Colonel Roberto Guardia

As I am sure many of you have heard we have arrived here safe and sound to Bolivia!! We had few issues at the airport...with the exception of our sudden change in plans. Our original plan was to arrive from La Paz to SantaCruz, and take another flight to Cochabamba. Please read Karly's post on how we ended up staying in La Paz.

So we end up staying with this incredibly nice family in LA Paz. At the time all I knew was that the wife and children were witnesses and the father was not and worked for the police department. We took advantage of being in LA Paz and got started right away on getting our residency. (LA Paz has all the government buildings there)  After going to get the requirements from Interpol, we get back to their home. Ade (the wife and mother) asks us what we need from Interpol and as I am reading the list to her here comes the father in uniform. We introduce ourselves. A very intimidating man at first.

After finishing the list, Senor Roberto Guardia (the husband) takes the list and says he will take care of it and get us all that we need. Of course I don't argue with the man. I readily agree and listen attentively as he tells me what he needs from us. He leaves to go back to his office and tells us to meet him there later that afternoon.

After he leaves Ade tells us that he is the Colonel of Bolivia. He is second to the highest official position. Next is General. So, needless to say this man's got power in the system! As we later came to see, just the mention of his name demands attention....and we are staying in his house. The Colonel's house!

Longer story short, he helped us get all the paperwork that we needed to turn into Interpol. All of the documents have his name and signature on it so no one questioned us. Residency process is half way finished! Turns out, Karly's unexplained persistence worked out in our favor after all. :-)

After getting to know him, he turned out to be a very loving, sweet, caring person. He gave us a lot of safety tips and advice and was always eager and ready to help. We turned out to be great buddies.

Something very interesting too is that Awake actually interviewed him. There is a paragraph and picture in the July 8 2002 page 4 awake. His name again is Roberto and in parenthesis it says (Bolivia).

How crazy is that?! :-)