We had planned to spend Christ­mas in Nicaragua. But as the great philoso­pher Jag­ger once said, “you can always get what you want…”

On Sat­ur­day, we got up at 6am to take a fron­tera bus to Peñas Blan­cas, the Costa Rica — Nicaragua bor­der town. We were there in 2002 and had wit­nessed a man being crushed to death between two trucks, so we knew how chaotic it could get. But noth­ing pre­pared us for what we experienced.

We took a chicken bus, basi­cally a cus­tomized US school bus. It was packed. I man­aged to find a seat, but Feng had to stand at the back of the bus with our back­packs. The ride was painful and we were stopped by the police quite a few times.

After an hour, we were stuck behind a long long line of trucks, all wait­ing to cross the bor­der. Our bus man­aged to pass them (on a two way road but nev­er­mind) and even­tu­ally told us to get off. We had arrived… at least, almost arrived. In front of us was a huge line up. I started to queue and Feng explored a bit. We just could not see the end of the line. I asked the guy behind me: “how long to you think it is to reach the migracíon?”. “Cinco horas… más o menos”, he replied with a shy smile. Shit.

We just could’t wait that long. I felt sorry for the peo­ple in the queue, mostly migrant work­ers from Nicaragua, but we couldn’t sleep there for fuck’s sake.

We took a chance. Every­body was queu­ing to get an exit stamp from Costa Rica at that point, so we decided to go ahead to Nicaragua and see if we could enter with­out the pre­cious exit stamp. I was pre­pared to bride, to beg, what­ever it was going to take.

We started walk­ing besides the queue. It was extremely muddy, because it had just rained, and we had our back­packs with us, mak­ing the walk more painful. We walked for about 20 min­utes (that´s how long was the queue) and even­tu­ally reached what we thought was the Nicaragua migracíon. A guy looked at our pass­ports, and dis­cov­ered we didn´t have the exit stamp. “Lo siento señor, pero se nos dijo que no era nece­sario un sello de sal­ida. Vamos a Nicaragua por tres días, y todavía ten­emos 90 días en Costa Rica”, I said. Nope. “Please sir, that´s what we were told”.

Even­tu­ally, he told us to go ahead. We arrived in front of a offi­cial, from the Nicaragua migracíon, and I repeated the same story. We have 90 days in Costa Rica, a valid stamp, and we just want to stay in Nicaragua for a few days before com­ing back to Costa Rica. This time, he didn´t work, and we could not get through. Back to square one.

We some­how found the Costa Rica migracíon and begged again. I was hop­ing they may give us the pre­cious stamp, but we were told to go back to the queue. “But it is sev­eral kilo­me­ters long”, I said. “It´s not us, it´s Nicaragua. We don´t mind you leav­ing the coun­try, but Nicaragua won´t let you in with­out the stamp”.

We turned around, sweaty and tired. Above all, dis­ap­pointed. There were no way we were going to queue. Besides, peo­ple were start­ing to riot around us (bet they were, queu­ing for sev­eral hours — days? — can do that to you…) and we didn´t want to get into trou­bles. For­get about Nicaragua. Fuck.

We looked for a bus to go back to Liberia, Costa Rica, but there were none. Even­tu­ally, we found two Cana­dian back­pack­ers, who were com­ing from Nicaragua. We shared a taxi ride to the near­est Costa Rican town and tried to get over the fact we wouldn´t go to Nicaragua.

It still doesn´t make sense to me. Most of the peo­ple queu­ing for the Costa Rica exit stamp were obvi­ously migrant work­ers from Nicaragua (almost all men, there were very few women actu­ally). Why would Costa Rica make it so dif­fi­cult to leave the coun­try? When it comes to immi­grants, legal or not, coun­tries usu­ally don´t care when or how they leave. I never go an exit stamp in Canada, or even in the U.S.A. And why so much chaos?

Once again, I can´t help think­ing that bor­ders are a very ran­dom and arti­fi­cial invention.

Mean­while, we are back in Costa Rica, and cur­rently on the Pacific Coast.

Bus Sta­tion in David –Queu­ing For The Bus

Try­ing To Reach The Nicaragua Migracion

The Line Up To Get A Costa Rica Exit Stamp…

Finally Get­ting A Ride To Go Back To The Near­est Town

Related posts:

1. It´s A Wild Life…
2. Bor­der Cross­ing — Panamá To Costa Rica
3. ¿Y Ahora Qué?
4. Bus­ing Around Cen­tral America
5. Faces Of Cen­tral America