By Marco Felix
With plenty of advance notice and no small dose of enthusiasm, I had planned a trip to Bolivia with my kids to make the most of their summer break. Part of the master plan was to do a little victory lap around the country’s major cities—especially those in the so-called Media Luna, the eastern lowlands—since I rarely visit the high-altitude regions these days, and only then with a full regimen of pills: the elevation makes me suffer, and my tachycardia doesn’t settle down even with those famous sorojchi altitude sickness tablets.
Prominent on our itinerary were the Uyuni Salt Flats and the notorious “World’s Most Dangerous Road”—that winding cliffside track strewn with crosses marking the brave and the foolish who plunged to their deaths—a lethal route that drops from snowcapped peaks straight into the semitropical paradise of the Yungas. We also planned to visit the “Titi” portion of Lake Titicaca, since “Caca,” the other half, belongs to Peru and we didn’t feel like venturing quite that far; plus Torotoro National Park with its Umajalanta caves, and dozens of other spots.
Naturally, visiting my family and, as a side benefit, sharing a few drinks with my old buddies was perhaps the real heart of the trip.
The Naïve Man’s Precaution
Knowing full well that the most unexpected things tend to happen in the country where “everything happens and nothing happens”—as the statesman Víctor Paz Estenssoro himself famously put it—I took the naïve and innocent precaution of calling the Bolivian Embassy in Washington to get accurate information about the documents required for US tourists to enter the Plurinational State, just to ensure firsthand there would be no misunderstandings or snags.
It must have been about eleven on a Monday morning when I cranked the handle on my rotary phone, but nobody answered. I waited a few minutes, dialed again, and still nothing. I couldn’t figure it out, because according to the consulate’s website, public hours were ten to two. It didn’t take me long to realize they observed reduced banking hours, as if the consulate were a branch in some forgotten provincial outpost, or that their weekends routinely extended into Mondays.
By 11:45 AM, there was still no sign of life from our diplomatic representatives. The most likely scenario was one of two things: either they were nursing the previous night’s hangover, or they were deep into their mid-morning sajra hora feast. Either activity, according to the most sacred tenets of Bolivian labor rights, is an inviolable duty—uninterrupted by matters however delicate, and certainly not by anything as trivial as answering a phone call or fielding inquisitive questions.
At 12:45 PM, I dialed once more. Praying to the Almighty, I nervously brought the receiver to my ear, pressed my snout to the mouthpiece, and said:
“Hello? Bolivian Consulate?”
A raspy, liquor-soaked voice responded with a “Yes” so curt it sounded like a smothered belch gasping its final breath. The clerk seemed to choke on those three letters, undoubtedly from a bout of indigestion courtesy of his mid-day feast. Clearly the gentleman was suffering from a stomach ache, having a terrible day, or simply didn’t feel like being pleasant, answering as if he were doing me a grand favor and as though assembling a sentence with a subject and a verb cost actual money.
“I am a native-born Bolivian, but my children, who are traveling with me as tourists, are American citizens. What are the requirements for them to enter the country?”
“Transferring you,” was the sum total of his contribution.
Three minutes later, an even raspier voice asked how he could help. I repeated the question, and this time the answer came crisp, clear, and without a shadow of a doubt, delivered in a tone of supreme authority: “You, as a native-born Bolivian, don’t need a single thing to set foot on your homeland; as for your kids, they need an entry visa, which they obtain upon landing at the airport in La Paz.” Just to be doubly sure, I asked if any additional documentation was required. He assured me no—just their valid passports, and that was that.
Houston, No Problem
On the day of the trip, at the airport in Houston, I headed to the self-service kiosks to print our boarding passes. I entered the reservation code, my kids’ names and mine popped up, I verified the information, hit print, and presto—in the blink of an eye we had everything in hand. Shoes off at security, bla bla bla, and fifteen minutes later we were airborne to Miami.
We arrived late in the evening and stayed overnight at a Marriott near the airport. In the morning, after breakfast, we took the shuttle back.
The Monolith Face
I repeated the same routine as in Houston, but this time the machine paused before printing, displaying a message instructing me to report to the counter.
I handed our passports to an American Airlines agent with a face carved out of solid stone, her gaze as stern as a pre-Inca monolith. She scrutinized them meticulously, sizing us up from head to toe as if we were international fugitives, before declaring: “You’re fine, sir, but your children cannot board.”
A cold sweat ran down my spine, my hair standing on end. I asked why. She offered an evasive glance and began reciting the litany: color passport photos for the kids, a formal letter of invitation from a resident in Bolivia, copies of my fingerprints, bank statements, a full accounting of my financial assets, and finally a notarized travel authorization—stamped, signed, and duplicated—from the children’s mother.
I stood there petrified and trembling, not from cold, but from sheer rage. There were barely two hours left before departure, and apparently nothing the airline could do for me—much less this bureaucratic troglodite, who didn’t so much as blink when I informed her I had personally called the consulate and was assured valid passports were all that was required. The deepest fury, of course, was directed at myself for failing to cross-check the information. I hadn’t double-checked because, in my foolish optimism, I had assumed the officials of the famed Plurinational State were qualified, professional, and experienced enough to hold sensitive diplomatic posts.
A Flying Alasitas Fair
While this disaster unfolded amidst the chaos of the ticketing line, the clock kept up its relentless tick-tock. I thought for a moment—a rare occurrence for me—and decided to bolt from the Miami airport on the double.
I started sprint-running down the corridors like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find an exit. So wildly was I running out of desperation that from my bags, like overripe fruit from a tree, began falling the iPods, porcelain chamber pots, tin piggy banks, plastic combs, paperweights, and every other trinket I was carrying as gifts for relatives. Sprinting without a clear direction, I must have looked like a compass without cardinal points or, more accurately, an Ekeko god of abundance hit with a sudden stomach bug searching frantically for a restroom. Having no free limbs—my hands already full of packages—I had no choice but to keep running by kicking and herding the bags along like rolling aguayo woven suitcases, leaving a trail of merchandise behind me that turned the airport concourse into a full-blown Alasitas miniature market.
Fortunately, the astonished shouts of the crowd yelling at the top of their lungs—”Make way! Make way!”—served as my wind-up key. Barely conscious and dragging my kids in my wake, I reached the taxi stand nearly half a kilometer away in the bowels of that infernal airport.
Thirty-Five Dollars in Photos
I ordered the driver to rush us to the nearest CVS to get instant passport photos. When we arrived, we leaped out, and—having learned nothing from my previous mistakes—I begged him to wait with the engine running, swearing I’d be right back. Once again, like an absolute fool, I committed the madness of trusting a cabbie, leaving our main luggage in his trunk. As for the gifts, I didn’t even care anymore; they had been abandoned to their fate on the concourse floors of Miami International.
Thank God, nothing bad happened. When we ran out, I saw him sitting peacefully in his car, reading the newspaper and listening to his music. I have no doubt that had he been one of those clever unlicensed drivers back home, he would have bolted with our belongings, leaving us stranded mid-journey—literally barer than Adam and Eve, covering our modest bits with four-by-four passport photos instead of fig leaves.
With a stroke of luck, requirement number one was resolved for thirty-five dollars.
Two Dollars and Fifty-Five Cents at Kinko’s
We still needed the bank statements and remaining paperwork, which required a computer and printer. I frantically searched my phone for the nearest Kinko’s, and the closest option was in Coconut Grove, about seven miles away. There was nothing to do but continue our taxi odyssey while the meter kept ticking up, calculating miles at a rate that rose like a spike in fever.
We finally arrived and I managed to print everything. The second requirement was resolved with an expenditure of two dollars and fifty-five cents: an absolute bargain compared to the price of those damn photos.
On the way back to the airport, I told the cab driver to stop driving like a pensioner, reminding him we had zero time to spare. Rather than pitying our misfortune like a cloistered nun, he needed to fly us back like a rocket, as we had barely thirty minutes left to board. When we hopped out, I thanked him for his patience, though my wallet took a beating: the taxi bill came out to a crisp hundred and twenty-five dollars.
Five Minutes
We arrived panting at the counter, where the same American Airlines agent was still standing like a wooden scarecrow. At the mere sight of us, she put on an “it wasn’t me” expression and informed us we could no longer board—check-in had closed exactly five minutes earlier.
I looked at her with white-hot fury, peppering my language with colorful expletives as I insisted we still had a full half-hour before flight time. To avoid looking me in the eye, she buried her head beneath the counter like a third-rate ostrich and pointed to a sheet stating that check-in closed strictly thirty minutes prior to departure. I checked my watch: 1:35 PM. The plane was scheduled to lift off at 2:00 PM on the dot and land at El Alto by 9:00 PM.
Exhausted and thoroughly defeated, I sank into an airport seat for what felt like an eternity until I recovered my breath and my wits. In the end, I resigned myself: I had done everything within human power, but due to the intransigence of a heartless bureaucrat and a missing five minutes, we were grounded.
Coconuts at the Hotel
We returned to the same hotel and, dead on our feet after a quick dinner, crawled into bed and slept like angels. We woke up the next morning to the whistles of seabirds gliding along the shore in search of stray fish, accompanied by the rich scent of coconuts falling from the palms surrounding the property. We felt relieved, knowing that in just a few hours we would finally be en route to Bolivia—barring any further mishaps.
To avoid last-minute surprises, we headed to the airport at the crack of dawn. Approaching the counter with trepidation, I was immensely relieved to find that the stony-faced clerk from the day before was, thank Heaven, nowhere in sight. I handed our paperwork to a different agent who, without a single objection, handed over our boarding passes. No one mentioned a letter of invitation, fingerprints, or a notarized mother’s consent form—the very items that had nearly ruined our trip. Breathing easier, we cleared security and, before you could say Jack Robinson, were sitting comfortably in leather seats waiting for the aircraft that would carry us to our destination.
Doing a quick mental calculation, I realized this whole ordeal had cost me a small fortune: adding up dinner, an extra night at the hotel, breakfast, ground transport, photos, cab fares, and copies came out to four hundred and eighty-one dollars and fifty-five cents—plus an incalculable amount of pure rage. I was consumed with irritation, not just over the money, but because I had lost a whole day of vacation. Even so, I calmed myself down, laughed it off, and democratically divided the blame between the airline agent and the incompetent at the embassy.
The Socialist Sauna
Around 1:20 PM, boarding was announced. After the usual gate chaos, with everyone finally seated and buckled in, the aircraft began taxiing down the runway. Suddenly, the captain’s voice came over the intercom announcing that due to unexpected circumstances, we would have to remain holding on the tarmac until further notice.
Anyone who has experienced this knows that being trapped inside a stationary plane on a tarmac, with no option to exit, is a torture worse than anything invented in the Middle Ages—you aren’t even permitted to use the lavatory to relieve yourself. As the minutes dragged on, the cabin air grew thick and heavy. It seemed as though, out of sheer anxiety, the collective sweat of the passengers began clogging the A/C vents, turning the fuselage into a socialist sauna devoid of ventilation. To make matters worse, passengers in unison began venting digestive gases that fogged up the windows and filled the cabin with the stale, pungent aroma of spoiled chajchu.
A brutal mechanical clattering shook the belly of the plane, accompanied by an inexplicable loading and unloading of luggage. Finally, the captain spoke again, announcing we would be taking off shortly and apologizing as if the delay were his personal fault. We lifted off, and within minutes were heading south.
The Man Bound for La Paz
That foolish people exist in this world, no one can deny. But the fellow traveling with us took the crown: he had boarded the completely wrong aircraft, and amid the chaos at the gate, airline staff hadn’t caught the blunder.
It turns out that once onboard and moments before takeoff, listening to the conversation of the passengers on either side of him—because the idiot, to top it off, had insisted on a middle seat claiming he suffered from vertigo—he realized that Cochabamba and Sucre, their destinations, were nowhere on his itinerary. Only then did he grasp his blunder.
It was true the old chap was flying to La Paz, as his boarding pass attested—except he wasn’t flying to the seat of government in Bolivia, but to the city of La Paz in Baja California, Mexico. The poor fool had simply read the words “La Paz” on the electronic gate display without bothering to notice the country name printed in large letters right next to it.
According to the captain, security protocol dictated that the aircraft could not depart until every piece of luggage was cross-checked with 100% certainty. Now the banging in the cargo hold made sense: it was the crew unloading every bag, matching names to the original manifest, and reloading them. In short, thanks to one total blockhead, we sat stranded for nearly two hours on the tarmac, drenched in sweat and with bladders on the verge of bursting.
Closed Skies
Mid-flight, I attempted to sleep, but the anticipation of landing kept me wide awake. I passed the time watching old movies until around eleven at night, when the familiar voice of the captain came over the speaker once more. Adding up our flight hours, I figured we ought to be on final approach to El Alto, expecting the captain to announce our descent. Instead, what he said changed everything: we were being diverted to Santa Cruz to await further instructions.
As fate would have it, at that precise moment the Bolivian presidential aircraft was entering national airspace following a tumultuous return trip from the steppes of Moscow. The president had gone there on a business tour—and to verify firsthand whether the Kremlin turrets were truly made of sugar and snow, as the counter-revolutionary opposition back home claimed.
I later learned from the press that days earlier, certain European nations—specifically France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, whom our indigenous ruler viewed as imperialist lackeys—had the audacity to deny his aircraft passage through their airspace. And who were they to close the skies to the secretary general of the political utopia known as the MAS, the emeritus sports secretary of the Chapare coca growers, the doctor honoris-sin-causa, the president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Plurinational State of Bolivia? To deny airspace to none other than the illustrious Evo Morales, during his triumphant return from Russia, on the mere suspicion that he was smuggling Edward Snowden inside a Russian nesting doll gifted by Putin?
With blind righteousness, the president decided to exact his revenge on those responsible for the blockade, convinced the Americans were behind the plot. To demonstrate who held the reins—and to remind the world that when he gets angry, everyone ought to tread lightly—he issued a mid-flight decree: for a period of five full hours, nothing and no one, neither angels nor holy spirits, would fly through the skies or land on the runways of Bolivia while the criollo emperor traversed the Andean sky. So ironclad was the order that air force fighter jets were dispatched to patrol the clouds, ensuring not a single fly took wing during those hours.
Midsummer Bonfires in July
And so, through no fault of our own, we were diverted to Santa Cruz, where we had to wait for the presidential jet to land, for the emperor to disembark, review the imperial guard, and fulfill every ceremonial protocol—which were not few, considering the traditional flower-throwing and garland-draping ceremonies take quite some time.
As if that weren’t enough, we sat waiting an extra two hours for good measure, because the supporters and party loyalists surrounding the airport to back the mini-dictator decided to celebrate. Even though it was July, they treated the occasion like the festival night of San Juan, partying until dawn with booze, bonfires, and fireworks on the tarmac.
Cash Is King
Finally, we reached La Paz just as the first rays of sunlight hit the highest peak of Mount Illimani. We headed to immigration where, to my sheer surprise, no one asked who on earth I was, where I came from, or where I was going: not a single mention of passport photos, letters of invitation, bank statements, or any other bureaucratic nonsense. The Plurinational treasury seemed interested in one thing only: cash.
All they said was: “That will be one hundred and forty-five dollars per head for the visa fee.”
Milliseconds after handing over the cash, click—the gate opened. And there I was at last, shivering from the high-altitude cold, breathing the crisp mountain air of the City of Our Lady of La Paz alongside my two kids—their passports carrying brand-new visas, and not a single gift in our hands, since the iPods, chamber pots, piggy banks, and combs remained scattered like mini-festivity offerings along the concourses of Miami.
It took me forty-eight hours to reach my destination: stranded first in the United States thanks to misinformed bureaucrats, and stranded later in my own country because the President felt like closing the national airspace out of sheer pique—as if I were somehow to blame for him getting grounded on the runways of Europe.