_ _ _ _ | |__ __ _ ____ _ __ ___ _____ __ (_) | _( )__ | '_ \ / _` |_ / | '__/ _ \_ / '_ \| | |/ // __| | |_) | (_| |/ / | | | __// /| | | | | < \__ \ |_.__/ \__,_/___| |_| \___/___|_| |_|_|_|\_\|___/ _ _ _ _ | |_ _ __ __ ___ _____| | (_) ___ _ _ _ __ _ __ __ _| | | __| '__/ _` \ \ / / _ \ | | |/ _ \| | | | '__| '_ \ / _` | | | |_| | | (_| |\ V / __/ | | | (_) | |_| | | | | | | (_| | | \__|_| \__,_| \_/ \___|_| _/ |\___/ \__,_|_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |__/ ____ ________ . . \ \ | el | . o o ,====== | pres- | . _____ _ _ _ _ / \ | idente | \ \ ______ | . . |\ |_' _____| o \ \___ _ / === _ | | |\\ \ . ______\___\__________/dyfr/ | | |_ |\\\ // _/= - - - - - - - - - - _/ o | _- |/ // o (_________ ___________/__ _ _ _| |____// . \ \ / \_____/ ___/ \ \ __ _ _ _ / _ / o . \ \ / / | | o \__\___ __ _ _ / / | | . . . ________/ /___|______|_______________ . . . / ___///____ ________ /| / / / / / / / / / | / /__________/ - - - /_______/ / | Another scribble from Baz Reznik's travel journal: VISA TROUBLE Every country has its own visa regulations and when you visit 23 in one year you will encounter problems. It doesn't matter how well you think you prepare, with all those different regulations you're bound to fuck up one day. Most commonly is the "stamp in, stamp out" regulation. You receive a stamp in your passport the day you cross the border which counts as your visa and as long as you exit within the time-limit specified on the stamp there is not much of a problem. The difficult thing is usually getting the stamp without paying. For example in Latin America most countries won't charge Europeans for the stamp (people from the USA are usually a big exception due to the strict USA immigration regulations and high costs: a lot of South American countries mirror those costs in their own immigration laws). This doesn't mean you'll get your stamp with ease. The land-borders between two Latin-American countries are considered a "no man's land". Between stamping out and stamping in you will be harassed by numerous people who will try to convince you to buy the "very important immigration forms" (that are usually free at the immigration stand), who will try to sell you drugs (and then tell their police friends about it) and who will offer their "service" as luggage carrier (for which you will pay a lot or face the consequences of never seeing your backpack again). When you finally reached the immigration office you'll have to stay quite strong not to pay the corrupt officer behind the counter. In some cases they just confiscate your passport and force you to pay some dollars to get it back and believe me, when they point a gun on you, you will pay. Make sure you always have a pile of small dollar signs with you to ease out the tension. Another difficulty about traveling over land is the absence of a return ticket. At a lot of borders you'll have to proof that you're going to leave within the days specified in your visa and the only legal proof is a plane ticket out. This might turn out difficult if you travel everything by bus. We quickly got experts in falsifying plane tickets and even had a ready made empty ticket on our laptop that we could fill in with every destination we wanted which we would print at the last stop before crossing a border. The biggest mistake we made was between Uruguay and Argentina. From Buenos Aires there is a boat crossing the Rio de La Plata to Montevideo, Uruguay. On our way there we got a stamp at the Argentina side, went on the boat and got our entry stamp in the harbor of Colonia. On the way back we got our exit stamp in Colonia. After one hour we landed in the Buenos Aires port. Walking from the boat, through the hall, around the corner and… outside? Where was our entry stamp? It turned out that we should have gotten our exit and entry stamp at the Uruguayan side. There was nothing the people from the company could do, it was already late and the next day they would sort it out for us. When we arrived at the shipping company the next day and talked to the people again we were told they still couldn't do anything (so why don't tell us that the night before?). We had to go to the immigration office on the other side of town (where we just came from) and sort it out there. After hours of waiting, countless of lines, signs, pulling numbers, explaining again why we were there and begging for a stamp we finally got the answer: there is nothing anybody could do, we were illegal and nobody was going to help us. The only thing we could do was bring enough money to the border crossing when leaving the country to pay the officer there. We traveled the whole of Argentina as illegals. Got stopped a few times at various checkpoints where we got questioned about why we, according to our passports, already left the country. But we were able to dodge the bullet by pretending not to speak Spanish so the (only Spanish speaking) police officers would give up after a while. The real challenge came when we had to cross the border to Chili in the south of Argentina. In the middle of nowhere the bus stopped at a dodgy looking border post. Just a container in the middle of the dessert with a barricade on the (gravel) road. Nervously we got in line with the other passengers in a movie-like setting where two military looking border officials had to stop their game of ping pong to check our passports. Slowly we advanced to the booth where one of the bearded guys was seated under a big portrait of the president. We had no money left to pay them off and had a slight conjecture that the possibilities of making a payment by bank where limited in this border post that was a eight our bus ride straight to the dry plains from the nearest town. Would we be stuck here for a while? TO BE CONTINUED By Baz Reznik