Getting the Bolivian Visa

A number of countries throughout the world have decided that an eye for an eye is the best response to the USA’s visa tariff of $100+ for their citizens. In brief, here's what it took in Salta, Argentina to get our Bolivian visas:

1. Go to the Bolivian Consulate at 10am. Learn you need more than your passport and money - lots more actually: 3 photos, $ deposited into Banco National Argentina, copy of entry stamp into Argentina, copy of credit card, copy of yellow fever inoculation, copy of address in Bolivia… you’ve got to be kidding… how do you do this at the border? It takes 24 hours to process and the Consulate closes at 2pm. Its now 10am. Better get going.

2. Hop a cab to the hotel. Put three head shots on a memory stick. Proceed to bank to make the deposit - $135 per visa for Skye and Marci – because I am a delegate at the Climate Change Conference, I get a 30 day ‘courtesy’ visa for no charge.

3. Go to the Banco National, an ancient and byzantine structure, looking for stairs to up to the second floor foreign exchange desk. Wander aimlessly through hordes of people standing in lines everywhere. Find stairs and proceed into room filled with bank employees literally shuffling papers back and forth between 4 desks. No one is available to help.

4. Finally, The Bank Person Who Deals With People Like Me arrives and says, ‘we only accept dollars, not argentinian pesos.’ Again, I think, 'you've got to be kidding...' I have to go down the block to the ‘cambio’ place to re-exchange my Pesos for US Dollars - they don't do this at the Banco National.

5. Line at cambio place is out the door. Wait for 30 minutes. Exchange pesos for dollars. Return to other bank.

6. Wait some more.

7. Do the deal and get the receipt. Walk down street to the Kodak place. Install my memory stick with our head shots. Fiddle with the machine. Lady tells me it isn’t going to work. Wrong formatting.

8. Walk 4 more blocks to different photo store. Wait. Get photos. Continue to photocopy place.

9. Photocopy all the other stuff. Catch cab. Deliver stuff to Ricardo at consulate. He smiles and says come back tomorrow, which I do and everything is in order.

The process is the journey. Or something like that. In this case there is a destination and its Bolivia.

Vamos!