This morning I paid the “tasa anual” or yearly tax on my carné de extranjería. All in all it took me several hours to accomplish this, getting a current official copy of our “acta de matrimonio”, a bunch of other copies, a “pago” at the Banco de la Nacion, etc.

While I was waiting in line at the Peruvian immigration office this morning, one of the other folks waiting in line said:

So true…

Meaning, loosely translated, “if Peruvians aren’t growing coca they are somewhere standing in line”. Or you could look at it as the Peruvians in rural areas (the ones chewing coca) work the land and the mines, doing productve stuff, while the folks in the city eat ice cream, write blogs like this one and spend countless hours on inane bureaucracy, doing not much of anything productive 🙂

Cola means “line”, it’s one of the first words you’ll ever learn in Spanish, right up there with mañana and un rato. Although it must be said Peruvians are horrible at making a cola, they are habitually trying to cut in line…