How to Weazel Out of Paying a Bribe... In Portuguese!

I woke up a bit groggy this morning, the taste of last night’s tequila still burning the back of my throat. I go downstairs, pay for the hotel for the last three days and have breakfast. Then we all pile on to Doris and away we went on the way out of Rio. After giving the troops a brief description of the truck I hop in front with Steve to help figure our way out of the city. Rio is not somewhere you want to get lost in a bright yellow truck full of gringos.

On our way out of town a cop waves at us to pull over at a check point.

‘Sons of bitches,’ I thought. I had dealt with these guys before. The last time I was coming out of Rio it was Carnaval and there were 5 trucks going the same way. They pulled us over, started looking over the truck and eventually found that we weren’t using a tachometer card (a little card that sits behind the tach that records driving info), which at least for South America is a very obscure law. The seedy cop told us that if we didn’t give him $5,000 he would take our truck away. I laughed and tossed him the keys. After about an hour of haggling (with our brand new passengers baking in the truck, we got him down to $300.

“Just give him the money,” my driver said through clenched teeth.

The cop smiled through his mustache and put the money in his pocket.

We heard later that a couple of other trucks ended up paying $500 or more and then in one case $100 and a flash from the female tour leader.

This time I was determined not to pay a cent. The cop started carefully checking through the likely offenses. After checking our fire extinguisher and first aid kit, he pulled back the tachometer with a flourish. His face fell. This time we had a tach card. He decided to go over Steve’s license again, this time corners of his mouth turned up slightly and he asked us to join him in the stuffy office.

Flies buzzed through the stifling air as he sat down at the desk. He shuffled some papers, looked at the license and then shuffled the papers again. I crossed my arms and got ready for a fight. I wished that it was going to be in Spanish. Arguing in Portuguese is not my forte.

“This license is not valid in Brazil,” He said, poking a meaty finger at Steve’s international truck driving license. “It’s not translated to Portuguese.”

‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘He must be really desperate.’ This was the flimsiest shakedown attempt I’d seen.

“What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous.” I pointed at the permit that we had received at the border. “That makes it legal. They gave it to us at the border. If his license wasn’t legal, why would have they let us in?”

He pondered that one for a second. “No… that license is only legal for countries like Bolivia.”

Bolivia, of course, is the South American whipping boy. Brazilians shudder to think that something that could be used legally in Bolivia could also be used in their country.

We went back and forth a bit. The fact that he hadn’t actually given me a figure made me feel fairly confident.

He made a last ditch attempt. He pulled out the English law book and pointed at the offense he considered us to be breaking. I read it. It said something like ‘…you must have a license that is translated into Portuguese, unless you have another official document excusing you.”

I smiled and pointed at the law to Steve. He snatched up his license and Brazilian permit.

“Thanks!” we both said in unison, as we strode out the office.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said. It wasn’t going to be that easy. He took the permit back, read it, consulted his guide book, looked back at it, scratched his chin and consulted his guidebook.

Sensing victory, let off a litany. “It says it right there!” I stabbed my finger at the permit. “Right there, you know it’s not an offense. Give it back, we’re leaving.”

The fact that this was all in very broken Portuguese reduced the effect somewhat, but eventually he admitted defeat. He gave us our documents back and we were on our way.

I’ve found that usually as long as you remain as confident as possible, to the point of yelling at them and then just make it very clear that you’re ready to stay there as long as possible, they’ll eventually get bored and let you go. Last trip I actually had a cop in Argentina ask me as a last ditch attempt to go on to the truck and collect 10 dollars from each of my passengers.

Sons of bitches.

Once we got to the campsite, Steve went over the truck with the new pax and I went shopping for lunch. Most of the rest of the day was spent basically just orientating everybody to the Budget lifestyle.

That night Steve and I did the cooking to show them how meals should be. Steve cooked a roast on a spit and I fried potatoes with peppers, onions and bacon, as well as made as salad. Afterwards, I took a couple of them down to the pub to watch some good ole American football. Great game (New England vs. Indianapolis), but I have a feeling they didn´t quite appreciate it the way I did.