We have horrid kids in the room beside us making a bloody racket until 2.30am when Sarah gets out of bed and bangs the wall. They finally shut up. This is not how we wanted to spend the night before our interview for a US visa at their embassy. We have an early start, need to be out of the hostel at 8.30am to be there for 9.45am at the latest. It's a bit of a dander from here, and I ain't risking rush hour traffic in a taxi.
Mind you, we do make it out on time even though Sarah's eyes are burning in her head. She has suffered so much worse than I at altitude. She hasn't been in great shape since the water bug in Lima, and that's quite a while ago. The security of drinkable tap water and familiar germs is a serious encouragement when it comes to thinking about going home.
The walk to the US Embassy isn't too bad, only takes us about 40 minutes instead of an hour (I haven't started walking any slower just cause I'm 4000m up!) but our initial plans go awry as the branch of Alexander Coffee, Bolivia's version of Clements, is shut for staff training until 10.30am. We were banking on it being open, getting breakfast there, and not wanting to kill everyone in the whole world. This is not a good start.
Worse yet, five more minutes down the road, there is a mad queue outside the US Embassy. Surely a line of staff trying to get in to work? No, this is queueing, US-style. Madness. There are three queues where only two can be seen. One girl at the top is verifying everyones' documents and sending them to the back of the second queue. It appears that our 10am timeslot is a little meaningless. Naturally we only figure this out, in our tiredness and hunger, after asking a few questions and finally arriving at the top of the queue. This takes about 45 minutes. Pages stamped, someone who speaks English!, we are sent to the back of the other queue which, admittedly, moves a little faster. Only one person through the metal detecting machine inside, that's what's keeping us. Still, somewhere around 10.30am we are inside the embassy.
For such an enormous building, all the action takes place in one relatively small room to the left of the lobby. More efficient queueing system here, one that involves sitting down on seats and awaiting your turn. We are surrounded by Bolivians who all seem to want to go for a holiday in the US, except the girl behind us who seems to be married to a US marine. She drops her photos all over the ground.
Up to Window One, yes, its our first visa, yes, here are our fingerprints on your fancy machine, sit down again in a different queue then into another room. Now we're sucking diesel! This chap is incredibly helpful, he admits upon sight of our emergency passports "When I see those I know something bad has happened", and we blaze through our chat. "Come back here tomorrow at 11am and these will be waiting for you with your visas". The relief pours through us. Alexander Coffee is open now and we need to supplement our joy.
Except we don't have time. We devastate a Subway Club sandwich (average) and get to La Embajada de Argentina just after midday. "If we drop our passports into you tomorrow, would they be ready for us on Monday morning to enable us to take a bus at 1pm to Buenos Aires?" "Ummm... I would book the bus for Tuesday, just in case." Very sensible, that man. A taxi to the bus station, a bus ticket booked with Trans-Boliviana, BOB$700, bargain. That's about GBP60. The flight was about GBP300 or so.
So we dander back to the hostel, kick back for a while, watch some crap tv, and before long its nearly 6pm and we are starving. Should we risk the Star of India, La Paz's Number One British Curry House? Well, why not?
The restaurant is back across town in that touristy part of La Paz, but its still a relatively easy downhill ten minute walk. There, in a pokey place with a couple of big parties at the back and a door that no one understands how to close properly, we sample their starter platter for two (one big garlic naan, two pakora that are really salteñas, a couple of decent onion bhajis) followed by a chicken tikka masala (far too spicy but not bad had it been something else) and a chicken madras (not bad at all). The madras rice was just long grain white rice with spicy ketchup through it, the naans weren't bad, but the saving grace on the whole thing was the very generous portions the Star of India allocates, and not for too much money either. It scratched our curry itch, and that was what we needed. It is hilarious that Brits (and it really was all Brits) travel the world with a craving for spicy food that isn't even their own. Still, its also one of the finer cultural aspects of modern Britain. Fish n Chips is still supreme though.
Walk back home, pass out around 10pm. Woken again at 11.30pm by bloody kids. Sarah bangs on the wall again. No relief this time. I guess maybe they figure its too early to shut the hell up. Now I am very awake. Somehow, sometime later, I pass out. Then the weird dreams start. That's what I get for not having a beer today. Crazy, crazy dreams roll around my head. The rain lashes down all night, trying to drown the city. Somewhere around 8.30am I am awake again, surprisingly fresh and ready for Round Two of Visa Hell.
This time its a whole lot easier. An 11am appointment means grabbing a taxi to the US Embassy and being their by 10.30am. Far too early, but no problem. We chat to the security girl on the door and anticipate breakfast at Alexander Coffee, just up the road. Just before 11am we are called over to reception and sign off for our passports, complete with US visa, valid for ten years. There is yet more outpouring of relief. One decent coffee and plate of triple-grain pancakes later and we hike up the hill to the Argentine Embassy. One deposit slip later, a visit to the bank, hand over US$50 or BOB$348.50 and back we go, hand over receipts, my bank statement, photocopies of our bus tickets and our passports and we are done! Friday's work is completed and we may now sit, relax, and complete other basic tasks.
Which consists of wandering around places we have already been, eating salchipapas for lunch (plus a big bottle of Simba, which is a little like Inka Cola but comes in a big glass Maine lemonade bottle), discovering that Bolivia's fake Hard Rock Cafe is shut (we think) and Sarah buying everything she needed in one single shop. Some sort of miracle. We check out an artisan market outside the university which is deep in twice-the-price-pruck. We buy some more football stickers and settle down in Cafe Torino yet again, one more bottle of wine to oil the conversation, and we chat away with Jhonny, our waiter, who is very helpful and points out that, at the end of the main shopping street, there are a few chaps who will swap their stickers with you. In spite of all our travails this is wonderful evening, even if I do hear La Vie En Rose (instrumental version) half a dozen times. We inhale a couple of tasty sandwiches too, just in case.
At some point around 10pm we decide to pack up and go home, all out of stickers (though holding a few doubles by this point) and somehow, without us noticing, it has lashed down outside. Folk are drenched. The little market stalls are covered in wet plastic sheeting. We 'haul shell', as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would have said, and a quick hard walk later we are back in the hostel, the last five minutes of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are on (in Spanish), and by the time Billy Wilder's 'Witness For The Prosecution' comes on I am exhausted, catch the first twenty minutes and pull the covers over my head.
Mind you, we do make it out on time even though Sarah's eyes are burning in her head. She has suffered so much worse than I at altitude. She hasn't been in great shape since the water bug in Lima, and that's quite a while ago. The security of drinkable tap water and familiar germs is a serious encouragement when it comes to thinking about going home.
The walk to the US Embassy isn't too bad, only takes us about 40 minutes instead of an hour (I haven't started walking any slower just cause I'm 4000m up!) but our initial plans go awry as the branch of Alexander Coffee, Bolivia's version of Clements, is shut for staff training until 10.30am. We were banking on it being open, getting breakfast there, and not wanting to kill everyone in the whole world. This is not a good start.
Worse yet, five more minutes down the road, there is a mad queue outside the US Embassy. Surely a line of staff trying to get in to work? No, this is queueing, US-style. Madness. There are three queues where only two can be seen. One girl at the top is verifying everyones' documents and sending them to the back of the second queue. It appears that our 10am timeslot is a little meaningless. Naturally we only figure this out, in our tiredness and hunger, after asking a few questions and finally arriving at the top of the queue. This takes about 45 minutes. Pages stamped, someone who speaks English!, we are sent to the back of the other queue which, admittedly, moves a little faster. Only one person through the metal detecting machine inside, that's what's keeping us. Still, somewhere around 10.30am we are inside the embassy.
For such an enormous building, all the action takes place in one relatively small room to the left of the lobby. More efficient queueing system here, one that involves sitting down on seats and awaiting your turn. We are surrounded by Bolivians who all seem to want to go for a holiday in the US, except the girl behind us who seems to be married to a US marine. She drops her photos all over the ground.
Up to Window One, yes, its our first visa, yes, here are our fingerprints on your fancy machine, sit down again in a different queue then into another room. Now we're sucking diesel! This chap is incredibly helpful, he admits upon sight of our emergency passports "When I see those I know something bad has happened", and we blaze through our chat. "Come back here tomorrow at 11am and these will be waiting for you with your visas". The relief pours through us. Alexander Coffee is open now and we need to supplement our joy.
Except we don't have time. We devastate a Subway Club sandwich (average) and get to La Embajada de Argentina just after midday. "If we drop our passports into you tomorrow, would they be ready for us on Monday morning to enable us to take a bus at 1pm to Buenos Aires?" "Ummm... I would book the bus for Tuesday, just in case." Very sensible, that man. A taxi to the bus station, a bus ticket booked with Trans-Boliviana, BOB$700, bargain. That's about GBP60. The flight was about GBP300 or so.
So we dander back to the hostel, kick back for a while, watch some crap tv, and before long its nearly 6pm and we are starving. Should we risk the Star of India, La Paz's Number One British Curry House? Well, why not?
The restaurant is back across town in that touristy part of La Paz, but its still a relatively easy downhill ten minute walk. There, in a pokey place with a couple of big parties at the back and a door that no one understands how to close properly, we sample their starter platter for two (one big garlic naan, two pakora that are really salteñas, a couple of decent onion bhajis) followed by a chicken tikka masala (far too spicy but not bad had it been something else) and a chicken madras (not bad at all). The madras rice was just long grain white rice with spicy ketchup through it, the naans weren't bad, but the saving grace on the whole thing was the very generous portions the Star of India allocates, and not for too much money either. It scratched our curry itch, and that was what we needed. It is hilarious that Brits (and it really was all Brits) travel the world with a craving for spicy food that isn't even their own. Still, its also one of the finer cultural aspects of modern Britain. Fish n Chips is still supreme though.
Walk back home, pass out around 10pm. Woken again at 11.30pm by bloody kids. Sarah bangs on the wall again. No relief this time. I guess maybe they figure its too early to shut the hell up. Now I am very awake. Somehow, sometime later, I pass out. Then the weird dreams start. That's what I get for not having a beer today. Crazy, crazy dreams roll around my head. The rain lashes down all night, trying to drown the city. Somewhere around 8.30am I am awake again, surprisingly fresh and ready for Round Two of Visa Hell.
This time its a whole lot easier. An 11am appointment means grabbing a taxi to the US Embassy and being their by 10.30am. Far too early, but no problem. We chat to the security girl on the door and anticipate breakfast at Alexander Coffee, just up the road. Just before 11am we are called over to reception and sign off for our passports, complete with US visa, valid for ten years. There is yet more outpouring of relief. One decent coffee and plate of triple-grain pancakes later and we hike up the hill to the Argentine Embassy. One deposit slip later, a visit to the bank, hand over US$50 or BOB$348.50 and back we go, hand over receipts, my bank statement, photocopies of our bus tickets and our passports and we are done! Friday's work is completed and we may now sit, relax, and complete other basic tasks.
Which consists of wandering around places we have already been, eating salchipapas for lunch (plus a big bottle of Simba, which is a little like Inka Cola but comes in a big glass Maine lemonade bottle), discovering that Bolivia's fake Hard Rock Cafe is shut (we think) and Sarah buying everything she needed in one single shop. Some sort of miracle. We check out an artisan market outside the university which is deep in twice-the-price-pruck. We buy some more football stickers and settle down in Cafe Torino yet again, one more bottle of wine to oil the conversation, and we chat away with Jhonny, our waiter, who is very helpful and points out that, at the end of the main shopping street, there are a few chaps who will swap their stickers with you. In spite of all our travails this is wonderful evening, even if I do hear La Vie En Rose (instrumental version) half a dozen times. We inhale a couple of tasty sandwiches too, just in case.
At some point around 10pm we decide to pack up and go home, all out of stickers (though holding a few doubles by this point) and somehow, without us noticing, it has lashed down outside. Folk are drenched. The little market stalls are covered in wet plastic sheeting. We 'haul shell', as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would have said, and a quick hard walk later we are back in the hostel, the last five minutes of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are on (in Spanish), and by the time Billy Wilder's 'Witness For The Prosecution' comes on I am exhausted, catch the first twenty minutes and pull the covers over my head.
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