Foot in the World
Canada - New York
From beauty to total embarrassment...
We had definitely already been infected by the traveler's virus. And this time, we chose Canada. From there, we went to New York to get to know the famous megalopolis, which the entire advertising world in São Paulo, where we were already living, knew and spoke highly of.
First, we arrived in Montreal, then we went to Quebec, Ottawa and Toronto. You know that place where everything is beautiful, perfect, without any problems and with unforgettable scenery? That was our impression. Obviously, today we have collected many more stories and other views of Canada than we did back then. As we already told you in the first part of this story, on the trip to Alaska we went up through British Columbia, passing through the most beautiful road in the world – Banff/Jasper – and through the Yukon Territory, through the Klondike, where the Gold Rush took place and “Uncle Scrooge” earned his first coin. We lived with bears and crossed from west to east of the country, via the Trans Canada Highway.
Returning to the Canadian paradise of that first trip, we spent incredible days visiting many museums and parks. We were impressed by how Canadians lived in the underground city on days of intense cold. The nature was indescribable. Beautiful! We saw the fabulous Niagara Falls from both the Canadian and American sides. And then, we entered the United States through Buffalo. So far, everything was fine. A perfect itinerary and trip.
When we arrived in New York, we stayed at a friend's house. Zu, her husband, and their little girl, who was still a baby at the time, were great hosts. We felt free to explore the city on foot, just as we liked. The days were really fun, until on the last day, a few hours before we were on our flight to Brazil, we went to 5th Avenue and were robbed. They took our bag with both passports.
It all happened very quickly. We stopped to have a snack. Outside there was a commotion and Helinho went to see what was going on. A girl asked to sit next to me. I took the bag that was on the chair and Helinho arrived at the same time. I immediately realized that something was wrong because the bag was gone. We looked on the ground, but a lady who was nearby said that a boy, who seemed to be with Helinho, took the bag and put it in a shopping bag. We went around looking in the bags of everyone who fit the description the lady gave. We were very suspicious of the girl who sat at the table with us, but in the absence of evidence we decided to go to the police station.
Finally, we filed a police report and called our friends, asking them to take our luggage to the police station. From there, we went to the airport to board the plane, without our passports. Two immigration officials guided us to the boarding area. We got on the plane, feeling like idiots, without our bags, without documents, without our cameras with photos of New York and with our morale very low. To top it all off, when we arrived in Brazil, we disembarked and realized that my glasses had fallen off the plane. I ran back, but by that time the plane had already been cleaned, the crew was drinking champagne and I was also left without my glasses.
We didn't have any problems entering Brazil. We just presented the American police report at immigration. The police officer looked at it without any interest and we entered the country. The problem was getting a new passport.
The stolen passport was issued in Belo Horizonte. Since we lived in São Paulo, we went to the Federal Police to get a new one there. At the Federal Police, we were questioned, both together and separately. They asked us many questions to see if we would contradict ourselves. In the end, they said that each passport, with a visa for the United States and Canada, cost a lot of money. That's right, they suspected that we had sold our passports. In addition to having been robbed, we were suspected of having sold the passports. After yet another embarrassment, we thought: “Sell the passports? Why didn't we think of that before?”