Crossing the Border into Bolivia

We woke up bright and early on Groundhog`s day (and Grandpa Howard`s B-day) so that we could get all of our paperwork together to cross into Bolivia. We were going to the Bolivian Consulate to get our VISAs taken care of and hopefully make everything much easier. As we were leaving, someone who worked at our hostel told us that because we were from the US, we would need several vaccinations, including rubella and some other crazy ones. AND if we didn`t want to actually get the shots, we could pay him to make fake paperwork for us. This sounded way to sketchy to us, so we decided to ignore him and just go to the consulate.

Once we got there we talked to the main guy who told us that they were out of United States Visas for that week, so we would have to wait until we got to the border. He did helpfully inform us that only Koreans needed all those crazy vaccinations, and that our yellow fever shot was perfectly fine. We also needed copies of our passports, credit cards, proof we had somewhere to stay in the country and proof that we were planning on leaving the country. And for some reason a passport photo.

We gathered all of the stuff we needed and had about 3 hours until our bus to La Paz. We were out of Soles, but didn`t want to take out more because we were leaving, so we decided to take our leftover Chilean Pesos and exchange them for Soles. I had about 10,000 left, so I got 40 Soles, enough for lunch and some snacks on the bus. Leah had about 7,000 pesos, but half of them were in coins, which the exchange place would not accept. Now she is stuck with all these Chilean coins and can`t use them, much to her annoyance.

So we get to the bus station and the bus driver is all business, asking for our passports, our slips we got when we entered Peru, etc. He asks us if we have the 130 US dollars and copies, which of course we do, but the two American guys behind us had none of that stuff. We started talking to them and they told us that there was NO WAY they were paying 130 bucks and that they didn`t feel like making copies of all their stuff, and they were just going to bullshit their way over the crossing. We decided they were idiots and wanted to cross the border with them to see what happened.

So we get to the border. We have to get off the bus and get official exit stamps from Peru. Afterwords, we walked on a dirt road about 100 yards and suddenly we were in Bolivia. It was pretty strange. We looked for those guys, but didn`t see them anywhere. Whatever. We go into the Bolivian immigration office and suddenly the guys were behind us. They had tried to just walk past the immigration office, but were caught by an officer. We started to fill out forms and it turned out we were the only people from the US and the only ones who took longer than 5 minutes to get stamped. Our bus driver kept telling us to hurry up, but what were we supposed to do?

We were filling out forms, chatting with the nice Bolivian official, everything was going great for us. Not so great for the two guys behind us. When asked for the 130 dollars, they said the didn`t have it and basically shouldn`t have to pay it because it is a ridiculous amount of money for a visa. One of them even refused to go make a copy of his passport, which was really the last straw for the people working at the office. They proceeded to take the two guy`s passports and lock them in a drawer. Then they told them they couldn`t leave. We aren`t really sure what happened to them after that. All we know is, is that they had to get their stuff off of our bus and were still at the border when we left. So let this be a lesson to you if you are ever going to Bolivia, THEY DON`T MESS AROUND.

Then we got to Copacobana and had to switch buses. It was chaos. The same festival in Puno was going on there, so we had to dodge drunk, crazy, dancing people all over the place. When we got on our bus, there was this ridiculouly drunk and woman decked out in a fancy, flashy yellow costume sitting in the wrong seat and singing constantly. Did I mention she was extremely obese? When she was told to go to her own seat, 14, she said okay and then sat in 3. Then passed out for a while in 7. Then finally made it to her seat. After about 5 minutes of driving the bus had to pull over for her and she got off, where I assume she puked.

While I was watching the drunk woman in fascination, Leah was paying attention to what was going on at the front of the bus. Apparently we had no driver at the moment because all of them were insanely drunk from the festival. We sat there for about 45 minutes until a driver was finally found, a man who didn`t drink because he was extremely religious.

Once we got driving everything calmed down, except for an occasional wolf howl from the drunk woman. Then after about an hour, the bus stopped and the driver told us to make sure we had our coats and to get off the bus. We had absolutely no idea what was going on and were kind of freaked out. Fortunately, we asked some people who were on our previous bus what was going on. They informed us that we were going on a boat to cross a river. What?!? No one had mentioned this to us. So we get on this boat and of course, are sitting right by the drunk lady. She sang the entire ride, stood up, fell down, and almost fell off the boat while getting off. She was pretty entertaining.

We got back on the bus and rode two more hours to La Paz. Our luggage was on top of the bus, so when trying to get my heavy suitcase down, the drunk woman stumbled right in front of me, and the suitcase almost fell on her head. The bus driver told her to go home and hopefully she did, but who knows, that woman was crazy. We arrived safely at our hostel, had a drink, and then went to bed.