Border Crossing in Central America

Our “end game” as I have been calling it, has been kind of a moving target, tough to pin down. If you look at Our Route, you can see that more than a few ideas have gained steam but ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor.  But a few countries ago, in French Polynesia, we were talking to Chris (the proprietor at the island of Ninamu) about our different ideas. He had been helping us get going with kite surfing and knew we were trying to learn to surf this year and suggested Colorado Beach in Nicaragua. We decided this would be a short journey from Costa Rica, where we were spending our time between June 19 and July 3rd, so we ahead and booked a house there, and later, a driver to get from our house in Costa Rica across the border to Nicaragua.

A little research online yielded quite a bit of confusion regarding the exit tax. It was clear that in order to leave CR by plane, an exit tax was required. But the recent blogs conceding the exit by land tax were conflicting. In December 2013, the land exit tax was implemented but fraught with problems. People were showing up at the border expecting to pay it there, but the only place to purchase the exit ticket was in Liberia, an hour backtrack by car. Because of the problems and understandable complaints, the tax was dropped for a while but supposedly was to be reinitiated in April. We saw no recent posts or embassy updates about this, so we pressed our driver for details, getting no response. The day before our departure, he got back to us and said we could pay the tax at another town, which made us nervous. Ultimately, however, we stopped in Liberia, as that was the the surest bet, and purchased six exit tickets at what looked like a DMV in a nondescript strip mall for $7 each while the kids waited in the car. Although the border crossing was a long multi-phase process, it was relatively painless. As we neared the border, our driver bypassed a long line of trucks, waiting with their engines off, and pulled up along side a barricade. We hopped out and he pointed to a line of people, which all six of us went and joined. The line moved quickly until we got inside, and then, par for the course, we found ourselves in the slowest line. Finally at the front, the man at the window dully assessed our exit tickets, surveyed the customs forms I had filled out, and then flipped laboriously through our passports looking for the Costa Rica stamp we had gotten on entry. Even though I had tucked the customs form in the passport to mark the page for him, and tried to show him, he proceeded to whip the customs form out of every passport, and then slowly flip through each page of each passport, sometimes twice, to find the stamp, so that he could ink the page right next to it. Slow and methodical, but I mused that it is doubtful that he gets paid by the passport. I have to stop here and say that as the trip has progressed and our passports have filled up with stamps and stickers marking all the countries we have passed through (34 at this point), I have begun to watch the customs agents’ eyes for a flicker of suspicion or surprise at the number of stamps. They never bat an eyelash, never ask a thing about it. Not like I expect to get an award or anything but it can’t be normal for a 7 year old to have a nearly full passport, can it? Wouldn’t that raise an eyebrow from time to time?  And Jon barely resembles the clean shaven guy pictured in his passport!  But I digress.

The shirt

We shuffled back to the car, where our driver with the One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor t-shirt, which was neatly tucked into his belted jeans sat smiling. We had two drivers, for some reason, and neither spoke English, but they pointed us where we needed to go at the critical times, or if they saw us wandering aimlessly, they’d offer a redirect.  In limbo between the countries, we pulled into another station with a few buildings, some buses, and many more entrepreneurs similar to those we had just driven by at the Costa Rican checkpoint, offering food for  sale, or money to exchange. We hopped out of the van, headed off in the direction that one of our drivers pointed, and walked into the wrong building. Soon Three Tequila, Floor poked his head in and motioned for us to follow him around the corner to the nearly hidden area where the main action takes place. He told us to go to separate lines, which we did. Jon paid a $1 fee when he got to the front of his line (I looked it up and it is an OPTIONAL fee for entering the local province, apparently). I approached two open windows and twice was told to go to the next window by the ‘busy’ nicaraguan customs agents. I waited patiently for the man behind the glass to trash talk me in Spanish to his female associate who had just pawned me off on him, and then our driver walked up and said something about five forms. I looked at him and said “seis”. He looked over at our four kids and for the first time appeared to register that we were a family of six. Hmm. I filled out the forms quickly, by now having memorized our passport numbers, and our address in Nicaragua (since this was the exact same form I filled out earlier today and given to the agents at the Costa Rican office a few minutes ago). Lifting my head up from the task, I saw a long line had formed at the window, but there was our driver, holding a spot. This didn’t stop an elderly Nicaraguan woman from pushing her way to the front of the line in front of the Americans, with whom we exchanged knowing looks. Without fluent Spanish, it is tough to tell someone off, or inquire about their intentions even, so we waited. Once at the window, we paid $12 each, another tax of some sort because visas are not required here, then hopped into the van to resume our trek. A few hundred yards later, past the disinfectant spray treatment (which our van endured, not us, thankfully) and the blow torch guy, whom we were disappointed not to see in action, we were stopped again. A guard carefully checked our documents while eyeing each of us just a second longer than is comfortable. I suppose if we had anything to hide, this type of scrutiny might be enough to make us squirm, but as if to emphasize our honest intentions, I had Jon take a photo of him.

A few seconds later, we stopped again and picked up Rudolfo, who was to be our guide and interpreter from the border to our house on Colorado beach. Having been raised for 10 years in Miami, he spoke fluent English, and immediately set about explaining each thing we saw. The first thing we asked about is the long line of trucks, which we had seen on the Costa Rican side and now were seeing again on the Nicaraguan side. He said that the computers must be down and that although the agents can do the processing on paper, they simply don’t want to, so the truckers have to wait. He said sometimes they wait as long as a week to cross the border!

He pointed out the huge lake Nicaragua (24th largest in the world), a plantain orchard, a hotel project turned baseball camp owned by a famous Nicaraguan pitcher, Dennis Martinez. He told us that the number one sport in Nica is baseball! Funny how we instantly perked up; I guess I hadn’t really realized how much I missed baseball these past 12 months. He told us that the Roberto Clemente award, which is the humanitarian and sportsmanship award in major league baseball was named after a Peurto Rican player – whose plane had gone down while he was en route with a shipment of relief supplies to victims of the 1972 Minaguan earthquake. Apparently the first three flights he had sent had been diverted to corrupt officials so he decided to accompany the fourth flight, which tragically crashed. We never knew the history of that award, and I once again thought to myself how valuable a good guide can be to making it easier to relate to a country. It was evident right away that Nicaragua is a much poorer country than the one we had just left, and much less touristy.

As we pulled into Rivas, where we were to buy groceries, we saw a stadium and asked if we could check it out. Rodolfo took us to the entrance, but it looked locked, even though we could hear a practice going on inside. As we turned away, a gentleman across the street yelled something in Spanish and pantomimed opening the gate, and Rodolfo turned back and and figured out how to open it. Ironically there was an American team playing the local team (the boys all looked to be about 18-20). Then, Rudolfo, who collects MLB caps, pointed out that the Nica’s team’s pitcher was wearing a Seatlle Mariners cap. Strange. Then, the American team’s batter steps up to the plate and the name on his Jersey: Jones, and weirder yet, his number was 44, David’s number. I’m still not certain of the meaning of all that but it seemed like a lot of strange coincidences for one spontaneous stop.

We gathered what we could at the small grocery store, but it was slim pickings. Later, we discovered that the 3 gallons of milk we bought were all spoiled, a week before their pull date, and there are no stores here at Colorado beach!! It is a gorgeous beach, but still in the earlier phases of development. There is one restaurant/beach club, one surf shop, one pizza shop (same owner as the surf shop) and a 9 hole golf course. So far, we have hiked up and down the mile-long stretch, boogie boarded, swam, and made it to the local ‘beach club’ to watch Costa Rica’s final game of the World Cup.

Our house is in a word, awesome. With three hammocks, an infinity edge pool, folding massage table and a private sentry at night, we are seriously set up for relaxation here, and after devouring 4 paperbacks, doing laundry, setting up a schedule to help Vivian with her spelling and Maggie with her multiplication facts, and FINALLY booking the last of our travel plans, I decided that it is time to start blogging again.

Our house on Colorado Beach

All smiles after catching a wave at Panga Drops!