Brazil v Ghana from Sao Borja (I think) 27 June 2006

Check out time at the Hotel Recidencial Misiones in Posadas was at the unholy hour of 10am. Despite our best plans to achieve much in the morning, while our packs were secure in our room, we only just made it out in time to beat the knock on the door.

The World Cup was starting to look tougher. We thought we were reasonably close to the Brazilian border, but the previous day had been a wash out with rain and so we had now only 26 hours to cross the border and settle down before a Brazilian TV. I had also promised Fransesco, the lovable Swit, that I would watch the Australia v Italy match with him at midday..

When we stepped out of our room with our packs on our backs, there was Fransesco content watching TV. He leapt to his feet, threw open the 'luggage room' and made to help us out with our packs. We declined.

"We want to book our bus to Brazil. Then, if we have time, we will come back here to watch the match.

Poor Fransesco was crushed. He looked so sad in his little white linen suit. He understood, he said. Fransesco understood this would be our goodbye, which was fair. He was never the greatest listener, so I didn't take the time to explain to him the purpose of our travels and the extent of our interest in the World Cup. I wanted him to understand how much I would love to watch Australia play and to do so in such a relaxed setting with him, but there was little point in trying to elaborate now. It was better to shake his hand, wish him farewell and to say we would hope to see him again.

"Donde? ' where did we want to go ' the guy at the bus company most reasonably wanted to know. We had no answer other than 'Brazil' which was hardly enough detail, so we left him, promising to return. We dropped in to an Internet café to check on his bus company's routes.

There was a basic cartoon map showing routes to two towns that looked promising being surely no more than a few hours away: Santo Tome inside Argentina and Sao Borja on the Brazil side of the border. The scale was impossible to discern, but they looked quite close to each other and, most importantly, were both serviced by the bus company to which we had immediate access. We returned to the bus company office and booked tickets to Santo Tome in Argentina leaving at 6pm that night. We figured we could make the dash over the border to Sao Borja in Brazil in the morning.

Pleased with our progress, and now with hours to kill, we returned to Hotel Recidencial Misiones for our mooted meeting with Fransesco. I felt a little hesitant about this. It would have been easier just to leave things at goodbye and I felt like we were going only to scab their TV, but I figured Fransesco would be pleased, and he was.

"Would you like to have a special chair? he asked me, pulling one up next to his.

"Its okay, we're happy back here, I said while Sal and I settled on a couch in the rear.

"Alright, but it's your country¦

He had a point. I had planned to engage in some quiet writing while keeping one eye on the game, but it would certainly be nice to relax and watch a match for my own sake for once. I accepted the 'special chair' up the front with Fransesco. He was happy now, with company, drinking his tea, smoking his pipe, and rattling off the names of all the Australian players he knew.

"I know more of them than you! he said.

It was true. I couldn't name more than a handful of football players in the world. Again, I wanted to, but felt I could not, explain to Fransesco my approach to this game.

Together, we three watched the riveting game. Fransesco supported Australia with us. I felt it was sincere and wondered whether he would have done the same thing without us being there. And then I wondered whether it mattered or not.

Watching the last minutes of the match, I willed the clock forward so Australia could have a chance to regather. I feared Italy's late score, but did not believe it would happen in the terrible way that it did. It seemed to me a crappy way to be knocked out of the Cup.

"At least let us play! I cried in despair!

"They are professionals, said Fransesco. "They get inside the square and look for the foul. He manufactured it.

His eyes were friendly and wise. He imparted on me an older man's and older world perspective on life. I am sure, back home, inside some plaster wall house, my rage would have fired much longer, but in Posados, with Fransesco, inside the old mission house, the bitterness disappeared quickly leaving only dim disappointment to smoulder inside.

Farewelling Fransesco, this time for good, for life I expect, we went to the bus station via an honest and talkative cab driver who procured from me every word of Spanish I know, in combinations completely anew. We tipped the good man, drank a beer at the bus station to kill some more time and caught our bus to Santo Tome.

While I'd prefer to pretend otherwise, we have been travelling with a Lonely Planet in tow. I'm told the Footprints book is better for South America, but, regardless, when travelling at such pace, I feel a guidebook is acceptable if not essential. We are moving almost every day and the World Cup will not wait for us if we get lost.

But Santo Tome was not in our book, nor even on the map in our book, and the same applies to Sao Borja where (I think) we would ultimately come to watch the match. Travelling to our destination at night, this scared us a bit. We came to be more and more worried as all the bus stops along the way were drops on dark roads with nothing about.

'Every town has a hotel' I thought to myself, but I did not fancy wandering around in the dark with our packs trying to find one. I'm a tragic over-packer and with all the purchases of bytes and tops for each country, our packs are now unfeasibly large. I imagined getting off the bus and settling down to sleep in a ditch.

So, when Sal saw a sign for Santo Tome and the bus pulled up outside a hotel, we panicked! We jumped off the bus and hurried inside the hotel.

"Great work! Well done! I said to Sal. I was full of congratulations for her good work in spotting the sign and saving us that inevitable night in a ditch.

When we were told the price was 85 pesos, things started to sting and sink in. Not only was our room overpriced, too clean, without breakfast, and with a TV (without BBC World), our hosts were rude and gave us a room with two single beds and a bible. Even worse, we still didn't know how far away the border was or how we would cross it in the morning. We kicked ourselves for not staying on the bus until we reached the bus terminal to procure this information and then seek a hotel from there.

"So STUPID!! I raged. "We had a free ride to the terminal! Now we don't even know where or how far away it is. I can't believe we were so stupid!

"I'm sure we can fix it, if we are diligent, said ever-positive Sal.

I insisted we get out on the street and get a feel for what was around and what we would have to work with in the morning. The streets were dark as hell. We walked a few blocks, dodging animal shit on the ground, but it soon felt that we were now taking the very sorts of risks we had jumped off the bus to avoid. We returned to the hotel and studied the only useful piece of information we had: a touristy map at reception with caricature figures of local attractions and towns. Our honest and earnest approach at this task made me laugh, which was good for a change. Judging by this map, Soa Borja was not far over the border, but there was another place, Puente, that seemed even closer. We went back to our room feeling okay. Sal researched and wrote out some useful phrases for the morning including 'could you please telephone a taxi for me' and 'how far away is the bus terminal'. We turned on the TV, watched the Stepford Wives, original and remake back to back, and slept.

At about 8am, we woke and readied ourselves for our upcoming speculative journeys. Sal showed her scraps of paper with Spanish phrases to the rude woman on reception. Feeling mighty relived, we learned that the bus terminal was only five or ten minutes. We took our packs outside to wait for our taxi.

The taxi, of sorts, took little time to get us to the bus terminal where we learned there would be no buses to Sao Borja or Puente that day, but that a taxi ride to Puente would be a manageable expense. We now felt we were doing quite well with kick off three hours away.

We waited at a taxi stand for perhaps fifteen minutes eating a snack which I like to call 'Chippidies' and Sal 'Chippies'. Sold around bus terminals, it is a tasty, sweet sort of soft bread, made with some sort of flour, we think, from a root.

The taxi driver quoted us three Reals more than the bus station people said that he should, which seemed fair given our skin tone and perceived bank balances. When we arrived at passport control, we told the taxi driver we would need to stop to stamp our passports. Here, there was some substantial confusion as we tried to determine whether our taxi driver would take us further or ditch us at the border. It turned out to be the latter.

We carried our packs to the Argentine checkpoint where the good gent ribbed us in Spanish about our loss to Italia. At Brazil's checkpoint, the man chatted a lot and asked many questions which we did our best to answer. We were only guessing really, but who cares what was said, he stamped our passports.

Now we didn't know what to do. Given the match was approaching and the day felt too cold and early to be any good for a mugging, our leading plan was to hitch into town. We started walking down the highway. Not far along, we found a truck stop sort of a restaurant, and, with our packs feeling so heavy, we thought it might be best to stop, grab a coffee and reconsider our approach.

Inside the restaurant were men sitting amongst streamers and balloons in colours for both Argentina and Brazil. Strictly, we were on Brazil's side of the border and in retrospect it probably would have been quite an interesting place for the match. It was filled with truck driving men from all over the place, smoking, eating, chatting and playing pool, but the divided loyalties in the decorations disturbed me a bit, That, plus it was still more than two hours until kick off and I felt it might have been pushing things to hang around there until that time. And, most of all, I just wanted to get rid of my pack.

We drunk our coffees, milky and sweet like Indian chai. Poor Sal barely satiated her caffeine addiction.

Sal reproduced one of her notes again, gave it to the guy on the counter and he called us a cab. The taxi came and Sal, on a roll, handed over another note to ask him to recommend a cheap hotel. He looked confused. We asked for a hotel in Puente in Brazil.

"Brazil! he said, looking relieved and making us also feel so.

I tried to reiterate that we wanted a cheap hotel.

"Dinero poco I said.

The taxi driver responded by starting his meter. I was pleased about this, but thought it was only loosely related to what I had said.

The taxi rattled away on the road, the driver stopping a few times to adjust the boot of his car which kept threatening to expel our backpacks. It was quite a distance to Puente or Sao Borja or wherever we were headed. I was pleased we had not continued with our walk.

As we approached a town, the driver became a little agitated and started asking questions of clarification. He was not the most patient man or understanding of our ignorance with Portuguese. I don't think he tried very hard. I grew tired. I started acting as if he should have had a better understanding of our most sensible request.

"We just want a hotel in Brazil! Please¦

"Brazil?

"Anywhere, so long as it's in Brazil.

As we drove, I saw a number of signs for Hotel Executivo and I guessed, and started to regret, that that's where we were headed. I did not look forward to another night in an overpriced, unfriendly place, but given the communication woes we were experiencing and the fact that kick off was now less than an hour away, I knew that we would take any lodgings offered to us, providing, of course, it was a place in Brazil.

We turned a corner, then another, and then we pulled up at a place where a very old man stood in a doorway below a sign that read 'Hotel Brazil'.

"Oh, fantastic! I love it! He's taken us to a place called 'Hotel Brazil'!!

I was rapt! Smiling, I wore the driver's insults of 'stupido' when I couldn't figure out how to put forward the seat to let Sal out of the cab and happily accepted his card knowing that we probably would call him again if we needed a taxi ' so much easier than starting from scratch. Wisely, he also gave a card to the owner of the hotel.

The owner, aged surely eighty or more, in thick glasses and cap seemed delighted to have us. I doubt he has had many Australians in his hotel. He showed us to our beautiful crummy room with tiles on the floor that crack with each step and a television with only one channel ' but the right one for watching Mundial matches. Soon after, the man knocked on our door to present us with towels and toilet paper. I loved him! I wanted to pick him up and give him a squeeze. I was so happy with the serendipity and to be in this strange place with no idea where I was and to feel so very welcome! And all for such a reasonable price.

Soon, there was another knock on the door. The man was beckoning me to follow him back to the front of the hotel again. It took a while for me to understand, but he was saying 'comida, comida' ' lunch would be in half a hour. He pointed out his assistant filling the steamers with hot water, preparing for lunch. It's silly, but it really felt like it was in honour of us. Kick off was coming and we had intended to hit the streets to find a bar, but the man was so insistent we stay and eat and I felt so touched that I really wanted to and we did.

I still don't know whether lunch is included in the price, but I really don't care. The food was the most nutritious I had eaten for days, maybe weeks. There was rice and beans and salad and noodles and potatoes and salt and even chilli oil. I loved it and ate a massive helping without going back for seconds or thirds ' though I could have ' just in case the meal was actually included in the price and I would have seemed greedy. I was so happy to eat there, just to be there, we stayed in the hotel for the whole match.

We seemed to be the only ones there for lunch, but about half a dozen men appeared for the game. We were still eating at kick off and so peeked through the open door of the dining room into the lounge room where the old man sat on one kitchen chair with his legs on another and on each couch sat three giggly men.

I think the giggliest of them all was another guest at the hotel. The youngest was a child of someone who works at the hotel. The others seemed to be friends or regulars in the dining room perhaps.

The four or five women associated with the hotel sat in the kitchen away from the match. One of the younger women wandered in soon after kick off and happened to be there when Brazil scored its first goal.

"Already!? she said in Portuguese while the men flicked their fingers and jumped about.

Now an older woman came out to check on the noise.

"Already?! I suspect she said too.

Now the old man left his chairs and came into the dining room to set in motion the key, and probably only, cause of discomfort for me in Hotel Brazil. He introduced us to the old woman thinking, hoping, that we would share common language. He told us the woman was 'Alehman', German, and that she spoke Deutsch, which I heard to be Dutch. I told the woman that my mother is Dutch and then the conversation really got underway.

We had no idea what was going on. The dear old lady just talked and chatted away, not oblivious to our lack of understanding, but not seeming to care all the same, and, not content with a unilateral exchange, again and again she sought our a response. God give me context! She was just chatting! I didn't know what to make of such a discussion without function. I took to eating again, but that didn't help. She just started and smiled and, when she felt the urge, started talking again. I liked the woman, but we just couldn't communicate and she wouldn't leave us alone. As I write, I wonder whether our Australian passports might have been mistaken for Austrian ones to have given rise to this persistence with speaking on her part. I just could not say.

There still was a game going on and when the dear old lady finally left us, it was still at one nil and nearing half time. Sal and I moved into the lounge room.

I sat with the men. Sal sat on a chair in behind to film us. These fellows were genuine giggling gurts. They made voices for the players when they fell on each other for homoerotic hugs. They mimicked the commentators' silly voices. They were such a silly bunch.

Towards the end of half time, one of the kitchen staff brought out a big tub of popcorn for all. The old guy left his chair to fetch a special bowl for Sal to have some up the back.

We scarfed down our popcorn with our mitts, dropping it on the floor, me eating it even when I had done that. There was piles of the stuff and it lasted well into the second half and then toothpicks were produced. We men all sat around together picking teeth. There were no drinks, but this manner of (popped) corn and (splintered) wood consumption felt plenty manly enough, even amidst all the giggling.

Brazil scored a second goal and then a third and went on to win the match. No-one seemed thrilled. I gave a polite clap, but someone shook their head. They said Brazil had not played all that well. Everyone left quietly as if off to work. Sal and I braved the cold weather of this southern part of Brazil and went out to the streets.

We had heard some firecrackers during the game, but saw no evidence of such in the town. Our noses well tuned, we found our way into the main square, but nothing was happening. We didn't even see many Brazil tops around. I really think it was a poverty thing. The roads were all made of cobble stones. Most transit around us took place on bicycle. There were horses and so many stray dogs in the street.

I felt there must have once been money around as there was a grand stadium, now with a broken down roof and a lonely pay booth without a fence. There was an empty swimming pool and busted bowling alley. Everything looked as if it had been beautiful once. The word 'Conspiracao' had been graffitied around.

"They're probably all busy turning soil and sewing seeds, said Sal.

I think, in a way, Sal was right.

The town was not like a big city where a pocket of fanatics can create a big scene while the rest of the millions continue with life. In a small place like this, life does and must go on.

We walked the town, joined the queues at the banks to find some local currency and prepare for our hotel bill, whatever it may be. We ate deep fried sweet churros snacks, tried, and failed to find Sal a good coffee and returned to Hotel Brazil where, despite the cold and dead of the day, I felt so warm and happy to be.