if you are crossing the peruvian/ecuadorian border, avoid tumbes if you can. if you can´t, take CIFA, an international bus company that makes the crossing much safer and simpler.
we are in ecuador now, after an extremely (and unnecessarily) sketchy and expensive border crossing yesterday. also included in our involuntary tour package was a five hour wait at the ecuadorian immigration office, and no meals for the entire day. we finally checked into a chill hostel in cuenca at about 1230 am.
here´s what happened: we left mancora, peru, early in the afternoon yesterday and headed for tumbes, which is right on the border with ecuador. what we should have done from tumbes was booked 2 seats on an international bus. the international bus would have taken us to both peruvian and ecuadorian immigration where we could take care of stamps and paperwork, and dropped us off in guayaquil or manchara, which would have been fine. instead, we for some stupid reason decided to go with a taxi driver who said he would take us to the border for 10 soles (about 3 bucks) per person. we were partly influenced by a peruvian girl who had been on our bus from mancora and was trying to figure out the best way into ecuador as well. so the three of us went in on this taxi, despite having been warned in lima that taxis at the border are a ripoff. anyway, the taxista took us to peruvian immigration and we got our stamps, then some other dude got in the car with us, saying he would take us across the ecuadorian border.
at that point it started to feel like we were being smuggled across the border, which was not necessary, since we all had valid paperwork. turns out these guys were just hustling bastards; after we drove through a super-sketchy market littered with big, dirty cargo vans and trucks and populated by dirty vendors´ stalls, we parked in the middle of a dusty little soccer field. there our driver informed us we had to pay an additional $5 (not soles) per person for a tax. he went over and handed it to some guy in a security officer´s uniform. daniela and peruvian girl protested and i complained, telling the guy that this wasn´t part of the deal, but we had to pay because we had managed to get ourselves somewhere near the border but had no idea where we had to go next, only the guys we were with knew. in any case, he didn´t pay much attention to our protests.
then we lugged all our gear through a part of this sprawling, dirty market behind sketchy guy #2 until we got to a bus station. then he turns to us and trys to charge us $5 a person--a fee that was never mentioned. i was angry at this point, and hot and out of breath from speedwalking through the market with my pack on. i told the guy, ¨you never told us about this¨. i absolutely wasn´t going to pay him--he wasn´t paying attention to me, just blabbing on about ¨this is my job¨ and ¨ecuador is expensive¨ ($15 for 30 minutes expensive?), and then busts out the old, ¨i have a family, two little niños¨ line. i was like, ¨fine, but look, nunca nos aviso¨--you never told us. that was my issue, that he was a dishonest little son of a shutyermouth just like the taxi driver had been, and i had had enough of being screwed over at that particular point in my day. daniela gave him $5 for the both of us.
i´m still a little bothered by the whole thing, not least by our own stupidity. we knew better than to get into a taxi and should have just taken an international bus for like $5. anyway...
when we did get our bus tickets, daniela made sure they stopped at ecuadorian immigrations so we could get our entry stamps and that the bus would wait for us. so we roll up to immigrations and find out the computers are down. there were about 10 people on the bus, but only the three of us needed stamps. so the bus driver finds out the system is down and tells us he can´t wait for us. we remind him that the company assured us they would wait for us when we asked them at the office. so he left. he told us our tickets would be good for the next bus from that company, which would be by at 7pm. it was 330 pm.
of course, about 10 minutes after the bus left, the system was back up and we had our stamps not long after that. in the meantime, busses from the company we should have taken instead of the taxi roared by every 10 or 15 minutes. we waited until 745. we got into cuenca at 12am. found a lot of hostels that were full, and finally one that was open. it´s a nice spot, and hopefully we can get on with our trip. maybe i´ll buy a panama hat here.
4 votes 
