We should have known this. In retrospect, we felt pretty stupid. What happened was, we were driving out to a barbeque at the American Society (which I wrote about here).
It turned out to be farther than we thought. We passed a police checkpoint--they have these random checkpoints on the highway here, with orange cones set up that you have to drive around--and our first instinct was to stop and ask if we were headed in the right direction.
Basically, it's like asking to be pulled over.
Pull over, the cop predictably said.
Dan pulled off to the side, where another officer asked to see his documentation. At this point, I was shaking in my flip flops. We've all heard stories of what can happen when you're at the mercy of the police in Latin America, right?
Plus, we don't have Brazilian driver's licenses. Luckily, Dan did have his PA license with him (which he rarely does).
You know you're supposed to also have a translation of this license, the policeman said, looking at it.
Dan stuttered something in an exaggerated gringo accent. (Thinking, I guess, that this would elicit sympathy. Or pity. Or something.)
The officer stared at the license some more, turning it over in his hands, lecturing Dan sternly on the laws and what could happen.
He could keep us there and make us wait by the side of the road. He could take the documentation into custody. (And of course, what he didn't say, but what we were thinking, he could demand to be paid off.)
But after a few minutes more of chastising us, he peered into the back at the three boys sitting there, and said, well, since you have kids, I'll let you go this time.
Lesson learned. We now carry our driver's license translations at all times. And will not be asking the police for directions again any time soon.
Here's a picture of the countryside we were driving through.
For obvious reasons, I don't have any photos of the cops.
2 comments:
Ha - I can relate to this! Other lesson learned: never leave home without the kids! They can get you out of all kinds of predicaments, even with power-tripping, bribe-thirsty cops.
A true documentarian would have photographed the cops and asked for their badge numbers. This is why we don't see reports from too many documentarians.
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