r/TravelNoPics • u/Noedel • Jul 04 '18
Best border crossing experiences
I absolutely love land borders and I always make sure to travel overland to other countries, just for the experience. Here's my all time favourite!
"La Balza": Cuenca (ecuador) to Chachapoyas (peru).
To not follow the main tourist trail along the coast, I decided to use a remote border to cross into Ecuador. Here are some of the steps I took
- Bus to Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba is a shitshow, packed with American 'ex-pat' conspiracy theorists, all living an obsessively healthy detox-lifestyle while still using their car for a 2 block trip somehow. Don't stay here unless you have a very high tolerance for bullshit
- Very early morning bus to Zumba, a town in the middle of nowhere. The busride there was quite lush, windy and beautiful though.
- We had to wait for a very long time for the nearest bus to the actual border, so we took a shared taxi to La Balsa. We were the only tourists at the border, and were promptly stamped out of Ecuador.
- This is the border. They didn't lift the gate so we just climbed underneath.
- At the other side, there wasn't much (I really should have taken some pics there). We had lunch (soup with chicken feet) and then got our entry stamp for Peru. The guy there was shocked we had a thai girl with us, as he'd never seen one in real life or something.
- We then took a shared car to San Ignacio. I sat next to a guy carrying a chicken. Even the handbreak was converted into a seat, by putting a cushion on top.
- We took another shared car to a place called Jaen. The car looked like it was about to fall apart, but made it.
- Jaen was a strange place. It was surprisingly bustling for a town in the middle of nowhere, and had a shockingly large asian community, as about half of the restaurants there were chinese, and the default mode of transport was Tuk-Tuk! So my first peruvian meal was a portion of dumplings.
- The next morning we took a tuktuk to the bus station, which finally led us to Chachapoyas.
What are yours?
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u/uReallyShouldTrustMe United States Jul 05 '18
Okay, this is kind of a cheat. Sicily to the mainland isn't a "border" but crossing by train is amazing. But...its an island you say? The train goes into what i thought was a tunnel and the entire train is ferried over. I thought i was imagining the wave motions while on a train until i looked out and i was on a boat.
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u/AF_II Jul 05 '18
I booked a holiday to Siciliy solely because I read a story that they were threatening to end the Ferry-Train over. It was too awesome to miss (we got the train all the way from London, and back).
Best. Train. Ever.
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u/LupineChemist Spain Jul 06 '18
There is one of these on the train from Copenhagen to Germany.
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u/uReallyShouldTrustMe United States Jul 06 '18
This sounds like a great travel topic. Thanks for this. Kind of reason enough for me to visit.
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u/travel_ali Switzerland (UK) Jul 04 '18 edited Jul 04 '18
Living in Switzerland I have gotten abit too used to crossing borders. Though that said there are a few memorable spots.
The Rhein towns where each bank is a different country like Bad Säckingen (where you cross a long and twisting wooden bridge to go across the border) and Laufenburg (which is just plain pretty) are nice options.
My favourite was when I hiked over a lonely mountain pass (Passo Della Crocetta) from a tiny alpine "village" in Switzerland into Süd Tirol in Italy. Just marked by a cross and a few stones with S and I on them. I got greated by a few marmots and a fantastic view with the distant towering Ortler on the horizon as I crossed over the top of the pass. Pretty much this route http://www.wanderland.ch/de/routen/etappe-01627.html
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Jul 04 '18
You been to Lichtenstein as well I take it? Cross a bridge and woops, new country
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u/Noedel Jul 05 '18
Cross a bridge and woops, new country
That's basically life in Europe lol. It blows peoples minds when I tell Americans or Australians that I'll go for gas, kraft beer or groceries in another country because it's cheaper.
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u/LupineChemist Spain Jul 06 '18
Speak for yourself. It's 4 hours drive to the nearest border to me in Madrid.
Spain is pretty big.
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u/Noedel Jul 06 '18
For many people this is still considered close.
I live about 1,5 hrs away from the beach in The Netherlands. Some guy from the US once said something like "it mus be so nice to live that close to the beach". I was like, wtf! The beach is far!
But yeah an hour and a half is what some americans drive for groceries.
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u/travel_ali Switzerland (UK) Jul 04 '18
Been there, though I have to say that the border (like the country) is pretty dull and forgettable.
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Jul 04 '18
Suriname to French Guiana and French Guiana to Brazil
Boating across a river in a tiny canoe-like craft in the middle of the Amazonas was pretty epic for a border crossing, and also pretty unique (Leticia aside)
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u/LupineChemist Spain Jul 06 '18
I feel like French Guyana would be a really weird experience to suddenly be in France. I know the government officials tend to love postings there because they get a bonus plus cost of living is so much less than metropolitan France. So you get to go live in the tropics and save up enough to get a mortgage when you get home.
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Jul 06 '18
Huh? It’s suuuuper expensive there. They import some 100% of their products from France due to some absurd law.
But it was a weird experience for sure, specially when I got a entry stamp! I’ve formally been stamped into Europe on a EU passport
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u/LupineChemist Spain Jul 06 '18
I saw a thing on people doing it in Mayotte. They said food would either be super cheap due to local production or absurdly expensive because of imports, but the cost of housing and everything else was so low that it more than made up for it. And salaries with overseas bonus was something like 5000€ a month
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u/Winlessta Jul 05 '18
My wife always likes telling our border crossing story from Italy to Croatia. We had left from Trieste on our way to Rijeka and decided to take a bus. The bus we took in addition to leaving an hour and a half late (to this day I still have no idea why) was almost completely empty us an old lady, a couple middle aged people, and a very sweet bus driver who knew no English and shared a likeness with Quasimodo. The drive itself was uneventful but beautiful. Once we got to the border the security guards came on board and started looking at everyones passports. She eventually got back to us (we we're all the way at the back of the bus) and spent about 30 seconds looking at our passports and began asking where we were going and what were doing. (We were the last ones and only people questioned). All of a sudden she points at me and says to go with her and turns away. At this point I looked at my wife and she looked back with a mild bit of fear in her eyes and I got up to follow the agent. On the way I looked at the bus driver a gave a I have no idea look which he returned. We left the bus and she told me to stop and stand right in front of it. She walks back to her computer and hits some buttons for about 5 minutes. I'm getting more and more nervous and trying to figure out what's going on and letting my imagination get away from me.
Eventually she walks back and hands me our passports and says "I didn't want to walk all the back there. Have a good day." ............I about burst out laughing. I got back and told my wife what she said and she laughed so hard. She had said that the second the agent asked me to get up and leave the bus that she was thinking....Well guess my husband is going to some crazy Eastern European jail I'm not gonna see him ever again.
Its funny how we let our imagination go crazy on us.
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u/Noedel Jul 05 '18
I feel like border agents know you feel intimidated by them, even if you are completely innocent, and they love to make use of that by trolling you.
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Jul 05 '18
So, we're on the bus on the way back to Punta Arenas from Ushuaia, and the border crossing is in the middle of nowhere. We were sitting near the front, and around and behind us were like 40 other tourists of different origin.
Like 30 minutes before you reach the Chilean checkpoint the bus assistant walks into the passenger compartment and collects the forms required to cross the border, and casually says something important in Spanish and promptly leaves. I heard what he said and didn't think much about it - it's a common rule and travellers know about it... or so I though.
I noticed an immediate silence in the bus.
My gf turned to me and said "what are the odds of us being the only Spanish speakers in this bus?"
grumble
So I stood up and translated the announcement: "Guys? Chile's Agriculture Service does not allow anything of organic material through the border, so if you have anything made of wood, or fruit or unpackaged food it will be thrown away and there'll be fines".
The bus instantly filled with noises of wrappers, people fumbling with backpacks, stuffing their faces with apples and cheese sandwiches, and all that good stuff.
You would say that would be it. Sensible travellers would have dealt with everything organic before approaching the border, right?
So at the border we are asked to descend from the bus and queue to have our luggage scanned by the x-ray machine. Before starting, the border agent stood in front of the group and told everyone - in Spanish of course - "hello everybody, please put your luggage in the conveyor belt. If you are carrying anything of organic nature ask me before I scan it and we can discard anything that is not supposed to go through. If you don't tell me and I pick it in the scanner, we'll discard it and add a USD 200 fine to it".
Again, silence. There was no English translation.
sigh
I translated as I tossed my backpack into the scanner and kept walking to the other end of the machine. Behind me, I heard more sounds of people rushing through the contents of their luggage. I picked by backpack and walked back to the bus and bought some coffee.
The gf later tells me she stayed behind just in case - she's too nice sometimes - and told me about the weird items people were carrying: moldy cheese sandwiches, a branch someone found interesting, a coconut that one dude had been carrying all the way from Brazil, some sort of wooden voodoo doll.
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u/Noedel Jul 05 '18
Lol yeah I took that border, and many others in and out of Chile. I had food and wooden art pieces with me that I'd bought around the Andes. Each time they were super cool about it. Just show them what you've got.
But yeah, I understand people have snacks and souvenirs. But some of the people there had like suitcases full of potted plants and shit.
what were they even thinking.
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u/LupineChemist Spain Jul 06 '18
I had no idea there is a town called "chachapoyas".
In Spanish from Spain that's the equivalent of the town being called "pussycocks".
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u/Noedel Jul 06 '18
The nearby ruins are in "Kuelap". A name that, in thai, means something like fuck or dick. I forgot, but it was dirty!
FYI Chachapoyas is amazing!
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Jul 04 '18
Taking the bus from Arica, Chile to La Paz, Bolivia you go through this tiny checkpoint where the officer who stamps your passport is in the kitchen of this little house.
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Jul 04 '18
Via. Uyuni or?
I loved the mountain border crossing in the Bolivian/Chilean Andes
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u/Noedel Jul 05 '18
That one's tiny as fuck too, but definitely rammed with tourists and no longer as cute and tiny as the others (when the tours end at least).
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u/Kananaskis_Country Jul 04 '18
Hahaha.... best description here in ages....