We rode to the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border on what is perhaps their busiest day of the year for crossings. There were perhaps 2 dozen tour buses parked at the Immigration offices when we pulled up to the border. The result was 3 massive lines slowing snaking into one small building.
Later we were told that the massive lines were due to many Nicaraguans returning back to work in CR after spending the holiays back home with family.
Thankfully, the folks processing the paperwork to get us out of Nicaragua were quite efficient, and we were able to complete the first half of of the border crossing in about an hour.
We paid a guy $10 to get us through the process, and it was a good thing. We handed him our passports and bike documents, and he went off with Cory in tow to get the papers processed. Thirty minutes later Cory shows up, and each of us now have a new document with 6 different signatures scrawled across it. Cory says each of the 6 signers was standing in a more-or-less random location around the parking lot, and our fixer had to consult with other fixers to even find them. We could not have done this one on our own.
The second part, getting into Costa Rica, now that was some madness! As we pulled up to that border, we saw literally thousands of people waiting in a line that snaked around and around a small parking area -- like so many snakes writhing and twisting in a pit…
We ran into two very frazzled looking Swedish moto travelers who were just on the tail end of getting their paperwork completed to enter CR. They told us they had stood in line for SEVEN HOURS to get their immigration document stamped.
This was a job for the Fixer.
Normally, I have no problem paying these guys to make a small problem go away. Today though, seeing those many thousands of people standing in the hot sun, who our few US Dollars would allow us to bypass, almost as it they weren't even there…
The right thing to do would have been to just just join the end of the line, no?
We, however, paid the fixers, who shared the money with some Immigration officials, guards and local police officers -- all of whom worked their magic to get us through in less than 2 hours.
Why do I feel so shameful?
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Earlier in the day we rode past another windmill farm -- this time in southern Nicaragua. I'd say about 30 gleaming white windmills, all going full-tilt. I am being constantly surprised as to the extent of wind-generation capacity here in the developing world.
That's a good trend, no?
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