bolivia pt II

I left Badajoz on a Tuesday night on a bus at 12:30am and arrived in Madrid at 5:30am. After an hours waiting in the bus station, I hopped on the Metro (subway/underground/whatever they are called these days) and road it around for a good hour and 40. Now it normally takes 40 minutes to get to the airport but I had time to kill. So I rode the line backwards and thought about what it would be like to live in a big city and ride the Tube to work everyday at 6am with several other hundred thousand people.
So at nearly 8am I pulled into Barajas Airport Madrid, with supposedly 5 hours to spare. Check in wasn't difficult and I waived goodbye to my main bit of luggage. 5 hours turned into 7 hours and I found myself being envious of the man in the photo. Years of practice have left him able to sleep in conditions I wasn't able to succeed in over the previous 10 hours.

The flight finally took off and it was a party on board. You see most of the people had been living in Spain for a good amount of time, often having left husbands or wives and children back in Bolivia while they attempted to earn money over a couple of years to send it back home. This flight, leaving Madrid and heading to Bolivia signified going back to everything they loved but the money. A fair amount of free food and alcohol was consumed on the flight. It was a happy 11 hours in the air, and an even happier landing for some.

They opened the doors of the plane and the humidity hit like the plague. Next was immigration. I went and stood in the short line labeled "tourists" till I figured out there was no one at the front to stamp my passport. So I went and stood in the long line labeled "Bolivians". Nothing like standing in a long line, sweating, looking like a white fish out of brown water, waiting to be let into a country where their leader isn't getting along with your leader. So I tried to look as Canadian as possible.

45 minutes later I handed over my passport to the one guy who was looking at all 200some passports.
"Are you American?"
"My passport seems to say I am."
"Do you have a visa?"
"I didn't think I needed a visa."
"You need a visa."
"I don't have a visa."
(And so on. Short phone conversation: "I have an American here without a visa. Do they need visas? Okay, okay. Alright then. Gracias.")
"Wait here, there is another man coming to talk to you."
(That particular man and I repeated the conversation quoted above.)
However at the exact end of the conversation, from over the loudspeakers came a woman's voice asking for a certain Señor Antonio Flora to report to the information desk. The man looked up at me, looked down at my passport, then back up at me. I puffed out my chest and tried to look important.
"Is that you they are calling?"
"Yes it is."
"Do you know why they are calling you?"
"No but it's probably important, I'm a very important individual you know. Denying me entry into your country could cause some serious international problems and not to mention, it would probably cost you your job."
(At this point you have probably figured out that my responses are the one thing I have been making up so far. The rest however is truth. Curiosity finally got the better of the man once they called my name again over the loudspeaker and with a stamp in my passport, let me know I had 30 days in Bolivia. However he was going to accompany me to the information desk to see why they were calling some American who had just flown in from Spain. When we found no one there, and the lady at the desk knew nothing about me, he asked to see my passport.)
"It's not false is it."
(I paused as I considered the stupidity of his question. Briefly considered pointing out that if I was to have a false passport, one, I would not tell him that it was false, and two, I would put in it a slightly better picture of myself. Considering the fact that I was in the country with my luggage and had a couple of weeks of adventure in front of me, decided to not be a jerk and simply replied that no, it was in fact a legitimate document and that I was just a humble law abiding foreigner who wanted to see a bit of Bolivia. After a long suspicious glance he disappeared off into the distance.

Turns out, my contact in Santa Cruz had called info an hour or so earlier asking for me. Why they chose that moment to announce me, I don't know. But God seems to have pretty good timing. One 35 minute taxi ride and 5 euros later, I was hooked up with Iván my first night's host.