Femton jävla minuter

If you read the title you will now be able to say “fifteen fucking minutes” in Swedish.

Sometimes you are lucky, sometimes you are not. I did everything right today. I took the early bus yesterday from Macapá so I would arrive to Oiapoque at 07:00 instead of 08:00, at 07:50 I had found the federal police station and was first in the queue for the opening at 08:00 (some morning issues made it take until 08:15 to have my exit stamp though), I hurried down the 10-minute walk to the river and managed to immediately get on a boat at 08:30. The passage to St George (French Guyana) took 10 minutes and at 08:45 departed a shared taxi for Cayenne.

Phew! Much faster than I could imagine. Lying Planet says the taxi ride is two hours so I was sure to make it. What I hadn’t counted with, however, is that the taxi doesn’t go straight. It takes all sorts of funny detours to drop passengers off. Farmers far out in the middle of nowhere. I think I was extremely unlucky because when we finally entered central Cayenne there were only two passengers left (of eight) and all had got off at some remote peculiar places). And the annoying driver, a Brazilian mid-aged woman, was more interested in chatting and gossiping with the passengers, kind of forgetting to put the foot on the gas pedal every time the mouth went too warm.

It felt like I had been in the taxi for four hours and wondered if I still had a chance. The battery in my mobile phone was running low and although I had rebooted it into flight mode, I had only 3% left and had now turned it off. I didn’t know exactly what time it was. I looked at the sun. “Zenit sort of”. Maybe there was still time.

Finally the taxi arrived to central Cayenne. I was thinking of taking my phone out to check the time but I thought that I was on the limit and could not waste any unnecessary time. I instead turned around with my bags and marched with steady steps, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator, to the Suriname consulate. The visa application time closes at 12:00.

It was closed. I took the phone up, turned it on, it still worked. 12:15.

I had looked forward to this opportunity to save a day in Cayenne and instead of two nights, only stay one and save money. I obviously took the wrong taxi.

Femton jävla minuter. Femton fucking jävla kuk-minuter.