The first time around, I was heading northbound with all my luggage from Panama City to San José, and I hit the border at around 5 a.m., after roughyl 8 hours of overnight travel. All 60 passengers disemabarked and grabbed their luggage from the underneath compartments, then were ushered into a dingy room and made to wait for more than an hour until the border patrol opened up. Then began the search...a three-ring circus that began with them strategically positioning us in various parts of aforementioned dingy room, whilst having us line up the luggage in neat rows. In came a drug sniffing dog that merrily leapt and sniffed among the rows of bags as we looked on. All except for a blind man on the bus who was rightly wondering what the hell was going on.


After the pooch was taken back out, we were asked to orderly line up to have our bags searched. Thus began the frenzy of everyone trying to find their cases in the rows and get back in line to have one of the two officers massacre their neat packing jobs with grubby hands, throwing books, sunscreen and lingerie flying in all directions on the worn counter. Every bag was gone through in this manner, by only two officials. So for 60 people, times at least two cases each, plus backpacks, purses and the odd bodybag (ok, not really), there were more than 200 pouches of crime in all to be sifted through. When it came to my turn, the flary-nostrilled cretin beholden to the search of my boxers and socks had trouble figuring out why I was Irish but lived in Argentina. This conundrum, which one could physically see being twirled around in his head, came out in the eloquently grunted question,"Are you an (expletive) gaucho?" Having answered in the negative, I could see he was pained to have to think once again. His next ploy was to try and figure out how it could be possible that the person in front of him, frail and tired at 5 am after a long bus ride, could be the same person in the passport photo of what was surely a happier moment several years earlier. "You used to be fat," was his epiphanous summation of this mental puzzle. After several minutes of such pithy conversation with the official, I was on my way.


The fun was far from over yet, though, as the bus took off with our luggage to the other side, while we were left to deal with Panamanian immigration. AKA the place where you buy a $1 stamp which was the brainchild of a local politician, for the sole reason to make him money. Ingenious.


After this, we had to enter the obstacle course of the physical border crossing--a stretch of a couple hundred metres of dust, potholes, a giant truck wash and seedy looking businesses. Then the mirror process of immigration lines and bag searching began on the Costa Rican side.


Nearly a full four hours after arriving 200m down the road, we headed off once again, only to be stopped three more times on the road for passport checks done by police. At one of these, two unsuspecting Jamaican ladies who had forgotten to get the Costa Rican stamp were hauled off to be carted back to the hinterlands of the border crossing.


A month later, I was hurtled back into this fray once again, this time consolidating my luggage in hopes of a smoother time. However, the wily border crones had a better scheme set up for me this time, which was a crossing in broad daylight. As soon as we disembarked and lined up on the Costa Rican side, we were flanked by a crowd of kids offering to show us the way to the Panamanian side. Since there is only one road in Paso Canoas, and only one direction to get to the other side, this seems like a no-brainer and the kids are usually shooed away at first.


But the knee-high knowitalls are persistent and follow you all the way down, and they actually become useful after a while, when you buy your $1 useless stamp and face off with the growling border official who persists to ask you a series of questions despite having all the answers in front of him on a piece of paper you just handed him.


At the end of this process, they tell you that they decided you have to buy a tourist card (only sometimes and for some travellers, apparently depending on their mood--two Canadians travelling on my bus needed one also, but two Brits did not, even though they tried waving money to buy one, just to be safe, but were refused). This is where the pestering kids actually became useful, dragging us off to a little hidden away office where the toursit cards are issued.


Here I was pitted against another official who asked all questions whose answers lay right in front of her. When she asked which Ireland I was from and I told her, I was told it didn´t exist. Silly me, there is no Republic of Ireland, just South Ireland. South Ireland is my new citizenship.


Anyway, after forking over my $5 for this completely useless bit of paper saying that this poor schmuck from South Ireland can have 90 days in Panama, I returned with my pint size guides, whom I was kind of warming up to at this point.


Back to grunting official number one, who, despite the lack of a queue at this point, waited a good 2 minutes before talking to me. Then he told me I needed another piece of paper that the previous official hadn´t given me.


A mad dash back through the dust, and the paper was there. "It must have dropped" she told me. Right. Back for a third time to the grunter, who by this time was actually gone. In his place was a border official who was all smirky and persisted in calling me Fortune, as he asked me a series of questions, the answers to which were on the papers in front of him.


Then, escorted by the lollipop guild representatives, I went to have my bag examined, hauling it up and proudly unlocking it and opening it up ready for inspection. The official took one look at my passport and asked, though the answer lay in front of him, "Where are you from?" South Ireland I responded, then he handed the passport back and told me to go ahead, I was finished. He didn't even bother to see that I had packed clean underwear this time.


The kids all lined up around for their reward for a job well done, more joining up with the two who had helped me out from the start (or more accurately, bugged the hell out of me in the start, then helped me later on). Apparently all the town were their cousins and felt that through their blood relation were entitled to some contribution on my part as well. Though they were happy enough to be told that I would look for them specifically on my next voyage through. Next time, however, it will be a serene passing in a canoe.
 

For more information tours in Costa Rica, please write or call our travel desk.

Telephone: 506 258 4896
Email: [email protected]