulled up at 3.40, half an hour before takeoff, and he handed me my passport with my shiny, new, 5-year, multiple-entry Brazilian visa.
The only problem was that when I arrived at the airport I found out that my flight to Atlanta was canceled, and Delta claimed there was no other way to get to Rio that night. (All the flights are overnight, so I would have had to wait 24 hours.) So I called our travel agent, who said there were seats on a United flight through Dulles, and then I convinced the Delta person to put me on that flight instead. (Because it was a last-minute, one-way booking, the cash value of the ticket was over $4,000, although I don't know how money changes hands between airlines.) I walked over to United, checked in, went to security, and got pulled aside for additional screening. (That's what happens when you have a last-minute, one-way ticket.) Then I strolled onto my plane with a few minutes to spare, flew to Dulles, flew to Rio (after upgrading my seat), got a shoeshine in the airport, and took a taxi to the aforementioned hotel on Copacabana beach.
After all the flights I've done, I can say honestly that, like the Navigator but unlike Euromad, I was completely calm throughout the whole experience, even while waiting to see if I would get my passport in time. You do the best you can, and if things don't work out, they don't work out. Which, of course, applies to most of life.
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