Monday, June 27

Passport day. I just killed time, packing my bag, waiting for 4pm when I could pick up my passport with its new visa from Immigration. Of course, I ran into KK at the office, but no passport was to be found. It wasn’t ready yet. We had to come back tomorrow.

No mas. Spanish streamed from the deepest recesses of my being as if I hadn’t wasted 9 years of my life studying French. No, I could not come back tomorrow! My flight was first thing in the morning! Between KK being composed (she spoke much better than I did) and me starting to fly off the handle, we were escorted into the office of the Director. Our files miraculously appeared on his desk. Some simple questions and all seemed resolved. So, we took our seat.

And we sat.

And then we sat.

And then, just for fun, just to shake things up a bit, we sat some more.

Behind us, a teenager has just come from the US embassy because her passport was lost. She was part of a church group. They were returning to the United States on a red-eye flight that night. She needed a new visa, ASAP.

One problem: they crossed into Bolivia illegally. The border between Bolivia and Argentina is porous. Thus, not only did she not have a copy of the green entry form (damn that pesky green entry form!), there was no record of her ever being in the country. This is bad news. Unless you are a journalist/spy on secret assignment, crossing into a country this way is stupid. If they don’t know how you got there, as a rule, they won’t let you out. The irony of a church group breaking the basic immigration laws of Bolivia was not lost on either of us, and it was only heightened by the fact that this was a white church group from Mississippi. This is a demographic that would overwhelming support strict immigration controls in “illegal immigrants” in the United States.

Well, we wait. It is 6 o’clock. Employees are leaving their offices. Army officers are lowering gates and locking doors. They glare and tell us we have to leave. We do not. And we will not until they hand us our passports. And if they don’t like it, go find the director. Eventually, this is exactly what happens. He comes out of the office surprised to see us. I am not sure whether this is a show, but it seemed like even he was embarrassed by his country’s performance on this one. Two minutes later, we had passports.

Invigorated by this triumph, its time for dinner at El Tambo. It is night in La Paz. It is frenetic with corn horns and break lights and thin air and everything that makes it such a wonderful city.