Finally to the site!

In the past three days we have gone from being outraged, desperate, and almost ready to call it quits to a complete state of ecstasy. Two days ago (Tuesday) we were expecting our instruments to arrive early in the morning, supposedly already liberated from customs, but several hours went by and at 4 o’clock in the afternoon we were told there was a problem, that the instruments were being held for some reason. We went to the customs to see what was happening. We found out the brokers that were hired did not read the Brazilian law to import scientific instruments! Yes, believe it or not, we were missing an original document which the law very clearly asks for. Instead of asking us for this paper two months ago, they scanned the signature of one of the professors and pasted it into a copy of the document needed, of course the custom agent noticed the document was a copy and not the original. By this point it had been two weeks waiting for the instruments to clear customs, and since carnival starts next Monday, if our instruments were not out by this week we were certain we will not see them until Monday of the following week, ten more days of waiting! ... No way. Urgent mails were sent to the MPI asking for this document to be sent overnight, and frustration and anger took over Johannes, Marco, Miri and me. We were tired of being in Manaus waiting. That night we met Scot Martin to see what the hell we were going to do…we knew the document from the MPI was going to be sent here first thing german morning, but it was to risky being that there is no overnight for packages to Manaus, at least three days is the fastest anything can get into Manaus (hey, that’s even true for people, it took me three days to get here from Mexico City). It was decided Scot and Johannes were going to go and talk to the agent and try to convince her/him to release the instrument under the promise the document will be delivered as soon it got into Manaus. With any person this request seems reasonable or even obvious, but remember we are talking about custom agents not people! I myself decided I could not stay another day in Manaus, so I went to the site to spend the day there and see if I could help any one over there, I was too mad.

It could have not been a better decision. While I was releasing all of my anger walking through the jungle and going up a 60 meter tower, good things were happening at the customs: it seems the customs agent was in a good mood and told Johannes and Scot that if the MPI sent Johannes an email authorizing him to sign to make the document “official” and that as soon the real document got to Manaus they delivered to him, the instruments could be released. We could not believe it, a customs agent being reasonable and nice. We of course celebrated and indeed this morning at 8:30 the truck with our instruments arrived at INPA.

Tomorrow, February 1^st, we are leaving for the site; hence, I’ll be disconnected for the next week, minimum. I would like to stay at the site for two weeks straight, but we’ll see. Finally some measurements and the work we came here to do, I don’t think we’ve ever been so exited to go and work.