Ah, the border... But first we had to get there. After picking up his surfboard from the trains baggage car (yes, you might wonder... what do you do with a surfboard in Bolivia, a land locked country? you stand out, that´s what you do. James and Emma had come from New Zealand, Figi, Bali, Indonesia, etc... hense the surf board. Even knowing that, it still looked pretty odd in a dusty border town) we decided that even though the guide books said you could walk to the border (turn right... about 15 min) we would share a cab.
Best idea yet. That 15 minute walk was really 3+ miles. So we beat all those other backpackers who had chosen to save themselves 3 bolivianos (about forty-five cents US). I found this funny, they were willing to walk 3 miles to save 3 bolivianos, but they obviously had all spent at least 10 more bolivianos than us on their train ride because we certainly didn’t see any of them in third class. It’s interesting to see what people spend money on. But anyway, back to the story....
We were the first westerners to the border and we needed to change money (since apparently it is near impossible to change bolivianos to pesos once in argentian) Oh, hey, great... it turns out that it’s siesta time. Every change house is closed. Well, we decided we really didn’t have that many bolivianos on us that we couldn’t keep as souvenirs... and James and Emma had some pesos we could use till we got money in Argentina. Off to Bolivian immigration.
I’ve never seen such a happy immigration officer in my life. With in about 36 seconds we had our stamps... Off to Argentina... or rather Argentinean immigration...
Now, this was the truly fun part. If you don’t count the lady with the baby and the two jackasses behind us that ended up cutting, there were about 10 people in front of us. Yet, it took over 2 hours to cross the border. In the first hour we moved a total of three and a half feet. Luckily we had plenty of things to look at to keep us entertained... pigeons, the man watering the dirt (over and over and over again... we all agreed he would have been much more productive were he inside checking our passports) and my personal favorite, the mystery of line 2.
You see, we were sent to line 4. Line 4 was apparently the line there just for show (for a while we thought that the guards had a bet going, trying to see which guard could make the longer line... the guard in charge of line 4 or the guard in charge of line 3- so far line 4 was winning) But the enigma was line 2. In our 2 hour stint in line 4 we were could not figure out why the hell the people in line 2 did not have to stop. They just waltzed their way through the border, rarely acquiring even a passing glance from the guard.
Granted, it was apparently the bicycle line, but you know what? Most of these people didn’t even have bicycles. And, even if they did, should that really make that big of a difference? We all agreed that if we were ever to try and cross this border again we would buy bicycles just to speed up the process and save ourselves the hassle of being delegated to line 4.
Oh my God. What were they doing in there? Strip-searching everyone? I certainly hope not.
For the next hour or so we only had oh, 4 or 5 more people slip their way in front of us. We were actually to the point of physically pushing past the man on crutches (we were sure they were a ploy, the minute we passed him suddenly he was miraculously healed… praise the lord he can walk) trying to cut us when we finally made it to the little window at front of line. We arrived to find a very apathetic Argentinean immigration officer slowly eating a cup of ice cream and typing all our information into the computer in the hunt and peck, one finger style, which I’m sure accounted for much of our 2 hour wait.
A stamp and all we had left was to get our bags checked. I of course, not wanting to go thru this, tried my best to play dumb and walk thru the border. Unfortunately, this time it didn’t work. Praying I would not have to open my backpack (the straps are there for a reason... they are keeping it pulling one of those worms in a can moves and popping open to twice its size) I walked over to the table.
This is interesting; the search method appears to consist of the guard giving my pack three to four hearty chest compressions. I’m not sure exactly what this is supposed to accomplish other than crushing my toiletries and I’m fairly sure this is not the most efficient way of finding contraband.
I guess it is about as good a method as making James take out his surf board so the guard could knock on it (because you know the best way to smuggle something into a country unnoticed is the middle of a desert is in a surfboard) After figuring that the surfboard was clean we were finally aloud to go.
Welcome to Argentina.
