Adventure?

Today was what Tyler and noelle referred to as an " adventure." I used the term "fucking nightmare" instead. But you say tomato, I say tomato I guess.

Let's see...where to start...oh I know, lets start with everyone in the entire city of disgusting Corumba, Brazil having no idea how the hell to cross the border. Now, I would get it if we were in say, denver trying to figure out how to cross into Tijuana. But going from Corumba to Bolivia is the equivalent of crossing from El paso into mexico. Its really the ONLY reason people come to this godforsaken place, but i guess they all just wander around until they find Bolivia.

10:30 am: The so-called "helpful" woman at the sketchiest hostel on the planet says, yes, just go to the border, get your stamp and then buy your train ticket to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Easy enough. So we went to the border, and what do you know? There's a long line, and we find out that we have to get a Brazilian exit stamp first. Ok, so we walk back to Brazil. Long line there too. Oh, did i mention that my dumbass thought it would be a good idea to wait to get our Bolivian visas until we got here? I should officially be committed to an institution. Anyhow, we decide to go back to the hostel, get our bags, come back to get stamps and visas, buy our train tickets before it sells out, and wait til it leaves at 6. Thinking back now about the fact that we thought that would actually happen, I laugh a little. No, I take that back. I laugh really, really hard.

We get in a taxi to go get our bags, and the taxi driver says that it would be easiest to go the Bolivian consulate in Brazil to get the visas, because there is no line. Perfect, things are working out here. We get bags, head to the consulate. Here's what I want to know- why don't Americans get to take 2 hour breaks for lunch? Because everyone else on the planet does. So of course the consulate had closed until 2 to take a nap or eat or get drunk or go do something completely counterproductive. At this point, I was sort of frustrated, but still looking at this whole thing as a cultural experience. However, the fact that I hadn't eaten more than some friggin bread with mystery meat on it for breakfast did not help my mood in the least. (I mean, seriously, at least the other hostels gave us some crusty looking watermelon.) Oh, and it's about 40 degrees Celsius at this point, so we are all sweating profusely and smell like the raccoons that my neighbor used to feed when I was a kid.

We got our visa documents together, found some decent gas station empanadas, unsuccessfully tried to use an ATM, and waited. The people who worked at the consulate showed up at 2. Apparently, the consulate himself gets to take a 2 1/2 hour nap for lunch. More waiting. My hopes of making the nice train with ac and hot food were dwindling. Consulate arrives, and the secretary takes him our passports. After waiting for another half hour while he probably copied all our personal info to steal our identities, he asked us to come into his weird garage office. Before reading the rest of this paragraph, please keep in mind that Bolivia is closely aligned with Venezuela, and I'm sure you know about the Venezuelan/US relationship. First the man asks, "do you speak English"? When i responded yes, he said in Spanish, "ok then I will speak Spanish". Weird. Good thing i have that one covered too. Then he proceeded to flip through every single page in my passport, asking about several of the places I had travelled. He was particularly interested in and confused about my travels to Chile. Weird. He then asked what I did, who I worked for, and why I am going to Bolivia. I decided to leave out the part about how I work for a government agency. He then turned to Tyler, who speaks no Spanish, and asks him the same questions. Except he adds a question, and asks "quieres matar nuestros morales?" Or, "do you want to kill Morales (the Bolivian president)"? Straight face, no joking, really weird. WTF. Tyler didn't understand, so I asked him to repeat the question and then translated. Tyler looked at me like I was insane and then responded appropriately, with surprise and a little fear. "Welcome to Bolivia," responds the consulate, and shakes our hands. What is that? Is that normal? Do we ask The French if they are going to kill Obama when they try to visit the US?

We then find out that they wont accept cash from us and that the banks are all closed so we have to come back tomorrow. Jesus H Christ. We talked our way through that one, after about another hour. Apparently, US citizens are the ONLY people in the world required to get a Bolivian visa, so no one at the consulate even knew how the hell to handle us. It's now 4pm. I'm way past enjoying this "cultural experience" at this point. Now comes the point where even Tyler started to flip out...after making us go wander around Corumba once already to make copies of THEIR visa forms (because they only had ONE), they made us go BACK to the freaking copy place to make more copies of the visas they just gave us. In the consulate office, they had 2 printers and 2 fax machines. So where's the damn copier?! The lady who runs the copy business out of her shack apartment must be doing sexual favors for the consulate, because there is no way she would stay in business without them. Oh and I got yelled at for accidentally writing on the original. It wasn't notorized or anything-it was a piece of paper with a smudged Bolivian seal printed on it! We had already made her another copy! But oh no, I ruined her original.

Get to the border, get stamps, change Brazilian Reals for Bolivian bolivianos through the random pregnant lady on the street, head to train station. Oh, i forgot to mention that at the Bolivian border, they made us go across the street to some random office and make copies of our passports and visas. Hop in a cab with a toothless driver and head to the train station in Quijarro, Bolivia. Train is sold out and of course there is not another one until tomorrow. There was absolutely no way in hell I was about to even consider staying the night ANYWHERE in that town.

Fortunately, we are all grad students and had already come up with plan B. To the bus station. We are all past frustration at this point, and are wiling to do anything to get out of this place.

To describe the bus station in words would not do it justice. I'll let the picture describe that one (which was taken with a disposable camera for fear of digital one getting snatched instantly). Regardless, there are open seats on a bus, it has air conditioning, it's cheap, and it has TVs. Done. So we wait some more...Noelle and I run into some Europeans we met in Bonito who somehow manage to be more lost and confused than we are, and Tyler chats with a Brazilian med student friend that we met at the consulate. Things are going better.

Well, we just got on the bus. And this Scottish guy sits down next to Tyler and says that he hopes we haven't seen him on the news, because...wait for it...he has been all over the news for child molestation. He and his Filipino wife and daughter are currently running from the law. No big deal.

We just sat in the bus outside of the police station while they made that guy and his family get off for questioning. He must have paid the cops off, cause they let him back on the bus. So that's where I am at this very moment. Watching Fast 5 in Spanish while trying not to fall asleep so the Scottish pedafile doesn't come kill me. Call it what you want, but this ain't no adventure.