November 1st was a travel day for me as I was leaving Bogota to head to La Paz, Boliva (via a stopover in Lima, Peru). It was a bit tiresome in that I left Bogota at 4 PM and did not arrive in La Paz, until after midnight. Though inconvenient, this was not abnormal. What was, however, was what happened when I arrived in La Paz.
Upon deplaning, all of the passengers prepared to go through customs and as my turn arrived (I somehow found myself the last person in line) to pass through, I greeted the officer cordially. Inspecting my passport and documents, he began talking to another officer. This didn´t worry me too much as I knew that my passport and customs papers were in order, but after a period of time he began looking from my face, to my passport picture and back again. He handed my passport over to another officer.
"I don´t think that looks like him," he said in Spanish. "What do you think?"
The other officer shrugged his shoulders, looking more doubtful than anything. The first officer asked me to take off my hat and lean in closer to the window. He looked down at the passport with a doubtful glance, clearly not convinced.
"Give me your passport number." My entire body froze. What kind of procedure was this, asking someone for their passport number from memory? I hesitated, and then regrouping, gave him all 9 digits in slow, clear spanish. He looked down after each number and upon hearing the 9th, and looking satisfied, stamped my passport and let me through. I don´t really want to imagine what the outcome would have been had I not known the number, especially a 12:30 at night.
I´d say I was lucky. Not that I am the most experienced travler, but I have had enough bad luck in my travels to have had reason to memorize my passport number.
The obvious moral of the story: It is worthwhile to take the time to memorize your passport number, or at least have it saved somewhere (i.e. your phone) so it is easily accessible in the event that your actual passport is not.
The even more obvious moral of the story: Make sure you look like your damn passport photo. In this case, I don´t know if the officer was having some fun with me or if he actually thought it didn´t look like me. It´s not been a problem for anyone other customs agents and its not like I´ve grown out a full beard (its only been 9 days!), but who knows.
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2 comments:
Hi Chas,
I've caught up with all of your writings (they're great). Thanks for keeping us posted. Your words about La Paz are very descriptive and make me want to visit!
I'm very curious about the relationships of the various groups of people with each other - e.g. the relationships between women and men, old and young, adults and children. No need to write a dissertation, but as you travel around the world and notice things, please comment.
Here's a good quote I read recently, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers."
Love, Aunt Gay
Passports have numbers???
Who knew...
Perhaps a shave is in order... and not the kind that makes you look like Rick the Biker from Plano, TX.
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