Tumbes - Huaquillas border crossing

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We found ourselves at Tumbes without having actually planned to be there but, as is tradition in South America, our international bus to Guayaquil hadn't turned up in Mancora and so we found ourselves on a colectivo to Tumbes. When the colectivo stopped inside Tumbes we got thrown into a taxi by the driver of the bus and we asked for the CIFA office (a bus company which also runs international trips to Guayaquil according to the 2003 Lonely Planet)! However, according to the taxi driver (and he only told us this once we were in the taxi of course) the CIFA office in Tumbes is now closed and you have to go to Aguas Verdes which is the town between the Peruvian and Ecuadorian border controls. Now if you check the Lonely Planet forum, which actually i never do but did this time, you find out that this border is notorious for people crossing in taxis getting ripped off or worse so we turned down CIFA in favour of Ormeno, another company. The Ormeno bus had unfortunately left already but apparently only 20 minutes ago so the taxi driver got us back in the car and we raced to the border controls where we hoped to meet the bus before it crossed. However, surprise surprise the bus wasn't at the border controls and with me still refusing to cross the border in a taxi we had to head back to Tumbes to book a bus ticket for the next day. After booking the ticket which was $15 each for what should have been a 6 hour journey we went to find a hotel. The driver and his buddy (oh yes, there were two of them in the car - dodgy or what?) offered us two choices... a hotel in town or a hotel on the beach. Not a tough choice we thought and opted for the beach, which we were told was 10 minutes away. The beach was actually more like 20 minutes out of town and in the middle of absolutely nowhere! To be fair we ended up in a nice hotel run by nice people right on a completely deserted beach (even if there was a bit of rubbish - no Mancora that's for sure). There were even loads of crabs on the beach to keep us entertained and the sunset was amazing but back to the tale of woe. The taxi pulled up outside the hotel and we asked him how much it was (after having been told that it had been 15 somethings at the border (soles or dollars, take your pick)! They then tried to charge us $60 (dollars) with our luggage in the boot!! Bastards! We managed to get them down to $40 dollars and 10 soles and once we'd got our luggage they left probably feeling really pleased with themselves.... f**kers!

So children... the moral of this tale is.... DON'T GO TO TUMBES UNLESS YOU HAVE TO. Everyone seems to want to rip you off! Apparently if you cross the border in a colectivo then you'll be fine but to be honest the whole place oozes dodgy from every pore. DON'T EVER GET IN A TAXI IN TUMBES, NO MATTER HOW DESPERATE THINGS SEEM. Get in a little tuc-tuc because i think they'd struggle to rip you off to the same extent (mind you, you never know - i think they'd try)! While we were in the border control on the peruvian side we were asked many times for our passports by shady looking randoms and then we saw 3 dutch girls get taken off to a side room. Luckily they reappeared soon enough with all their limbs and money intact but they were asked for money by official looking people. Seriously... everybody is trying to rip you off there. There are other border crossings further inland and apparently there's absolutely no problems there and the border's really slack so it sounds like a better option.

We did actually come out of all this in one piece and with all our belongings but it's not a great experience and one which i would definitely have rather not had. Ecuador is lovely though and it is worth the trip but perhaps it's better to cross somewhere less s**t?

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Comments

[Jonas]

We were also ripped off/robbed in Tumbes.. Never ever take a cab there!! Luckily I got my money back from the insurance but it sucks knowing these people can rip off as many tourists as they like and nothing is done about it.