Sunday, February 27
The Airport
Even as a former government employee, I couldn’t believe the logistical inefficiencies I was experiencing. It was 6am at the Bolivia El Alto internacional airport. I sat, slumped against the wall, last in line to get a visa. Carl stood in front of me, shifting his feet nervously. He walked over to the security guard to ask – again – if we had all the required documentation before we got to the window.
Our flight had left Lima late, a little after 1 am and I couldn’t believe we weren’t more delayed given the extremely chaotic boarding process. We didn’t think they were going to let us on the plane. After getting our boarding passes online for the first time on this whole trip, we wondered when they were going to ask to see our required negative PCR tests and other forms. Well, about 10 minutes before boarding one of the LATAM staff walked around the waiting area to see if everyone had the forms. We showed her all of our paperwork: passport, vaccine card, negative test, proof of insurance, and two affidavits because we couldn’t figure out online which was the right one. She lingered over the insurance. We had World Nomads which covered up to $100,000 in health expenses ($30,000 required by Bolivia). She asked where in our coverage it said that it covered COVID health expenses. We showed her their website which said COVID expenses were covered under health expenses. She refused to accept this, wanting to see the words COVID next to our coverage amount. When Karen showed her insurance (she purchased the slightly nicer plan) she was able to show the woman a line that said COVID travel coverage, which the woman accepted. This enraged me. I tried to explain to her that Karen’s insurance covered travel expenses incurred due to COVID, for example if this woman didn’t let us on this flight, Karen would be covered and we wouldn’t. The agent refused to accept this and asked us to look harder in our contract.
I called World Nomads but of course the insurance office wasn’t open, only the emergency line. A very calm man based in Florida was able to confirm our insurance covered COVID health expenses, just as it covered any health expense. The staff woman refused to speak with him over the phone, demanding written documentation. I asked the guy if he could send an email and he very kindly and patiently wrote one out and sent it.
I received the email just as our group was called to board. Luckily, there was another airline agent checking forms and, given the added urgency of boarding, he wasn’t being as ruthlessly detailed. He didn’t even check our insurance and stamped our boarding pass, waiving us through. Around us we saw many groups arguing with agents over the required forms and it seemed that not everyone made it on the plane.
Our plane had landed in La Paz only 6 minutes late, at 4:06am. Surprisingly, they disembarked the plane from back to front so we were near the front of the line in immigration. The first line was just for COVID documents. They took one of the affidavits and looked at our negative PCR test results. Then we stood in line for the non-Bolivians, non-South Americans. Finally, when we reached the desk the woman told us to go to a window off to the side to get our visa, then come back to the desk. The window only said ‘tarjeta’ (card) above it which made us think it was just for people paying for visa with card (and we had spent fees to withdraw the $320 in cash needed for 2 Bolivian visas) but we complied and got in line.
We waited in line for an hour. There was a group of Ukrainians in front of us who were having issues with their documentation. They kept going from the window to the desk, cutting off other people waiting patiently, all the while wearing their masks on their chins. Perhaps because of their impolite behavior, the man at the window had no patience left for us. He asked for a printed copy of our passports, and documentation of where we were staying in La Paz and our flight info for leaving Bolivia. We had this documentation (Airbnb reservation and a bus to the Bolivian/Argentinian border which we hoped would suffice) but only on our phones, not printed. He barely said anything and dismissed us with a waive of his hand, shooing us away without explaining why he wouldn’t look at our phones. We had been talking to the man behind us who had everything printed (including his bank statement!) and he promptly took our spot saying, ‘you need to print your things’. Ok…would have been nice to know!! There we stood, with the immigration desk in front, security guards guarding the door back to the plane, and a set of bathrooms. Where was the Kinkos?!
I asked the lady at the desk because she seemed nicer before. She said a representative from the airlines could print things for us and then she looked around the room as if to say ‘he was just here’. Finally a tall man in a full purple suit with slicked back hair (looking like the rich evil villain of the movie) walked up and took pictures of our phone docs so he could go print. We got back in the window line and waited. When he came back with our Airbnb reservation and bus reservation printed there were still 5 people in front of us. Meanwhile, Karen with her Irish passport hadn’t needed a visa and had gone through after talking to the desk woman about an hour before.
Finally, finally, we made it back to the window with our printed documents. We were literally the last people at immigration. THIS TIME the window agent didn’t even look at our papers. He asked for the $160. Carl handed him $320 in cash for both of us. The man examined each $20 bill one by one. For the first bill he pointed out a small ink stain on the top corner and he set it aside. For the second bill he pointed out a small tear on the top and set it aside. Bill by bill he pointed out small defects and made a pile of the rejected bills and pushed it back to Carl saying he couldn’t accept the cash. At THIS point I looked for the hidden cameras. He had to be joking. I laughed and threw up my hands. This process had been so ridiculous I couldn’t believe it. Carl gave the man our credit card which (surprise!!) worked.
He gave us a very pretty full page visa and we went back to the woman at the desk for her review and stamp on another page. Carl got the same woman we had before and I went to the desk of, apparently, the new employee. Finally she asked me my profession. I laughed again because I wanted to say ‘unemployed’, ‘spy’, ‘clown’ – what did this matter at this stage?? I said Engineer and she finally took all my documents, kept them, and stamped my passport.
Sweet, angelic Karen was waiting for us on the other side with a croissant and a water. We got an Uber to the Airbnb where the host was waiting for us. He was very sweet. He showed us around the apartment and explained everything. We were beyond excited to see the washing machine. We all took a nap for several hours.
The City
We woke up around noon and got ourselves organized. Carl and I decided to walk around a bit while Karen stayed back and got groceries for all of us. Carl and I tried to find the nearest travel agency but it was closed. Then we went to a well reviewed restaurant, also closed. So we walked up Avenue 20 de Octubre. We looked for a place to get something to eat. It felt like it was early morning still and they say you shouldn’t eat heavy meals when adjusting to elevation so we looked for something on the lighter side. Then we passed by about 10 carnicerías that had every kind of grilled meat. One place even had a grilled meat salad. We opted to come back later, which then we regretted because we never got a chance to return.
It was about 30 minute walk uphill to the street, Sagarnaga, where a bunch of travel agencies and souvenir shops were. As we walked uphill we passed through an open air market where women were selling all kinds of fruits and vegetables and lots of different flowers. It was beautiful and smelled great. We could hear music, like a parade, close by and wondered what was happening. Walking up further we started seeing kids with water balloons and water guns and cans of some kind of soap spray. It took us too long to realize it was Carnival. We figured we were safe from water guns if we didn’t wear a poncho or carry ammunition.
We got to the top of Sagarnaga and saw a travel agency in the first shop. We noticed a sign for Cholitas wrestling- a semi tourist thing where native women demonstrate their strength and independence through theatrical fake wrestling- and as we looked at the sign a woman inside called us in. We asked her about it and she said the tour left in about an hour. As we discussed booking that we also asked her about booking a day trip to Lake Titicaca. We were able to book both for pretty cheap all the while the little boy (her son?) and a man (the dad?) were spraying people with their water gun whenever someone walked by.
When everything was booked we had about 30 minutes to get something to eat before we had to meet the tour guide. We walked down the street but didn’t see much. We stopped in a cafe but could feel how slow the ordering process would be, so we left. We were running out of time. We ran up the street again (not an easy feat at 12,000 feet!) back through the outdoor market where we were sure we’d seen some street food. Finally we found a woman selling hot dogs. Good enough! No idea what was in the dogs- they were nearly neon orange – and they were topped with potato strings and sauce. They hit the spot. We had enough time to have a small conversation with the woman making the hotdogs and another customer. They both seemed surprised when we told them we were from the US. This continued to happen over the next few days. Given how hard it was to get in to the country, we weren’t surprised that few Americans had made it, let alone bought orange hotdogs from this woman on this random street.
We thanked her and left. The second we stood up we noticed the sky had grown dark. Kids were still throwing water at each other as we rushed up the street. We were nearly back to the travel agency when it started to rain. We kept running (uphill!) and made it into the shop without getting too wet. The agency let us borrow some ponchos and we followed the guide down the street. Now that we were wearing ponchos we were slightly worried the kids would think we were part of the water games. The guide had us wait outside a nice hotel while he looked for the other tour participants. We were waiting with the tour guide’s kids – a 16 yr old girl and a 9 year old boy who had a huge super soaker. He kept waiting until people had walked by and then would spray them in the back. As we waited there it began to rain harder and then it hailed. Then it seemed a little silly to be spraying people with water.
Finally our guide came back and said the others were no shows so the five of us would go ahead. We followed our new family down to the purple teleférico- the cable car- and rode it up the hill to the neighborhood of El Alto. From the teleférico we could see across the valley and admire the huge mountains looming on all sides of the city. In El Alto we got out and walked, zig-zagging through the busy streets and open air markets.
We finally came up to a huge concrete building- basically a high school basketball gym – with a wrestling ring in the middle. Our guide seemed to know everyone that worked there. As he happily greeted every person he showed us to our plastic chairs beside the ring and then he disappeared. We later wondered whether he was in the show at some point. We will never know because the luchadores wear such great masks over their faces.
They started playing some hype music that sounded like Eminem or Linkin Park on bad speakers with clowns singing the rap solos. Then the announcer came on and introduced the wrestlers. Two women came out dressed in the traditional dress with two long braids and big fluffy skirts. Up until they started fighting we weren’t sure if it was going to be serious wrestling or like the kind from World Wrestling Entertainment. Immediately we realized it was the later as they performed coordinated moves, throwing each other down and bouncing every way off the ropes. They acted out a little scene where one woman obviously had the crooked referee on her side and she wailed on the other. In the end the underdog rose up and prevailed, beating the crooked player AND the ref.
At a break one of the staff came up and gave us popcorn and Coca Cola’s in glass bottles. There was another round of wrestling, this time some men in full lucha libre outfits entered the rings and seemed to team up with the Cholitas. Because of Carnival, all the locals in the stands had water guns, water balloons and/or the soap spray cans. Whenever one of the wrestlers would get near the crowd would unleash and the scene would end in hilarity and the wrestlers tried to slip away, drenched in soapy water.
At the end of the show, the man who gave us the snacks came up again and directed us to follow a young woman and a taxi driver. They drove us back to the teleférico and the young woman got out and rode it down the hill with us. She spoke so fast it was hard to understand her but we all enjoyed the scene from the cable car as we descended into the city lights below. At the bottom we learned that she had just come down as our escort so we said goodbye and she went back up the hill again. We headed back to our Airbnb.
When we got there we heard live music playing across the street. Curiosity got the best of us and we decided to investigate the source, despite how tired we were. We saw a sign for an ‘end of the world party’ and walked down an alley to find an open warehouse full of people dancing. There was a band playing a mix of rock and traditional pan flute music. They were actually so good! Lining the walls were tables piled with merchandise. Everything seemed to be goth or satanic themed which we guessed was related to the end of the world theme.
Then a man approached us. He was a short, very drunk Bolivian man with a black front tooth, chubby cheeks, and wavy hair hanging down to his legs. We had to lean over to to put our ear next to his mouth and he would yell things in slurred English like ‘where you from?’ and ‘welcome to my country’. He kept making the rounds around the room. When he approached I would back away slowly behind Carl. He introduced us to one of his friends and kept yelling things into Carl’s ear. Carl said “if he spits in my ear one more time…’ Finally we decided to go back to the Airbnb to sleep. We felt impressed with how much we had experienced in Bolivia already despite starting our day so late.
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