Bolivian Adventure: Introduction and Arrival

Obviously a “Bolivian Adventure” doesn't quite fit with the URL for this blog, and since I'm here doing a project with Engineers without Borders, the title of my blog doesn't make too much sense either, but I hadn't anticipated documenting any future travels beyond my two quarters studying abroad, so bear with me! (Also, if you want to reflect back/compare to past trips, particuarly Ecuador, you can do so easily!)

The premise of this trip is implementing a water distribution system in a small, rural community called Piriquina. They have a water system at the moment but it's old and needs to be fixed in many places. Our UW chapter of EWB has worked in this region of Bolivia for 6 years doing water projects and roofs and stoves projects (shameless plug: http://students.washington.edu/ewbuw/ ). I've been involved with our chapter since I started at UW and I've donated the majority of my free time, as well as some time which should have been spent on things like school, to this project for the last 6 months or so. My fantastic team, who will be important characters in this story so I'll introduce them, are: Carley, fearless leader, Master's in Public Health student, and team mom who worries about health even more than me; Matias, other fearless leader and Brazilian/Urugyaan/French Spanish speaker (aka invaluable team member since he can actually communicate); Nate, fellow classmate and enormously entertaining storyteller; and Garry, Carley's husband and resident professional mentor who is the whitest person on our team despite being from South Africa (also, he has a fantastic accent). Other important people are Donee, who is the most knowledgeable person about Bolivian projects since she's worked here with EWB from the beginning (EVErYONE asks abouut her when you meet them and say you're with Ingenieros Sin Fronteras); Nate, (too be refered to as Nate2, not to be confused with my teammate Nate) her husband; and the 2011 Roofs and Stoves project team (Johnny, Craig, Kasia, and Lisa).

So far this trip has been kind of crazy. I stayed up all night packing and between Emily, Peyton, Mikk and Jenn was distracted, got everything assembled, and made it to the airport. Before I had even gotten there, though, I got a call from Nate, one of my teammates, who was already at the airport and couldn't check in for his flight because apparently American Airlines actually requires you to show all of your international travel documentation for your final destination. In this case, that meant that to check in to a flight to Dallas (in country), to catch a connection to Miami (in country) to fly to Bolivia, we had to show them all required paperwork for getting a Bolivian Visa. According to the embassy website, you need $135 USD, a yellow fever vaccination card, a visa application form, a letter of invitation or a destination address, and two passport photos with some explicit rules about how large your face can be compared to the rest of the photo. Now our Engineers Without Borders chapter has sent people to Bolivia for 6 years and NO ONE has EVER needed to show the yellow fever vaccination card or the passport photos to get into the country, including a few people who went earlier this summer. Of course, American requires you to have all of this. Nate, unfortunately, didn't get the passport photos because that was an extra errand he ran out of time for, and the rude lady at the ticket counter was not helpful or willing to ignore this dumb rule (Lady: “Would you like me to read you the list of fines I could incur if I let you on this plane?” Nate's sarcasm, which luckily he withheld” “Why yes! That's exactly what would help me right now!”). I got there and we waited in the long line together to talk to a different person, and therefore missed our 7am flight. The nice lady who helped me ut me on the 9am flight, but the third lady who helped Nate still made him go get passport photos at the Walgreens in Seatac. $50 for a cab fee later, Nate got put on some flight to the Bay Area, and then he was supposed to meet me in Miami. (Perhaps you can tell the story doesn't go quite as planned?) Meanwhile, I get to Dallas and Miami without a problem, other than having to completely repack my carry on bag at Security since it was packed rather densely with every electronic item I had with me. There was no Nate to meet me in Miami, though, because the Bay Area was, of course, cloudy, so his flight was delayed and he would have missed the flight out of Miami. Instead, I found out later (the story does work out in the end!), Nate got rerouted through Peru, where he had to pay a $140 visa fee just for passing through the airport. It was a rather expensive day for him.
I made it to La Paz, Bolivia, without incident, and I literally slept for the entire plane ride on all three flights, including the takeoff from Seattle. In La Paz, I paid my $135 visa and gave them my visa form, and did NOT show my photos, vaccination card, or destination address. Garry, another team member who had arrived a few hours before, met me at the gate, which was fantastic, and we bought $45 plane tickets to go to Cochabamba on the 7am AeroSur flight (I love South American prices!). We had a nice breakfast and then went to investigate our flight. Unfortunately, we had incorrectly calculated the time difference, so we had already missed our flight... After some choice words by Garry, we went back to AeroSur and paid a small fee to change our flight to the next available option, which was 8:30pm. We then set up camp and I passed out for about 4 hours, which was wonderful. We just relaxed on our Thermarests for a while and attemped to contact Carley, who was already in Cochabamba. We found out from her that we could buy Nate's plane ticket as long as he checked in with his passport upon arrivial, so we went to do that, but by this time, there were only first class seats, so we payed $90 for him to have snacks and legroom for a 90 minute flight. We definitely all noticed the elevation (about 13,600 feet), which made climbing one flight of stairs difficult. None of us were happy about being short of breath after going up 20 stairs, especially because the bathroom was TWO floors down and we each drank at least 3 liters of water...
We got to our gate really early to make sure we did not miss our plane, and this time managed to fly with no problems, which was refreshing. We all had all our luggage at the other end, and the hotel had sent a cab to pick us up so there was a nice driver waiting with a sign for us. Driving through the city was remarkably like Ecuador, so I guess many places in South America are similar (gated houses/buildings/yards, graffiti, crazy driving), but it felt (and still does feel) great to be back..
We met Carley, Donee, and Nate2, who had already been in Bolivia for a month doing research, at the hotel, and had a nice dinner and Jugo con Leche (juice with milk), which is more or less a light milkshake, for about 50 Bs (Bolivianos), which is just over 7 dollars. You can even have meals which are in the 15-20Bs range :)

I really have done a lot more than sit and sleep on airplanes, but I've been bad about keeping up with what we've been up to, so there will be more; I'm just not sure when!