Decisions

The idea, once getting to Corumbá, was to get a train ticket to Santa Cruz-Bolivia at 7Pm to get there Wednesday at 8 am. The immigration office was closed when we arrived to the station. They told us, you can leave the country without the éxit´stamp on your passport but chances are the next time you come to Brasil you may be sent back. So since we all wanted to be in good standards with this nation, and we knew, since we found out from two Bolivians, that the train departs on tuesdays and Thursdays at 4pm not at 7pm as it does on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, that we couldn´t leave town, we decided to stay and spend our last night on this small, very clean town of Brasil as the last city of our time on this country. It was a little difficult to make the decision of where to stay. Close to the immigration office or near downtown. The Bolivians suggested to go to the border in Bolivia, where everything was a lot cheaper and then come back to the office for the stamp. The guy from Bolivia was waving his hand from the bus and told us to come up, his face showed a little bit of annoyance that we were taking so long on decide something that shouldn´t be a brainer. Go for the cheapest. This option of course meant to cross to Bolivia and then come back to Brasil. So, wasn´t that already leaving Brasil without an exit stamp? This unclear situation made us change our minds and ask the driver of this bus to take our back-packs from the bus. The Bolivian guy, moved his head like in disagreement when I took a quick glance to the bus. We all thought too that maybe we wouldn´t saved that much since paying for taxis to come back to Corumbá would have made the total amount spent maybe equal. But the most meaningful reason was that pshycologically we wanted to ´leave´Brasil for good, at least for this trip, so coming back the next day just to get a stamp was not to good of a feeling. A guy, of many, offered us to come to his hostel. These hostel workers are like bees, as soon as you get off the bus they are looking at you and want you to come with them to their hotels or hostels. Others offer you trips to the Pantanal or other touristic places. So you have to diplomatically, or sometimes, abruptly tell them to stay back or to wait a couple of minutes. I guess we took a lot of time deciding so many of them got tired an left, only one stayed so we went with him. Persistance of this young fellow I guess. He had a van parked on the parking lot a few feet from where we were. We got in and drove us about 8 blocks to the hostel. 10 reais ($5 US)per night, breakfast included. Sold!