I spent yesterday walking back and forth across Santos trying to complete the paperwork to unlock our car, Beatrice, from her container.

 

Santos is the largest port in Latin America – its streets dissected by a series of canals the colour of crude oil, devoid of life or barges. I walked hurriedly weighed down by bags, whilst drops of water bombarded me from unseen air conditioning units in the sky and rolled down the lenses of my glasses to complete my disorientation.

 

I stopped to ask people for directions to the destinations on my tick list “onde es el notario, el Ministero da Fazienda, el officina Safmarine?” My Portuguese is a facade and the directions came back at me incomprehensibly, so I plodded vaguely in the direction of a hand gesture.

 

Eventually, I found myself sitting outside the office of Hercules Jose Duppre, the notary. The name reminded me of the ‘Twelve Tasks of Asterix’ comic and the Gauls’ efforts to obtain Permit A38 in ‘The Place that Sends you Mad’. 

 

Ringmaster of the notary’s circus was Vera, a feisty matriarch signing dozens of documents that pass before her nose, as she jabbered on the phone and issued directions to her staff simultaneously. When she turned her steely gaze on me I timidly pushed my piece of paper across her desk hoping the instructions written in Portuguese would suffice.

 

Things were not so easy and I became rapidly embroiled in conversation of hand gestures in which we all agreed to have tea with Queen Elizabeth and discuss the possibility of obtaining a visa for Vera, I think. Forms were filled out, my profession considered, my address debated – ‘of no fixed abode’ doesn’t cut the mustard in Vera’s office, and something signed.

 

“Tay enge”, Vera announced with a flourish of paper and ink.

Tay enge? My eyes widened in bemusement.

“Sim, tay enge” she reiterated as she wrote the words out for me on a scrap of paper.  “THE END.”

 

Sadly it is not quite the end. A bout of Dengue Fever is sweeping the city reducing the number of officials available to push our paper along. Hopefully, we will be back on the road by Friday.