Bad afternoon in Uyuni and "The Price is Right, Bolivian Edition"

Here is the story of my crappy afternoon in Uyuni. Fortunately, like all bad days, it eventually ended and the next day was much better.

When we arrived in Uyuni off of the salt flats tour, I went to an office to get my visa to be in Bolivia. Basically, Bolivia has a bad grudge against the United States (drug war and all that), so they make life difficult for American citizens looking to enter the country. Unlike any other nationality, I had to get a visa that cost 135 USD. Thats right, USD - they wont even accept the fee in their own currency and I am expected to have brought with me enough American money to pay the fee. Fortunately, I knew about this in advance and had pleanty of crisp, clean US bills with me. They requested the $135 and when I paid it, a guy stood there slowly inspecting each bill. He ran his finger along each edge and looked very carefuly over every bit of each bill to make sure it was perfect and not a fake, rejecting bills he found a problem with. In total he ended up rejecting well over $100 in bills. I had about $250 on me and by the time he was done rejecting bills, I thought that I wasn't going to have enough money to pay for the visa, since he had rejected so many of my bills. The bills that I had given him were good clean bills and he was rejecting them because of the smallest little tears along the edges. After this ordeal, the people on our trip enjoyed playing "where's Waldo" and searching the rejected bills for the flaws. I even made him show me where each flaw on the bills were and he would search again for a few minutes before finding the flaws (Brett suspects that the guy tore some of the bills himself, just to be a jerk). In the end, we thought that we would have to pay with $1 bills, but he wouldn't accept those and made us take it to an exchange house, where they demanded 6 $1 bills in exchange for 1 $5 bill. At the last minute Brett found a few fives in his wallet and fortunately one of them passed the inspection. It was such an infuriorating and insulting experience to watch this arrogant jerk rejecting perfectly good currency. I was so furious by the end of it, although insulting him in English was somewhat satisfying, since he only spoke Spanish. Turning up his nose at my money was just so rude and obnoxious. Ugh! At least I will never have to deal with this again and the visa is good for 5 years, plus it is pretty and colorful.

My next bad experience was later in the evening while we were at a bar for travellers killing time before our train came. Five of us were sitting around a table playing cards, with our backpacks leaned against a wall behind me, not too far from the door. When we got up to leave, we discovered that my daypack had been taken. Although I should have been more careful and kept the small bag under my seat instead of by the wall, I had thought it would be ok, since the bar was pretty dead with not many people going in and out. But somehow the bag had been grabbed without anyone noticing it. Fortunately, the super valuable things (passports, camera, bank cards, etc. are always kept in Brett's daypack, which we guard with our lives and always keep under our seats between our feet in such situations). Its still pretty upsetting to have someone rob my bag. The only really important thing that was lost was my journal that I had been keeping for the past 3 months of the trip. I was really upset about losing it, since I liked to write my personal reflections about all of these amaizing experiences and had put a lot of effort into keeping it up to date. However, I have bought a new journal and begun to rewrite as much as I can remember of each day going backwards and am doing quite well so far, although it takes up a lot of time.

I was also upset about losing my nice Choco sandals that I had really loved, my ipod, and Brett's good pocket knife (he does have an extra one). However, except for the journal, everything can be replaced and La Paz turned out to be just the place to shop. So now it is time for "The Price is Right, Bolivian Edition". See if you can guess how much each item cost when we bought it in La Paz. Prices will later be listed in Bolivianos and 7 Bolivianos are worth one USD. There will be a prize for the person with the most corect guesses (Aliza, we already told you some of the answers, so you can't play, sorry).

1. A pair of ugly black sandals made mostly of foamy plastic. They velcro around the foot, kind of like Tevas.
2. A Janssport backpack, possibly a knockoff.
3. A grey knitted Alpaca hat.
4. A pair of brown knitted Alpaca gloves - the kind with the fingers exposed and flaps that go over the fingers to make them into mittens.
5. A Mets ball cap
6. New blank journal
7. Sunscreen
8. A splitter that will allow 2 sets of headphones to be plugged into one ipod (so that Brett and I can listen to music together on bus rides).
9. A headlamp flashlight

Although it sucked having my bag stolen, you wont believe how cheap these items were! The Price is Right answers will be posted in a couple of weeks. Good luck!

-Emily