Dream Trip to Brazil

My now 21-year-old son and I love to travel all over the world. This is a story I wrote back on January 6, 2019, shortly after we returned from Brazil and before I discovered Vocal. My son was 16 going on 17 then.

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Visiting Brazil was my life-long dream, perhaps induced by the famous 1975 Soviet film “Hello, I’m Your Aunt!” The main character there was a conman in drag pretending to be an "auntie" from Brazil and referring to it as "the country with many-many wild monkeys." As a child and adolescent, I loved that musical comedy and I think it may have planted the seed of desire to visit Brazil one day.

In 2006, as a doctoral student I hosted Brazilian students who came to LSU to study music. They stayed with us for about three weeks while they were looking for a place of their own. We became great friends and I kept in touch with them after we all graduated. Periodically, we talked about my son and I coming to Brazil, but it’s as far away from the US as Russia and twice as more expensive. But, in 2018, all the stars finally lined up and I managed to get cheap tickets from JFK to Sao Paulo through Rio at $575 per person. I was excited about this opportunity to see my Brazilian friends who lived in Belo Horizonte and whom I hadn’t seen for 10 years after graduation.

The trip involved a lot of logistics as we wanted to visit three cities, all during our winter break: Rio, Sao Paolo, and Belo Horizonte. The cities form a triangle in relation to each other, with a 5-7-hour drive between them. For the two of us, air tickets on domestic Brazilian airlines would have cost a lot of money and I wanted to have flexibility of moving around wherever we wanted. So after painful consideration and a lot of research I decided to rent a car (which is another hilarious story).

With Brazil being a member of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) alliance, we didn’t need a visa if we entered the country on our Russian passports. But had I known what it would entail, I would have gladly paid for e-visas as Americans.

On Dec.23, 2018 we arrived in Rio, although not without minor complications. The flight was overbooked and we got our seat assignments only 10 minutes before the departure. Ultimately, it wasn’t bad at all - Boeing 777, a large bird that handled the turbulence really well. On the 9-hour night flight, I couldn’t sleep at all (I almost never sleep on the planes), so I've watched five episodes of The Game of Thrones. My son slept on and off, but he'd hit his growth spurt and was already so tall and his legs were so long that he could hardly find a comfortable position.

The most fun was at the passport control in Rio. My son's Russian passport was stamped within a minute with no problem, but mine… The federal police officer took a look at it, set it aside, checked, stamped and returned my son's passport, and then took mine and went away without explaining anything.

We stood there for about 10 min, and since we entered on Russian passports, I had all sorts of thoughts of why my passport could have been flagged, mostly for my anti-Putin politics and online activities. Brazilian and Russian security forces cooperate closely, as I heard, so I thought maybe that was the reason.

The police officer, who spoke no English, finally came back and waived for me to go to another area. There was a couple of Australian travelers there who mistakenly thought e-visa was something they could buy at the airport. So they were hectically trying to figure out how to fly to Argentina or Peru, apply for e-visas from there (with Christmas in a couple of days) and then come back to Brazil.

As he showed us to sit down, I asked the officer what the problem was. He simply said "No problem, one minute" and disappeared. More anxious waiting there, with no explanation, eavesdropping on the Australians who kept calm and composed but were clearly rattled that they had not been allowed into the country. They came to explore the Amazon and had their entire tour planned for them, so they also called their tour company back an forth, trying to figure out the logistics.

Finally an English-speaking police officer came out and led me into what seemed like an interrogation room with 5-6 work desks. He started to ask me questions: What are you going to do in Brazil? Why are you flying to Sao Paulo without staying in the beautiful city of Rio? Why Belo Horizonte, almost no foreign tourists go there? Where are you going to stay there? Do you have enough money to make this expensive trip to three cities?, etc.

Just from his questions, I suddenly realized that he probably thought I came to Brazil to work illegally. He took all information about our hotels, return flights, contact info for my Brazilian friends (even tried to call one of them, but it was her home phone and she was at work), asked me how I knew my friends, and how I was getting to Belo Horizonte from Sao Paolo. When I told him I’d rented a car, he looked at me skeptically, and smirked,

"Have you ever driven in Brazil?"

"No, but I drove in New York City and Miami," I said, trying to smooth out the situation with humor. He clearly couldn't relate. Not even a smile.

I read on many forums that driving in Brazil was hectic and dangerous because of too many crazy drivers in a hurry, which is also a topic for another story.

"You must be a very brave woman," the border police officer said, taking notes on the rental car company. He then asked me to show the car rental contract, which I did.

My son was waiting outside of the "interrogation room" all this time, anxious and freaking out, and still eavesdropping on the Australians. I could see him through a dark-toned window, but he couldn’t see me. I couldn't even imagine what he was thinking at the moment. At some point, it all seemed so surreal to me I nearly bust into laughter at the absurdity.

Finally, the police officer asked, "So how are you going to get back to Belarus?"

My jaw dropped. "Belarus? I'm not going to Belarus. I'm Russian, but I live in America."

He flipped through my Russian passport and said, “There's no valid American visa here. Do you have a green card?"

I said I had an American passport.

"Oh," he said, "Why didn't you say so right away? Please show me your American passport, and your son's."

His entire demeanor and tone flipped, he became a lot friendlier, almost giddy. I went outside where my son was with my travel backpack in which I kept our American passports. At this point, I was more amused, if only a tad annoyed, by the magic power of American passports. My son stood up, pale and really worried, with a big question in his eyes. I told him they were just asking a lot of questions and needed to see our US passports.

I took the passports back inside, the officer checked them and said, "Your American passport is in a different name."

I produced my name change certificate (don't know what prompted me to take it with me, but I'm glad I did).

He took all my documents, including the boarding passes to our Sao Paulo flight now in 2 hours, to another officer at the opposite end of the room, explained to him everything in Portuguese, and left. He was obviously at the end of his shift, and leaving the room, he said, "You're in good hands, have a wonderful stay in Brazil."

The other officer made copies of everything but forgot the boarding passes in the copier, so when he came up to give back our documents, I asked, "What about our boarding passes?"

He quickly brought them back and said, "Sorry about the delay, I gave you 10 days starting from today."

"Ten days only??" I started to panic a little. "But our return tickets are for January 3!"

"Just joking," he answered, smiling, "you can stay up to 30 days on a Russian passport without a visa. Have a great stay in Brazil!"

I checked the stamp, and it indeed said 30 days, but had a mark that the return was on Jan.3. Leaving the room, I asked him, "So do you have a lot of illegal immigrants from Russia? Why all these questions and checks?"

"Too many, especially young beautiful women like yourself, if you know what I mean," he said and winked. I was almost 49 then and had no illusions about how young and beautiful I was. But in that moment, I felt both flattered and harassed at the same time, if that is at all possible.

I didn’t tell all the details of this conversation to my son then, he was just relieved that it was all over. He joked, "Well, at least they shortened our waiting time for the Sao Paolo flight."

When we left, the Australians were still hanging out in the interim zone, and I don’t know what happened to them ultimately. I hope they were able to work something out.

Overall, the 3-week trip worked out great for us. It was one of our most wonderful and memorable experiences, and we still debate which one was #1: Brazil, Peru, or Ireland. Brazil is absolutely amazing, especially around Christmas when it is their summer.

As we were leaving the country, though, a similar thing happened to me again: the passport control officer in Rio stamped my son's passport right away, but took mine, even though he saw that I had the American passport as well, and left without saying anything beyond, “Just a minute.” In about 10 minutes he returned, with my passport stamped. No interrogation this time, however. I guess they just wanted to make sure I really left the country without having worked a street corner somewhere in Rio, Sao Paolo, or Belo Horizonte.