Bolivian Border Blues
If this adventure ever becomes a book or a movie, this might be the opening scene:
The clock is literally running out on our chances to cross to Peru-Bolivia border, and I would be sweating if it weren't so cold. The van that brought us to the border from Peru is gone, the driver supposed to take us to La Paz has been waiting with increasing anxiety for 4 hours, and the border guards are not going to cut us a break. If we do not make it through, I am not sure where we will sleep tonight, as there do not appear to be any hostels or hotels on the Peruvian side of the border. The surrounding neighborhood made my Spidey sense tingle in broad daylight, and as dusk approaches the tingle becomes a churning in my gut.
From inside the little copy shop/general store where I have set-up shop, I hand Sophia what I hope is to last document. It is a multi-page work of repetitiveness, streaked with lines from the dying printer we have commandeered, and crowned with the object of much sweat and anxiety: a 3cm a 3am (ish)) color picture of my face, framed with backing that blocks out a border of the intended size.
She sprints it across the street to the border, where Theresa is waiting. I only hope the not quite white background is obscured by the faded colors of the printer when it is examined by the guards. Theresa carefully tapes it in place with clear packing tape I have appropriated from a small shop. Paul and Ava each carefully hold the other four applications, each of which has slightly lower print quality than the one printed before.
The arbiter of our fate is a five-foot-tall Bolivian border guard who has gone from hostile to indifferent to amused as the ordeal has stretched on and on.
If he does not accept it (the other four), I am honestly not sure what we will do.
How in the world did we get here?
The day started promisingly enough, with the run rising over the small floating island where we had been staying for several days. We had packed up the night before, pleased with our time with the Uros tribe, but also happy to be heading to a hotel in La Paz, where presumably we would have plumbing, hot water, and not fall asleep in our coats cuddling bottles of hot water to stay warm.
We had a lovely breakfast with Felix our host, where we exchanged small gifts, and then he loaded us onto his small boat and took us to shore, where the driver who had brought us from the airport several days before had agreed to take us to a clinic where we could get rapid COVID tests before being picked up by the service who would take us to the border and pick us up on the other side.
The driver arranged to take us to a private clinic, instead of the public hospital, where his friend the doctor quickly worked us in (and gave him a kick-back). But we were ahead of schedule and agreed to wait for the service at the central square downtown, where we could buy snacks and ice cream for the kids. A public parade in honor of city workers made for a fun, festival atmosphere while we waited, though it complicated our pick-up somewhat.
The driver proudly pointed out various landmarks, and we had a lovely conversation in my rapidly improving Spanish, with Theresa able to follow pretty well and participate in (thanks, Duo-Lingo!).
Arriving at the border made me a little uneasy, as there were lots of armed guards patrolling the streets. The Peru side was poor in a way that was exceptional to us even at this point in a journey that has included slums in Nepal, Kenya, Sicily, Albania rotors. This place has a harder edge to it, as the border was clearly focused on day-workers going back and forth.
We looked around for lunch, as we waited for our Bolivian driver, eventually settling on a second story shop that intermingled the smell of slow-roasting chicken (delicious) with the scents of a bathroom out of a horror movie (less delicious).
The soup that preceded the chicken contained chicken hearts and livers that made our children turn green. The chicken that followed was delicious, though our kids have still not gotten accustomed to eating animals in the shapes they were in while alive.
What is the opposite of food porn?
The US Embassy website, which has been a reliable ally through all of COVID reassuringly told us that visas were available at any land border for $160 each. This was expensive, but the country was cheap, so we figured it would come out in the wash.
We pass through the Peru side and meet a friendly guard on the other side who shows us where to go. That’s when things began going downhill.
An American backpacker and his mother were waiting in front of us and loudly declaiming the inefficiency of the system, the laziness of the guard who was supposed to be there, and “just disappeared.” He then described how he had tried to point out to them that according to the sign posted on the wall that he shouldn’t need a visa, only to have the guard pull a sharpie out and cross the United States off the “Good Country” list.
Uh-oh.
We look on a website we had not previously seen, which instructed us to fill out forms, upload pictures, and then provide copies of all the associated documents, which included bank balances (proof of ability to pay), proof of reservations inside the country (including contact info), and proof of a booked flight out of the country, as well as hard-copies of all of the above.
Seriously!?!?!
OK, deep breath. We got this. Laptops out, hotspots up – there’s a print shop across the street. We get to work. The backpacker (thankfully) disappears back across the Peruvian border to get headshots printed, and magically the inspector re-appears. We turn on all the Reno-Weber charm we can, but he is still not amused. Yes, we need all of these documents AND the online forms, which also need to be printed. He shows us an example of the folder we will need to create for each us. Yes that includes separate copies for each kid.
The website refuses to accept our pictures. No matter how we resized them, they appeared as either blurs or are being rejected for being too large.
OK, we still got this.
At this point a steady stream of people have come through, mostly locals, but with a couple of foreigners who either didn’t need visas (f-ing Eurpeans who get along with everyone) or who had spent weeks responsibly getting visas through the Embassy in the US.
I leave Theresa in the border hall and head across the street to start working on the rest of the hard copies we need. My extraordinary request to pay them to purchase 5 copies of 5 documents apparently stretches the woman working there, the ancient copier, and the color printer to their respective limits. With permission, I set up an extension to plug in our various electronic equipment, which is rapidly shared by various other people waiting for copies. I try not to be unnerved by this.
The kids need to go to the bathroom, but we have no Bolivian currency, and the bathroom guards will not accept Peruvian money or dollars. WTF people!?!?! Asking for guidance from our driver, who is starting to get twitchy about the time this is taking, I set out in search of an ATM and hope I do not get charged with a border violation. The two I find are out of service. There’s a bank, which closes as I am walking up to it.
After some confusing direction-asking, I am pointed to an indigenous woman sitting on a crate in the middle of the median. She happily (if illegally) exchanges both my Peruvian and American money into Bolivian at a completely fair rate.
Great, now my kids can pee. One problem solved.
The only picture I took at the time
When I get back in the building Theresa has a workspace carved out next to where the officials are processing a dwindling stream of day workers having documents checked and paying fees. After several hours, I am unsurprised to see that she has acquired the power to interrupt the line whenever she finishes another part of the endless document progression for approval by the guard.
After demonstrating that the website is down, she gets permission to print hard-copies of our photos and affix them to the forms (she thinks).
Her ability to charm is remarkable. I only hope that no one else can see the fury in the set of her shoulders and the way her forearms flex as though preparing to jump over the counter to strangle them. Few things enrage her like inefficient processes, but totally unnecessary inefficient processes is one of them. All we are trying to do is come in to spend money in your country. Why is this hard?
It’s starting to get dark when I go back across the street to try to get headshots printed for all of us. This necessitates calling the owner, resizing the pictures again, sending them over WhatsApp, and an hour. I borrow scissors and tape, assemble the packets, and run them back across the street. A different guard, with whom I was joking around earlier points at his watch and then at a statue of the Virgin Mary in an alcove. I take his advice as say a little prayer.
I drop by the van to give the driver a reassuring smile and promise to tip him well in La Paz. "Una cosa mas" I say, “One more thing.” He shrugs. It was "una cosa mas" two hours ago. His is visibly twitchy, and in my head he is weighing the pro’s and con’s of leaving us there – with or without our luggage.
I am in the middle of repacking our gear in the copy-shop, when Paul runs in breathless: we need 5 color headshot, slightly bigger for a previously unidentified document.
The owner has disappeared to recover from his travails and the woman still there just shrugs helplessly.
I look at the clock again.
"May I?" I ask, pointing at the computer.
Her half-shrug is enough for me and I grab the mouse. Muscle memory of Windows 95 along with some guesses at likely spanish words eventually leads to another print out of mug-shot looking photos that I hope are the right size, which Paul dutifully runs across the street.
Our total bill, including a giant bag of cookies: $8.
This country might not be that functional, but at least it's cheap.
At long last all of the documents have been assembled and approved. A glue stick is applied to the new pictures. The guards smile like they have accomplished something- maybe they have. Theresa visibly resists the urge to go Kill Bill on all of them. I have rarely been so excited to spend $800 for a pieces of laminated paper, because it meant a long can ride to a hotel, rather than... I truly don't know.
Maybe we would have bribed the driver to let us sleep in the van in the no-mans land between countries until we could try again in the morning.
Maybe we could have found a flophouse and been able to sleep on the Peru side of the border, assuming they would let us back in after processing us out.
Maybe we would have slept in the hallway of the customs building and tried again in the morning.
Maybe we could have just gotten in the van, drove to La Paz, and come back the neat day -hoping not to get caught in the meantime.
Thankfully, we'll never know.
