Bribing Bolivia

So, my dear friend Maria says it is time for a new post, and she is most certaintly right, for there is much to tell about the adventure that is my life here in Peru. Catherine and I needed to renew our visas in order to stay in Peru. When we arrived in Peru, we got tourist visas that were good for 90 days. We are in the process of applying for a resident visa that is good for one year, but while were waiting for that, we needed to get another 90 days or face serious financial penalties. Since we realized this only about a week before our visas expired, we had to quickly plan a trip to Bolivia, the closest country where we could cross the border. What we really only had to do was cross the border into Bolivia, get our passport stamped, and then reurn to Peru to get a new 90 day visa. Sounds like a process that should only take about 30 minutes.....WRONG! What we thought would only be a day long trip turned out to be the worst three days of our lives. First we figured out that the shortest amount of time possible that wecould do this in was in 3 days. We left Cusco around 10 p.m. Friday night (after I realized I had forgot my passport and had to frantically take a cab back to our apartment to get it before the bus left us). After driving around Cusco for about 2 hours (for reasons we still don´t know), we were on are way to Bolivia. With only a few short stops to drop off other passengers, we arrived at the Peru-Bolivia border around 9 a.m. the next morning. There were lots of long lines and a bunch of waiting in Peru but we had no problems and soon enough we were in Bolivia waiting in line to get our visas. To make what could be a very long story short, we get into the office and see lots of sign with a list of seven requirements for American citizens to enter Bolivia, none of which we actually had brought with us. We weren´t sure what was going to happen to us, but we hoped for the best. What actually happened was the worst. We were taken into a back room where immigration officials explained to us that there really wasn´t a whole lot we could do because we had already left Peru and we couldn´t enter Bolivia without a credit card, a copy of a roundtrip ticket, a copy of our hotel reservation, $100, a copy of our yellow fever vaccination, etc. We explained that we were only coming for the day so we could get back to Peru and renew our visa, and that we weren´t touring the country, so we would never have a round trip ticket and a bunch of the other things, but didn´t seem to matter much. We were stuck, without a country to accept us. So when we asked what we could do, you can imagine what the resonse was...MONEY, they told us. How much were we willing to pay to be able to enter Bolivia for less than 24 hours. Well, we paid, and it cost us more than just money. We now have a visa to enter Bolivia that is good for 5 years, but at the cost of many of the values that we hold in high regard. I have spent a lot of time working for fairness and equality, trying to make people see that corruption and abuse of power is what is wrong with the world and is what causes the poverty and wars in so many countries and I have now become a part of that system. It was an experience I would like to forget, but it has also reminded me that there is still a lot of work to be done. We survived our trip and have sucessfully renewed our Peruvian visas, but we do have to return to Bolivia to pick up our resident visas around the end of March, that is if they don´t find out that we are actually criminals and obtained our Bolivian visas illegally. I trust this information to all of you and ask you to remember that I am actually trying to do a good thing here, so please think twice before turning me in.