Dy 35:  San Jose, Costa Rica

Another noisy morning. But this morning, we were geared up and ready to get to the embassy as soon as they opened at 8:30am so we could hurry our visa apps along. After a yummy breakfast of rice and honey with sliced mango on the back patio at the hostel, we were off for another go with the angry embassy woman.

This morning, she seemed to be a bit nicer than yesterday when she saw us arrive, clutching documents and forms and photos in both hands. But then, it happened…She had just taken the first mess of forms and midway through her appraisal of our stock, she began shaking her head. What could possibly have been wrong?! We brought every single paper she asked us to bring. It was all there! She looked up with a fleeting glimmer of embarrassment and smiled, actually smiled. Then she mumbled something in Portuguese and walked off. Seconds later, she brought back the nice man who spoke English and had him explain that she had made a mistake and forgot to have us bring proof of exit documents as well. To make up for it, she told us that if we could hurry and bring them back before noon, she could process both visas by Tuesday–a whole 3 days before she originally told us!

Unfortunately, we planned to just hop a bus to Bolivia when we had gotten our fill of Brazil and there is no proof for that kind of exit. After trying to explain the problem, she still shook her head and said we must have them because at the airport the would give us trouble for no showing that we were going to eventually leave the country. So we hurried away to the internet cafe to print out something that would hopefully suffice, at least for the application process. An hour and a half later, we returned breathlessly and anxious to get our final document in so that we could get our visas by Tuesday instead of Friday. But then, it happened again…

At the internet cafe, the printer had failed to deliver the last page of our “exit documents,“ the part that says what city in Brazil we would be departing from. In our haste, we didn´t even realize we had left the page behind and now we showed up with incomplete papers! She tood shaking her head and, through the translator, said “Come back Monday.“

Three strikes. Man, this is damn near impossible! With a full day ahead of us, we decided not to waste it and took the opportunity to do a little shopping to try to replace a few pieces of clothing that had already gotten lost or forgotten along the way. With no more luck at the Penny Lane shopping district than at the embassy, we returned to the hostel and packed up for  picnic in a nearby park. We had such glorious, glorious sandwiches that day.

One of many city parks (photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/craftybitch)

By later in the afternoon, it was time to “go to work“ and we painted and painted for much of the remaining afternoon. Tired, frustrated, and bored, we sat downstairs and did something we didn´t even do we we owned one: we watched TV.