"Where's your tape?"

As mentioned before, we went crazy with shopping in 'La Cancha', the market in Cochabamba. We bought jumpers, blankets, carpets, purses and a hammock in bolivian colours. We planned that this shopping trip has to be in Bolivia, no country so far had such a variety of good quality handicrafts for such low prices. We also planned to send the things home. Let's say that much, we had problems to get out of the Micro (the bolivian 'city-bus') with our bags...

The day after our big market day we headed towards 'el Correo', the post office. The lonely planet book mentions several places to send post from, one of them is the customs control where they search the sending so it won't be opened for checks later on. That's the place we found ourselves, no clue where to go. The uniformed customs lady? The lady behind the computer? Or just downstairs right into the basement? The customs lady seemed the best solution (or was it just her uniform?) so we went there. Good choice! She checked our bags with the souvenirs roughly and sent us downstairs to the packing area. I read that they need copies of the passports but she told me off.

Downstairs was the oldest guy working i've ever seen, his smoking ashtray next to the non-smoking sign. He was also the oldest person talking english (just few words, but still!) i've ever seen. He weighed the two bags and told us the price to send them over to Europe. Lonely planet also says that this place is cheaper... Hopefully!

Next he brought a huge cardboard box and with the help of another lady he lifted my bag into the way too big box. This didn't make them happy. Smaller box. Way too small i thought. Bag didn't fit, so they tried to fit every piece separately, still didn't fit. After i removed my hammock and gave it over to Anni (she seemed to be in a similar situation i found by the big smile on her face) everything fit, and i was glad only to have clothes in the now out of shape box...

He told me to hold down the box while he wanted to tape it up. "Where's your tape?" he asked. I wasn't sure what he meant so i said the tape is over there. He shook his head and asked again "Where is YOUR tape?" Since I didn't have my own tape he told me to leave and buy one... When I came back as a proud owner of a brand new roll of scotch tape, I saw Anni and her two helpers treating her box the same violent way grandpa treated my box before I left. He was happy with my choice of tape and started to tape the box back in its original shape (more or less). Halfway through he asked for the passport copy and since I didn't have one and he didn't have a photocopier I pfound myself on the street again, looking for a place with one of those...

With the two copies, worth 50 bolivian centavos, I rushed back to the customs office. He taped the copy on the outside of the box with my face smiling at everyone. Then I had to fill out the addresses, including the sender address. I told him that we're travelling, that we don't have an address, he told me to just pick a street name of a hotel or so...

After this he sent me upstairs to get some stamps from the customs lady. The room was full of people waiting for something, so I queued. After a while without seeing any movement I noticed that the lady was sleeping behind her counter. I woke her up and asked for the stamps which she gave me after a big yawn.

Back downstairs we filled out some other forms with the help of grandpa. Then the box went onto the scale again. 4.06kg. So it was out of the 4.01kg limit. After some minutes of discussing with his workmates he told me proudly that he would 'overlook' those 50 grams. He just saved me 50 bolivianos! Annis box was on the scale now. 5.08kg. Out of the 5.01kg limit... But he was as generous as with my box and saved us another 50 bucks.

After this I was told to go upstairs to the lady behind the computer to pay for our boxes. While waiting I was entertained by a bored police officer, blasting the newest bolivian hits from his cellphone. Before it was my turn I saw Anni coming back with stamps from the customs lady. Was she still awake?

After the bill was paid the computer lady said it'll take 20 days for the boxes to arrive in Switzerland (or Finland, in Anni's case). I'm not so sure about that...