Borderline Madness

Border Crossing, COSTA RICA - PANAMA
Feb.16, 2015
[MAP II]

It's summer in Central America - dry season, and that means hot.  It's supposed to mean no rain as well, but, like everywhere else in the world, the weather is a bit wonky these days.  I don't know what the temperatures are, I haven't checked since I got to the Caribbean Coast.  At night, I sleep with only a sheet on the bed; in the day, my longer-sleeved shirt is for sunscreen purposes only.  The temperature numbers don't matter, it's just hot.

I was beginning to understand why, in these lands, everything moves more slowly during the day - I blink and my eyelids sweat.  People often refer to 'Costa Rican time', which translates roughly to "I'll get there when I get there".

I left Costa Rica and crossed the border into Panama, which was no cooler.  If space is the final frontier, this border must have been the first one...

Before now, the most memorable border crossing I had had was going from Austria into Italy, 1999.  I was sardined on an overnight train, sleeping side-by-side, head-to-foot in a compartment with five other backpackers.  In the middle of the night there was a loud rap at the door, and a gruff voice shouted "Passaporrrtay!  Passaporrrtay!".  Discombobulated, we handed over our passports to a pair of large men.  The door to the compartment was slammed shut, and off they went.  With our passports.  It took a few moments to fully wake up, and realize I'd just handed my passport over to two large, round, bling-clad Italian-looking men in dark clothes.  Not a badge, coat, belt, or hat to indicate that they were anything official.  I got my passport back after a couple of hours (I hadn't been able to go back to sleep), and breathed a big sigh of relief a week and a half later when I was able to successfully exit the country.

This was different.  I took a shuttle van from Puerto Viejo in the morning to the Sixaola border crossing.  Out of the cool shuttle into the intense dusty heat of what looked like a tiny village - artisan craft stands, a couple little tiny restaurants, dogs trotting here and there, a few tiny shops.  The shuttle driver pointed to a window within a row of shops, indicating that was where to pay the "exit tax".  I lined up at the window, with a couple restaurant tables either side of me, and a counter for ordering snacks inside and left of the window.  I paid my "exit tax" and was given a receipt.

Hoisting up my pack, I climbed a set of rather uneven concrete stairs (big steps with a big pack on accentuates the unevenness) to an old railway bed, and walked along it towards the river where the Costa Rican immigration office was situated.  I stood in line again, this time to show the nice man my receipt, and get a stamp in my passport to indicate that I had officially left Costa Rica.  I set off on foot, again on the railway bed, to a bridge over the river, with the heat shimmering above the still-intact rail and ties.  Mostly intact - there were a few holes I stepped over, where I could peer down at the rushing river below.  No crocodiles in view.  I so badly wanted to take pictures of all of this, but, while I know Costa Rica does not have an army, I'm pretty sure Panama does.

I googled images of it, and apparently there are many people not afraid of unknown armies:

Costa Rica-Panama border crossing - a bridge over the Rio Sixaola
http://trans-americas.com/blog/2014/06/border-crossing-costa-rica-to-panama

Once across the river, I descended a steep path of sort-of-stairs from the railway bed to another similar-looking tiny dusty village.  I stood there looking lost, until someone pointed me to the immigration office, next to the liquor store.  This time, before getting stamped, I had to show proof I was leaving the country again soon - perhaps they don't want North Americans and Europeans squatting on their warm beach and jungle-filled paradises.  I had a print-out of my flights to/from Costa Rica, and had to pull out my best Spanish to explain why I answered "Calgary, Canada" when he asked where I was returning to, and why my print-out showed a flight from Costa Rica to Houston, USA - the Houston-Calgary leg was on the back of the page.  I'm not sure he got it, but he distracted himself instead with my middle name on my passport, Linda, which is also my mom's name and in Spanish is a common word for 'nice' or 'cute'.  I flashed him a nice cute smile, and got my stamp for official arrival into Panama.

There was a moment's respite from the sun when I crossed under the railway bridge to the bus stop for another shuttle van.  A short ride gave me my first glimpse of Panama, passing by acres and acres of banana tree rows and a shipping plant with stacks of "Chiquita" containers (grocery store code for bananas: 4011).  I was dropped at the boat docks in Almirante for a final boat ride, out of the smooth estuary to the the rougher bay waters surrounding my destination island in Bocas del Torro, Isla Colon.

Leaving Almirante by speedboat, heading to Bocas del Toro, Isla Colon

I don't think I've walked across a border before.  And I'm pretty sure that if this had been North America, there would have been red tape, blue tape, and yellow tape, signs, rope barriers and arrows, sniffer dogs and cat scans.  There would have been only one stop at the exit country, and one stop at the entrance country, with cameras watching all of us and a "randomly selected" target bag search for me (because I always get "randomly" selected).  And there would have been air conditioning.

Post-border-survival research tells me the Costa Rican exit tax was instated in December 2013.  Much chaos ensued, as the machines required to issue the receipts had not been installed at the borders yet, and people were refused exit until they traveled hours back to the nearest town with a bank which was able to issue the official receipt.  The tax was created to collect funds for border crossing improvements [1].

The Americas were populated first by indigenous people, next by European and African cultures.  How is it that the North turned out so differently from the Central and South??  Is it the difference between the French and English vs the Spaniards?  Or is it just the heat?

Waiting at the dock in Almirante, the locals are not shy