We have to do what for a visa??!?!?

Mount Illimani soaring into the clouds over La Paz



Ok, well the last couple of days have been quite hectic. We were able to get in touch with Gospel Minitries International who has an office in Santa Cruz Bolivia. They instructed us to purchase a plane ticket from La Paz to Santa Cruz so that they would be able to assist us through the process.
On our last day in La Paz, Eric and I decided to go to the mercado negro, for those of you that are spanishly impared, thats the black market. It was quite exciting! We were able to purchase goods for some amazing prices! What is the quality of the things we purchased.......that is TBA.
Late that evening, we were able to fly out of La Paz and fly to Santa Cruz which is fortunately only an hour flight. Once we arrived, Eric and I were not exactly sure where to go or what to do. We simply googled a hotel, flagged down a taxi driver, and asked him to take us there. We had no reservations, had no idea where it was, where we were supposed to be the next morning while all the while it is very late at night. Fortunately, the hotel we found had an available room and was fairly clean.
The next morning, we woke up around 8 am and called Jiminna, our contact through GMI. She is the one that we would be spending our entire day with trying to take care of this visa process. She was nothing short of an angel sent to us. This visa process is supposed to take 10-30 days, however we were told that she could take care of everthing in less than 1 week which was great! What we didn't know was that less than a week literally meant ONE day! Needless to say, this was a VERY busy day.

We had to exchange $500 each in order to cover the cost of our visa's. We then had to go all over town via taxi to have blood drawn at a "hospital", keep in mind that Bolivia is a 3rd world country, so you can only imagine how inviting this "hospital" was. From there, we went to a lawyer here in town to take care of about 7 legal documents in order for us to stay in Bolivia. We then needed to get passport pictures taken, then we had to go across town to get a background check done at the police station. Following the bacjground check, Eric and I went back across town and stopped at Interpol to get a national background check. We then were advised to purchase a plane ticket. However, by that point we were both a little tired so we agreed to wait until tomorrow to do that. The plane tickets are set prices, so it doesn't really matter when we purchase them.
So the plane from here is to purchase a plane ticket tomorrow, and once we are done with that, we will be able to spend the rest of our time before our flight to explore (which will only be a few hours). Stay tuned!!!


P.S. One thing that I have forgotten to mention in my blogs, is that the roads over here are absolutely insane!! It is terrifying to cross the street or be in a taxi. There are literally no laws over here. We were told that the "rules of the road" are based on respect for others, and who has more money. We even saw a full sized bus full of people slam on its breaks, and skid about 20 feet up towards the curb and other cars!! just thought i'd throw that in for you guys.

You stay civilized........planet earth!!!!