KS- Sunday
We started this one out in Puno, about two hours north of the Bolivian border. Our original plan was to cross the border, and then head on through Bolivia, but it wasn't quite that simple, it usually never is. After arriving at the border, we were greeted by very long line to stamp out of Peru, It took almost an hour to complete that step, cancelling the temporary import of the bikes took quite a bit less. The immigration agent that did my passport said something about a visa for Bolivia, so when I got back outside I told Chip about it. We weren't aware we needed on for any of these countries, but a quick search said we did. It was one of those times where we might have benefitted from a slight bit of planning ahead. You can get a visa at the border, but as we later found out, you can't get all the items you need to have for the visa, especially on Sunday when most shops are closed in the tiny border town. The list is,, besides passport you need, vaccination card, bank statement, hotel reservation, plane or bus ticket out of the country, passport photo, and a signed visa application, and all of it has to be in a special manila folder, plus present it all with $160 in crisp US bills. We were able to get most items by printing them out at a internet café, that happened to be filled with Peruvian teenagers playing computer games and making lots of noise. We were able to get everything we needed, except the passport photos, and visa application form, and the folder. Key pieces. After much time spent walking around the border area, we determined there was no place to get a photo, and many times walking back and forth across the bride in "no mans land" asking Bolivia where to get things didn't help. You have to find the elusive form, and print it out. You'd think they would have them at the border, but nope. After a couple hours of this, our patience was getting tested.
We decided to head back into Peru and go over to Chile, and decided that we would have better luck getting all required items an crossing into Bolivia at another border. Sounds like a good plan, except when we went back to Peru to get stamped in, the immigration agent wouldn't do it. No exit stamp from Bolivia, no entry stamp into Peru he said. I told him that we couldn't get into Bolivia, he said, not my problem, Bolivia problem. Then he made the hand washing motion and pointed us to the door. So back outside we went, crossing back over to Bolivia and trying again to get the items we needed to enter there, again with no luck. So there we were, stuck between two countries, with neither one letting us in. Not a good feeling. A couple more fruitless hours went by as we tried to reenter the world, somehow. Even debating making a run for it. Finally we made one last attempt to get back into Peru, Chip ended up going to a different window in the corner, while I ended up in the window next to the jerk agent. The woman looked at my passport, and was ready to stamp it when the jerk spotted me and started waving his hands and telling the woman not to stamp it. Meanwhile, Chip had just gotten his passport stamped back into Peru, and was heading out the door when jerk saw him and yelled to the agent that stamped it, obviously a bit angry. By then, it was too late, he was officially back in Peru. Jerk took my passport from the woman and chewed her out, then chewed out the guy who stamped Chips passport. He shook my passport at him, then pointed to Chip walking out the door. Good agent was saying its not a problem, and then jerk agent handed him my passport angrily, said some words to him that I won't repeat (mainly because my Spanish has not risen to that level). As good agent looked at my passport, jerk again made the hand washing movements and threw his hands in the air and stomped away. Good agent looked at me, gave a little smile, which I gladly returned, then he scanned my passport into the computer, grabbed the stamp, and made one of my favorite sounds. The loud whack of an official entry stamp.
Out the door I went, with a huge sense of relief. I was no longer going to have to live on a bridge, perusing a career as a money changer, or washing windows. We went back into the Aduana to get te paperwork for our bikes again, the two ladies in there were very nice and helpful, defiantly a big change from jerk in immagration. By that time, we had decided that we were just going to skip Bolivia all together. It was that bad of an experience. Now I'm sure many people are going to say we were making a bad decision to skip a country like that, but heres how we see it. First, one of the Dakar stages in Bolivia had been cancelled do to bad weather. A friend of Joseph was there and said that he wished he would have skipped it, our friend Dick was there and was in a bad crash caused by an pedestrian running out into the street and hitting his bike sending him down the road at 40mph with his bike on top of him. And finally, the $160 dollars and stupid process of getting a visa was the icing on the cake. So we may be missing a couple things we wanted to see, but you would have to spend years travelling here to see everything. Last time we ignored people and signs telling us not to go into a country, we ended up standing along the side of the road in Kazakhstan, trying to convince the police not to impound our bikes, then eventually paying them $100 a piece and being escorted out of the country. So we have learned something from our past experiences, do a little more planning sometimes, and also know when to take a hint (or several).
We got back on our bikes, set course for the coast and the Chilean border. Looking forward to warmer weather, and lower altitude. Its a bit hard to sleep at 13,000 Ft when your breathing hard, and your heart is thumping away in your chest trying to get oxygen into your body. We'd been in the high altitude and cold rainy weather for too long. It was time for a change. We didn't have much time, or gas, but we managed to make it to the town of Marcocruz, a tiny village in the mountains, with a couple streets, and an old gas station. It wasn't too much daylight left, and we had already ridden through one storm where I'm pretty sure I felt the heat from a lightning strike on the side of my face. After gassing up and asking the old man for a hotel, he pointed into the tiny town. We found the guest house, and were given a single room with two beds and a bathroom for $8. The floor was spongy, the bed was tilted, and bathroom had no TP. After parking the bikes in the hallway, we went into our unheated room, changed clothes and wen back out into the village to find dinner. The first restaurant we walked into had about 10 people there eating, but the "waiter" came over to us and said were closed, and ushered us out into the street. There was one other restaurant in the dark town, so we went there, again there were people eating, and again we were told they were closed. So. 0 for 2, once again we had struck out at the game of Gringo Bingo. Found a tiny store that was still open, so I bought a can of tuna, some crackers, cookies, and a roll of toilet paper for the room. Walking back to our room, we decided that there have been better days and started researching the Chilean border requirements on slow phone internet. If you want to pull your hair out, try researching border crossing information, the web is full of conflicting information. So after a long fruitless day, a meager dinner was had, and we decided to get some sleep and hope for a better tomorrow, in Chile.
We started this one out in Puno, about two hours north of the Bolivian border. Our original plan was to cross the border, and then head on through Bolivia, but it wasn't quite that simple, it usually never is. After arriving at the border, we were greeted by very long line to stamp out of Peru, It took almost an hour to complete that step, cancelling the temporary import of the bikes took quite a bit less. The immigration agent that did my passport said something about a visa for Bolivia, so when I got back outside I told Chip about it. We weren't aware we needed on for any of these countries, but a quick search said we did. It was one of those times where we might have benefitted from a slight bit of planning ahead. You can get a visa at the border, but as we later found out, you can't get all the items you need to have for the visa, especially on Sunday when most shops are closed in the tiny border town. The list is,, besides passport you need, vaccination card, bank statement, hotel reservation, plane or bus ticket out of the country, passport photo, and a signed visa application, and all of it has to be in a special manila folder, plus present it all with $160 in crisp US bills. We were able to get most items by printing them out at a internet café, that happened to be filled with Peruvian teenagers playing computer games and making lots of noise. We were able to get everything we needed, except the passport photos, and visa application form, and the folder. Key pieces. After much time spent walking around the border area, we determined there was no place to get a photo, and many times walking back and forth across the bride in "no mans land" asking Bolivia where to get things didn't help. You have to find the elusive form, and print it out. You'd think they would have them at the border, but nope. After a couple hours of this, our patience was getting tested.
We decided to head back into Peru and go over to Chile, and decided that we would have better luck getting all required items an crossing into Bolivia at another border. Sounds like a good plan, except when we went back to Peru to get stamped in, the immigration agent wouldn't do it. No exit stamp from Bolivia, no entry stamp into Peru he said. I told him that we couldn't get into Bolivia, he said, not my problem, Bolivia problem. Then he made the hand washing motion and pointed us to the door. So back outside we went, crossing back over to Bolivia and trying again to get the items we needed to enter there, again with no luck. So there we were, stuck between two countries, with neither one letting us in. Not a good feeling. A couple more fruitless hours went by as we tried to reenter the world, somehow. Even debating making a run for it. Finally we made one last attempt to get back into Peru, Chip ended up going to a different window in the corner, while I ended up in the window next to the jerk agent. The woman looked at my passport, and was ready to stamp it when the jerk spotted me and started waving his hands and telling the woman not to stamp it. Meanwhile, Chip had just gotten his passport stamped back into Peru, and was heading out the door when jerk saw him and yelled to the agent that stamped it, obviously a bit angry. By then, it was too late, he was officially back in Peru. Jerk took my passport from the woman and chewed her out, then chewed out the guy who stamped Chips passport. He shook my passport at him, then pointed to Chip walking out the door. Good agent was saying its not a problem, and then jerk agent handed him my passport angrily, said some words to him that I won't repeat (mainly because my Spanish has not risen to that level). As good agent looked at my passport, jerk again made the hand washing movements and threw his hands in the air and stomped away. Good agent looked at me, gave a little smile, which I gladly returned, then he scanned my passport into the computer, grabbed the stamp, and made one of my favorite sounds. The loud whack of an official entry stamp.
Out the door I went, with a huge sense of relief. I was no longer going to have to live on a bridge, perusing a career as a money changer, or washing windows. We went back into the Aduana to get te paperwork for our bikes again, the two ladies in there were very nice and helpful, defiantly a big change from jerk in immagration. By that time, we had decided that we were just going to skip Bolivia all together. It was that bad of an experience. Now I'm sure many people are going to say we were making a bad decision to skip a country like that, but heres how we see it. First, one of the Dakar stages in Bolivia had been cancelled do to bad weather. A friend of Joseph was there and said that he wished he would have skipped it, our friend Dick was there and was in a bad crash caused by an pedestrian running out into the street and hitting his bike sending him down the road at 40mph with his bike on top of him. And finally, the $160 dollars and stupid process of getting a visa was the icing on the cake. So we may be missing a couple things we wanted to see, but you would have to spend years travelling here to see everything. Last time we ignored people and signs telling us not to go into a country, we ended up standing along the side of the road in Kazakhstan, trying to convince the police not to impound our bikes, then eventually paying them $100 a piece and being escorted out of the country. So we have learned something from our past experiences, do a little more planning sometimes, and also know when to take a hint (or several).
We got back on our bikes, set course for the coast and the Chilean border. Looking forward to warmer weather, and lower altitude. Its a bit hard to sleep at 13,000 Ft when your breathing hard, and your heart is thumping away in your chest trying to get oxygen into your body. We'd been in the high altitude and cold rainy weather for too long. It was time for a change. We didn't have much time, or gas, but we managed to make it to the town of Marcocruz, a tiny village in the mountains, with a couple streets, and an old gas station. It wasn't too much daylight left, and we had already ridden through one storm where I'm pretty sure I felt the heat from a lightning strike on the side of my face. After gassing up and asking the old man for a hotel, he pointed into the tiny town. We found the guest house, and were given a single room with two beds and a bathroom for $8. The floor was spongy, the bed was tilted, and bathroom had no TP. After parking the bikes in the hallway, we went into our unheated room, changed clothes and wen back out into the village to find dinner. The first restaurant we walked into had about 10 people there eating, but the "waiter" came over to us and said were closed, and ushered us out into the street. There was one other restaurant in the dark town, so we went there, again there were people eating, and again we were told they were closed. So. 0 for 2, once again we had struck out at the game of Gringo Bingo. Found a tiny store that was still open, so I bought a can of tuna, some crackers, cookies, and a roll of toilet paper for the room. Walking back to our room, we decided that there have been better days and started researching the Chilean border requirements on slow phone internet. If you want to pull your hair out, try researching border crossing information, the web is full of conflicting information. So after a long fruitless day, a meager dinner was had, and we decided to get some sleep and hope for a better tomorrow, in Chile.
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