The Friday I left for London was full of stress. The strike was back on (not sure if it ever really stopped?) but this time it was serious. I planned to take a night bus to La Paz but the buses weren't running because there were blockades, so I left in search of a plane ticket. I was able to buy a ticket for 11:00 pm that night, so I planned to stay the night in La Paz and leave for the airport the next morning. The travel agent nicely reminded me that I needed to bring my passport to board the flight, which I knew, but my passport was also a source of angst.
Our lawyer sent my passport to Immigration in La Paz about a month and a half ago so they could process my one year visa application. In the week leading up to my trip, I inquired as to the whereabouts of my passport daily and was told, "mañana," every time. On Thursday I asked again, and again was told "mañana, seguro." The 'seguro' was a good sign.
Anyway after passing a semi violent blockade where agitated trufi drivers were throwing stones and wielding sticks I made it back to the office and my passport arrived! I am now a legal resident of Bolivia!
I flew to London really without much incident, besides my flight from Cochabamba to La Paz being delayed two and a half hours. That at least gave me time to join my friends at the bar for a bit.
London was amazing, I ate so much good food, hung out with my lovely parents and friends, and overall had a great vacation. The travel back home was strenuous. The flights themselves weren't particularly terrible and I even managed to sleep a bit, but I arrived in La Paz at around 6 am, hoping to take a flight back to Cochabamba instead of taking the 7 hr bus ride that I was definitely not up for. I got on the waiting list for a flight but there didn't end up being room and the next flight after that wasn't for 6 more hours so I just decided to take the bus. I had to wait in the bus station for an hour and a half (a rare and unpleasant occurrence) where I discovered that there is a sign in each bathroom stall that says "NO SPITTING." Is that really the biggest issue with the bathroom? Let me answer that one for you: no.
I got on the bus and as it turns out, I was lucky the buses were running since the week before there had been several landslides that blocked the road. I saw the remnants of a few of these as the bus cautiously drove over the fallen stones. That was fine with me. What was not fine was the excruciatingly slow speed the bus moved in the straight (clear of debris) highway which is the only part of the journey a bus can actually go reasonably fast. I felt like we were moving down a highway at about 20 miles per hour, with no visible impediments. During all of this, the child behind me proceeded to kick and push my seat so hard that if I pushed the button to try to recline it, the chair would come flying forward from the sheer force of this four year old girl's strength. We had a little battle at a few points throughout the journey and at one point I turned around and snapped, "por favor! déjalo!" which literally means, "please! leave it!" which may or may not make sense but she did stop for a bit.
The worst part of the bus ride from La Paz is the point when you are driving through the mountains and you can actually SEE Cochabamba. You think you are almost home, almost off the bus, almost to a clean bathroom (the bus has a bathroom on it but it is always, always, always locked), almost to a shower, almost to a bed, almost to food. No. It's still another hour and a half if you are on a normal bus but I was clearly not. Hours of seat-kicking later (and hours of imagining revenge that definitely verged on child abuse) we arrived in the outskirts of Cochabamba. Before getting off the bus the child reached over my seat and hit me on the top of my head. Nice.
I took a taxi home- the 2nd taxi I asked- because the first one didn't want to take me because there were too many vueltas (turns). Alright. Anyway, I got home and it was great. The one bit of information I learned from the whole experience, however, is that if you are a foreigner living legally in Bolivia (i.e. with residency or a long term visa) and you fly out of the country, you have to pay two taxes of about 25-30 dollars each, the tax that foreigners have to pay, and the tax that nationals have to pay, because I guess you are considered both foreign and Bolivian, for tax purposes, naturally.
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