Pit Stop in San Jose

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Day 212: Bordering on chaos

Up before six, I knew I was in for a long journey today, as I packed up my things this morning and boarded a yellow school bus for David, the town near the Panamerican Highway. From David, I caught a shuttle bus up to the border, and after an hour and a half, stopping off at every town and village in the vicinity of the highway, I reached the chaotic scenes that marked the start of the Panama/Costa Rica border crossing at Pasas Canoas. Surrounded by heavy goods vehicles, beggars, police and duty-free shoppers, I somehow found the cunningly hidden Panamanian immigration office to get my first stamp. From there, trying to look where I was going, but failing miserably as every man and his dog offered me a lift, or to help me for a small comission, I walked with the queues of lorries, past multiple buildings dotted around, until I eventually found the immigration office for Costa Rica to get my second stamp. From there, I found that bus tickets were sold back towards the Panamanian border, and so found myself backtracking to get a bus ticket, before heading to the bus stop, back up by the Costa Rican border.

Although far from straight forward, I was quite pleased that everything seemed to be in place and I was all set to go. Looking around, I seemed to have done quite well, as others walked backwards and forwards trying to find the right immigration points. Nevertheless, the faff wasn't over, since along with swarms of other people, I was ushered into a giant cage (aka customs), where passports were inspected, forms were filled out, passports were requested a second time and bags were inspected. The whole process took about two hours before everyone was allowed on board the bus, and that was after I'd cleared Costa Rican immigration. I think it was easier getting through Miami airport. At least there, I had a vague idea of what was going on, where-as at Pasas Canoas, it was quite apparent that noone had a clue! The only mildly exciting thing to occur was a small earth tremor that had signs swinging and a few people wondering what was going on, but by-and-large, most people didn't seem to notice this, since they were too wrapped up in participating in the chaos.

Finally, two hours later, the bus set off for San Jose. It wasn't the most rivetting of journeys, and I managed to sleep through the first half of it until we were let off for a half-hour lunch break. I met a couple of other people and had lunch with them. Comparing notes, we decided that we had just experienced the most disorganised border crossing of all time.

The rest of the journey wasn't so fun as the bus followed the very winding and nauseating road up into the mountains, before descending down to San Jose, arriving there just before dark. Relieved to be off the bus, I shared a taxi with one of the guys from the bus, getting dropped off at the same backpackers hostel that I'd visited when I first arrived. Having checked in, I got some dinner at the hostel cafe, and after a luke warm shower, had a lazy evening trying to work out where I should go next.

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