The Immigration Blues

Many people I have met from outside the U.S. talk about how horrible it is even to stop in the U.S. and to have to go through immigration - apparently even if you´re just changing planes to head to another country. After making the land crossing to Costa Rica, I have just a little taste of the tediousness, but at least I didn´t have to do the retinal scan that foreigners have to in the U.S.

I left Granada at 7 in the morning to make the 5 hour trip to Liberia, Costa Rica. At 9:30 we got off the bus at the border. We had to wait for thirty minutes to leave through Nicaraguan immigration. When we got back on the bus I was actually naive enough to think that we were all done. We had given our passports to the bus driver after all. But, actually, the process was just beginning.

We got our passports back, got back on the bus and waited in a long line of cars to go through a car wash type thing to rid the bus of contaminants. We then got back off the bus and were told to get in a long line. There were actually two lines that merged into one, so I got in the back of the shorter. I should have known better.

I didn´t realize until I got to the merging point that this line was the cutting line and people in the other line held on the each other and pushed ahead to make sure my line didn´t get in. When I saw the people in my line shoving their way in I realized what was going on. I didn´t want to push anybody, but also didn´t want to go all the way to the back after waiting 40 minutes already. So, I found a nice looking old lady in the official line and told her I hadn´t known that I was in the bad line. She was very nice and let me in front of her saying that we were on the same bus anyways and if I started all over they´d have to wait for me.

After another two and half hours we finally reached the immagration desk to get our passports stamped. I was relieved and walked out to the bus ready to get on our way. But, everyone was just sitting next to the bus waiting. When I asked, I was informed that we had to get our luggage off the bus to have it inspected. So after another 40 minutes of waiting around for the official person to open the baggage storage on the bus, we took our luggage over to a long table and waited while a woman looked through it. That took a good 40 minutes (must be the magic number there), then we were off. At least I thought. We still had to stop two more times while police got on the bus to check everyone´s passports. At least we could stay in our seats for that. There is a definite concern in Costa Rica about large numbers of Nica immigrants, so I´m hoping the trip back into Nicaragua won´t be as slow. Knock on wood.

Anyways, I finally made it to Liberia at 4 p.m. (having missed my 2:30 bus to the beach) and took a taxi to Playa Tamarindo. I checked into the hostel and went straight to the ocean for a fantastic swim! Defintely vale la pena (worth the trouble) :-)