Oh holy....place down under

Per my last post, today was the day to return to immigration and collect papers.  Big surprise, we STILL don't have papers in hand.  Here's how it went down...

This morning Pollito dropped me off at the Immigration Ministry.  I had all my papers in order and I lined up and got shuffled between windows and then they tell me they can't find my information and that I need to go to the United office to get a report saying that I was actually on the flight.  I fought with them for a food 10 minutes, because really what I am doing is fixing their mistake.  The day I left Peru, the entire system was down.  What should have happened is that they should have entered the information into the system as soon as it was back up.  I have everything that I need.  I have my exit stamp AND the stamp where I had to pay the over-stay fine.  As far as I'm concerned, they need to do the rest.  Unfortunately, not.

I tried to go to an Internet place and I printed off my e-ticket (which cost an arm and a leg on the world's slowest machine) and showed it to the people at the window.  The man (I swear he is a robot) looked at them, went to ask someone about something, and then came back and told me that I had to do what his boss had said about getting proof that I was on the flight.  Great.  I went outside and looked for a taxi.  It probably took a good 20 mins to get down to the neighbor hood of the airline office and about 10 minutes walking around trying to find it.

Along the way I had to change a large bill and had to try two different places.  Swell.  I found the United/Continental office and sat down to wait.  I had arrived just after these two old ladies who had to have their names changed because their ID and their tickets didn't match and then they had a whole bunch of other questions and concerns.  When I finally got up to the window, the woman told me that United/Continental don't issue proof of being on the flight.  Its against their policies.  So she gave me proof that they don't issue this type of proof.  And I had to find my way back to immigration to meet Pollito.

I saw some cool things along the way such as a Mini World theme park, a medicinal botanical garden and a 3 block tiled mural that represented each department in Peru.  First I thought it was a cool community project, and then I saw the 1 block long dedicated to the late Pope.  Ah well.

When I arrived, close to a half hour later (traffic) I was starving and hot and Pollito told me that he had been talking to a person and then the person had disappeared to look for the documents that say that I left the country and that we just had to wait.  We spoke several times with people (who, by the way pretty much ignored me when they talked to both of us even though these papers were for me.  Pollito says they are just like that and they don't know any better) and the only response that we got was that they were looking and it was the airline's fault that they wouldn't give me the proof of being on the plane..

The man finally came out again and said that they had found all of the other manifests except my flight (what a coincidence)  and that I needed to sign a sworn document that verified that what I was saying was true.  This was just ridiculous.  I have the stamp in my passport.  I also have the entrance stamp from when I came back into the country.  I obviously did not make it through security, then immigration to hang out in the airport for  2 weeks and then somehow get from the departures part of the airport to the arrivals part and get my passport stamped again.  I suppose I could have bribed someone to give me stamps....three of them..but they why is just the entrance shown in my records?  Anyway, luckily we didn't have to get the darn thing notarized and Pollito just copied someone else's sworn statement and I signed it and we turned it in.

The man said it would be ready on Monday.  Right.

Writing out a sworn statement.  So much effort for something at the end, we wrote by hand and swore by ourselves.

During this time Pollito also called his uncle who works in the congress because he is friends with some important person in Immigration.  After we were almost all the way home, his uncle calls back and says he has the connections that we can call this woman and get the paperwork done today.  GAHGHGH.  Too bad we were already an hour away and hot, and annoyed, and tired, and HUNGRY.  We will have to see if this goes through on Monday anyway.  But knowing someone who knows someone almost insures that we will get the document on Monday.

When the document is handed over, I have to translate them and then we can turn them in.  Monday can't come soon enough.