I still remember after flying from Germany to Athens, how the Greek immigration officers just waved my three friends and me into the country. Not even a quick glance at the passports, no forms to fill out, we just picked up our checked luggage from the carousel and walked into the delightful Athenian sun. In light of the Euro debt crisis, this seems like a very typical Greek-German relationship. While airports don’t really count as borders, this was by far the easiest country to country transit I’ve ever made. Now, yes, picky and technical reader, I understand that they’re both part of the Schengen Agreement, but they’re still two different countries.
You can read more here about what I would consider my worst border crossing. It was from Laos into Vietnam, involved lots of waiting, ineffective bribing, and well, um, needless to say coming in the middle of a 26 hour bus ride didn’t make it any better. I bring these up because during my delightful few days in Guanacaste (the north Pacific part of Costa Rica) with the principal from my night school he offered to show me the border. We weren’t going to Nicaragua, and I can promise you that I hadn’t been begging for or even subtly suggesting a duty-free shopping trip. Yet, one day after lunch Hector was like, I’m going to show you the border. Now, let’s be real, a border is just an imaginary line on the earth-and as Costa Rica and Nicaragua’s border problems are on the Caribbean side of their border, there’s nothing in the border spat excitement category to be seen.
But, my policy, when traveling-whether domestically or internationally, is to always say yes when someone (I trust) offers to take me somewhere, show me something. I remember staying with my buddies Foster and Joe in St. Louis one time, they told me we were going to amateur pro wrestling. I really had no idea what to expect, needless to say, I was not disappointed. Nor was I when Hector took me up to the border. Because, well, much like amateur pro wrestling, it was pure mayhem. I was first struck when we started passing a bunch of semi trucks. No exaggeration, it was a lot of semi trucks. I counted on the way back-145 trucks-not including the 20-30 that were waiting in between the various processing stations. Despite my personal distaste for inanely obvious questions, I asked the obvious-were these trucks waiting to cross the border? Yes, yes they were Hector told me.
I tried to ask him as much as I could about why they were waiting. He didn’t seem to have any grand reasons. Then again, I guess for a county where waiting for things to happen and almost nothing happening efficiently (at least my opinion), it wouldn’t seem so ludicrous that trucks were lined up for miles waiting to cross the border. Or maybe, having grown up with it, he didn’t ever think about how, well, problematic it was. From what I could gather, the hold up was due mostly to inspections for drugs, and these inspections were more frequent and time consuming on the Costa Rican side. I’d guess that Costa Rica’s close relationship with the U.S. and its reception of plenty of ant-drug trafficking funds from the U.S. are the main contributor to this situation.
For a country that includes exporting agricultural and technological products to the U.S. and Canada among its biggest industries, it was mind boggling to me that this border crossing was so dysfunctional. This is the main highway border crossing between Costa Rica and Nicaragua-it’s where the Inter-American highway crosses. It’s not the only way to go north by land from Costa Rica, but it’s by far the easiest, fastest, most practical. Yes, the easiest and fastest way to transport anything via land between these two countries (and anything that’s coming from anywhere south of Costa Rica) is where there are trucks backed up for more than a mile. All I could think about the ride back was how giant of a problem this must be for the country’s export industries, a significant deterrent to expansion for many companies and industries looking to do business with Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala or even Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. Although, it could be a boon for the shipping industry ;)
It was crazy. Once past the huge line of trucks, we crossed an initial station just for trucks, and then entered a mini-city, where every single business operated either in customs forms, shipping, or catering. There were workers on bicycles with folders, papers, or Styrofoam containers of food and bottles of soda. It seemed like all the truckers were thus getting all the paper work filled out and bicycled up to the right offices while they were in line. Many snacked as they waited, some slept, some sat on stools and chatted, and a few even had hammocks tied under the trailer. Very near the border (as far as we could go before getting the passports we didn’t have with us checked) I saw two teams of drug enforcement officers examining two semi trucks. I don’t see those two teams working through the line of 145 trucks anytime soon. The article I link to below indicated the wait for transport trucks can take up to 36 hours. Not a typo-a day and a half.
In some Internet research I was able to find a recent opinion article written in Costa Rica’s most important paper by an international business advisor to the Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce, expressing almost exactly my thoughts about the situation. And, this article discussing how the government has been unable to find a use or indoor storage for $6 million worth of x-ray machines and other customs equipment donated from China might demonstrate that the customs and immigration department is overburdened or not working hard enough. For an imaginary line drawn up by two groups of people, this border is having an impact that, until seeing this, seemed beyond my imagination.
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