Brazil or Bust..... BUST!!

So I had it all planned out... Rails Summit (A Ruby on Rails Conference) would be happening in Brazil while I am here in Peru and I convinced Squeejee it would be worthwhile for me to go and represent the company there. (Ironically we had just recently been contacted by a Brazilian company about a potential contract).

Everything was in order... plane tickets, hotel reservations, travel docs... everything.... or so I thought.

I got to the airport on Monday and began the normal check in process. I started to get the feeling something wasn't right after I handed the lady my passport and then it started to take a while... pretty soon she called over someone else and they were speaking in Portuguese so I couldn't really understand them... but they were looking pretty closely at my passport. Not long after another phone call was made and soon these two dudes in suits showed up at the counter. They told me that there was some issue with my Brazilian visa and I needed to come with them to get it worked out.

To make a long story short... basically I was in this office for like 3 hours, getting asked questions about my travel, my passport, where I got the visa, etc etc etc.. It was nuts... one official actually accused me of forging the thing?!?! So, I missed my flight... and at the end of the night they told me I would have to go to the Brazilian embassy in the morning to get it worked out. THANKS!

So Tuesday to the embassy I go... more 'round and 'round in circles... 3 officials, countless questions... no answers.. no help. At the end of it all they could only tell me that there was "some mistake with my visa and it would need to be reprocessed." They would do me a special favor and do it in 5 days rather than the normal 15. THANKS AGAIN!

So, no conference for Bradley... still trying to get refunds on stuff but haven't been too successful so far.

I guess I should have just tried to slip someone a fiddy or a c-note or something :-P