If you don't like to read about people’s problems and people complaining and whinging and whining, then skip today because it was a rough day, not at all fun, nothing interesting, very frustrating, and to me, totally unnecessary and the company should strike it from their itinerary. The plan, I guess, was to give people the experience of a land crossing between two countries. At best, this can be a nice experience to cross between a couple of booths and get the passport stamped out and then into another country. At worst, it takes hours, there is a whole lot of hassle, a whole lot of wasted time, nasty officials, tired people, hungry people, people needing to use the bathroom, and more. This experience was closer to the worst than the best.
So we’re all up at 3:30 a.m. to get our suitcases out of our doors to be collected by Chris by 4 a.m. and then we are going to hop on the bus and drive to the ferry which will take us across to Suriname where we will get new local guides and a new bus and then drive 5 hours to Paramaribo, the capital city. Right away, I do not like the plan. 5 hours AFTER we get there and AFTER we have spent several hours getting out of Guyana!!! Who made this plan and why the heck did we all agree to it up front without anyone complaining, myself and my hubby included! Geez and a half! As this group was all a bunch of seasoned and veteran travelers, we have all done land crossings and we all hate them. The ONLY reason for doing this might have been it was easier and quicker to get the group visa for Suriname rather than everyone trying to get their own or rather than getting a group visa for traveling by air but I vote no forever more on the land crossing there.
To the group’s credit, we were all up and ready to go on time. Hubby and I carried our own bags down to the lobby as our room was rather out of the regular beaten path. Just made more sense. Our bags are going in a separate vehicle to the ferry crossing where we will then have to manhandle them ourselves onto and off of the ferry and through immigration. So everyone checks to make sure their bag is in the group to be loaded and hubby and I help load a few, then we are onto the bus, in the dark, with our breakfast boxes with don’t have anything very appetizing in them. I think I remember a rather smashed banana which was too smashed for me to eat and a juice bottle and a savory roll of some kind. Not sure what any of it was but at least it was food and I think a good many of us ate it on the bus on the way to the ferry so that we wouldn’t have to carry an extra box with us once we left the Guyana bus.
We had made such an early start because Chris, our tour leader, had heard that there would be road construction and closing of various routes that led to the ferry so we had to be up and past those closures before they happened. So we are out of Georgetown and over the pontoon bridge and on our way to the ferry before the cows are up and milked that morning. We arrive at the Guyana border crossing well before the immigration guards are there. We get an immigration form to fill in that we are leaving Guyana. The one we had been given to keep at the airport is a different form so we don’t need it anymore. Then we pass through a door into a waiting room and a guard looks at our passport and form before he lets us into the room.
Once in the room, an official kind of guy immediate has us step out onto the driveway and line our suitcases up against the wall and leads our group over to the park next door where there is a covered table and benches and tells us that we should wait there. Didn’t sound very good to me as we have all left our bags along the wall and as soon as cars start coming through the gate to line up for the ferry, we can’t even see them. I know my husband just wants to sit down and relax and be a part of the group but I want to watch our bags and stay vigilant for what’s happening because it looks to me like we will be squeezed out of the line and have a hard time getting back in line for immigration once the officers are there and ready to process. Our tour leader had said that we would be allowed to go into the VIP lounge and they would process us first as a group. Well that didn’t happen. In fact, pretty much the opposite of that happened!
There was a large group of people there from a number of churches that were going to a conference in Paramaribo. Whatever benefits that we might have thought we were going to get as a group, we were overridden by the church group and they got to go in the VIP lounge and they got processed first and they even got on the ferry first as well. We ended up being dead last because by the time the officers started processing passports and moving people into the building to get ready for the ferry, our group was shoved out of the line and we all had to sniggle our way back into the line with our suitcases and there were a LOT of people there trying to go to Suriname.
Chris is trying to keep the group together and does for the most part except for one guy who has a lot of experience with land crossings and just works himself to the front of every line. I wanted to work my way up to where he was as well but sometimes it just isn’t possible to convince my hubby of the merit of the idea. We are stamped out of Guyana and moved into a small, hot room with a small snack bar which is doing a very lively business. Our one guy is at the front of the room where he will be one of the first to exit the building and get on the ferry. We are all at the back of the room. The church group is in the VIP lounge. Finally, I wander over and get some ice cream even though my hubby believes that, as a rule, you shouldn’t eat ice cream in a foreign country if you don’t know how the refrigeration is. Has happened where I’ve gotten very ill from it but this time it was just tasty. Then everyone in the group goes over to get some stuff.
By now, we have seen that the ferry has arrived and people have disembarked and cars have driven off but nobody is getting on. After another 40 minutes or so, the cars that are waiting are allowed to drive onto the ferry but no pedestrians yet. Any pedestrians that had been standing outside at the front of the building are forced to come into the building which pushes us all backwards. The church group comes out from the VIP lounge and lines up in the driveway where the cars have just vacated. They march (really truly march, almost) onto the ferry and then the doors are opened for the rest of us to enter. Many people have no luggage other than a small purse or backpack so we are at a disadvantage in that we all have large suitcases and some of us have more than that.
Our guy at the front moves through the door as one of the first ones out and he’s gone onto the ferry and we don’t see him again until we are stamped into Suriname. As the rest of our group is moving through the door, the officials want to see our tickets. Chris has the group tickets so he is motioning to our group to come through and we get in front of a few people but as soon as we are walking towards the ferry, everyone passes us since we are monitoring our suitcases so we are last on the ferry.
It is a simple car ferry with just a small overhang on the car deck for people to sit and there are not very many benches. By the time we are on the ferry, there are no seats and no room even under the overhang. We stack our suitcases at the end of the covering and see that we can climb up some stairs where there are seats and benches up there. We are very, very lucky that it didn’t rain while we were on the ferry although it thought about it and sprinkled a bit.
Looking over the edge at the cars below, we are right above a pick-up truck that has the makings of a large picnic in the bed of the truck. The people get out and open the cooler, take out sandwiches and boxes of food and drinks and get back into the truck to eat. It is now around 11:30 or so and our breakfast boxes of 4 a.m. are long gone and just a distant memory. The small ice creams we had while waiting in the hot room are also a fond but distant memory.
The Surinamese border crossing is not directly across from the Guyanese border crossing. It is a 45 minute ferry ride down/up the river (wasn’t sure which way we were going). So we have a bit of time to relax and hope that it doesn’t rain. Doesn’t seem like 45 minutes at all though until we are getting to the landing and people are getting ready to leave. Unfortunately for us, we are at the back end of the ferry. We should have definitely tried to make our way to the front but we didn’t. The boat docks and the passengers are allowed off first. We had thought that the cars would exit so we had lifted heavy bags for several people up and over the railing between the passengers and cars but since the cars didn’t move, we had to lift the bags back over and then push them through the narrow walkway to get to the far end of the boat and climb up the ramp and exit the ferry.
Naturally, that then put us at the end of the line to get into the immigration. Oh Geez was this going to take forever. An official suddenly says "if you are over 60, you can go in the Nationals line" ALL of our group is over 60 so we start moving forward but the church group is in front of us and I swear, for being a bunch of Christians who are supposed to help people and be kind and all that, they moved to block us off and wouldn’t let us in the door. There is a big sign there that says Nationals and 60+ but we can’t get to it.
One of the church group leaders has taken it upon himself to move his people into the 60+ line even though they are Guyanese, not Surinamese and only maybe 4 or 5 of his 50 people are over 60. The rest are kids and young mothers and a few young boys and girls. The Immigration Official allows it and tells us to wait a bit before we go in the door as it is full in there and the A/C is running. Unfortunately for us, the church leader comes back out to the door and even though our group had worked its way to the front of the door, he calls for the rest of his group to come in and get in front of us. So they start pushing and shoving their way to get in front of us. I am trying real hard to be diplomatic and polite but I start saying things like “hey, we are all over 60, what the heck are you doing getting in that line and let us in because the official told us to get in here” at which he told me that since we weren’t from Guyana or Suriname, we could just wait until everyone else had gone. So much for Christian goodness to strangers! Everyone for themselves at border crossings. As we didn’t have our own group leader running interference for us for any of this immigration hassle, we were stuck in the back of the line and it took us 3 hours to work our way into Suriname. AND we still got through faster than the “Non-nationals” line.
Meanwhile, our one guy who somehow got onto the ferry without his ferry ticket, had seen this sign when he got off the ferry so he’d gotten in this line well before the church group pushed their way into the line and he had gotten out of immigration, gotten himself a nice cold beer, and met our local guide, and was sitting in the bus relaxing while he waited for the 3 hours it took the rest of us. What a crock.
Somehow, one of our members had tripped over a suitcase and gone down on her arm, hard, and skinned up a whole bunch of it. So she had a makeshift bandage over her arm now and was still bleeding, thanks to the wonders of blood thinning drugs. She was also one of the older members of the group, being in her 80’s, I think. A Surinamese official came looking for older people and I told her we had several members in their 80’s and 90’s and she went and found our injured lady but our oldest member refused to go with her to cut in line and get through faster. As the rest of us were still stuck, guess it didn’t really matter.
Finally I am around the corner and maybe less than 10 people before I am going to be called. I am the first one in the rest of our group. There are two immigration people checking passports. There is one man letting both lines to the windows and sometimes he will let several people from line one go to both windows and sometimes he will let several people from line #2 go to both windows. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to what he is doing. When I get to him, he asks if I am a group and I say yes and our leader is at the back. He asks me if our group leader is from Suriname and I say no, he’s from Canada. He then gets rather huffy and says why do we have a group leader not from Suriname and how can he possibly lead a tour because he wouldn’t know anything about the country. I explain that he just herds us from place to place and that we have a local guide who is currently waiting for us outside. This seems to mollify him but he calls for Chris to come to the front of the line and he wants to question him. I now go to the window to get my passport stamped so I didn’t see what happened next.
I am told to leave my suitcases to the side and walk to the window with my passport and form. We have had a piece of cardboard that says Suriname Visa stapled to the back page of our passports. They never look at that. The man asks me a couple of questions and then stamps my passport and I’m done. I am herded through the room with my suitcases and the door opens for me on the other side (by an officer) and I am pushed into Suriname. The last room where I was herded through was the room where they could have gone through my suitcases – customs – but none of our group got checked for any contraband.
What happened after I was sent to the window: Chris, our tour leader, was called to the official who is in charge of lines. The whole room was sectioned off like an amusement ride or like any place where you have long queues. So metal stanchions and railings in place and walking down one aisle, up the next, around the corner, down the next, etc. Because Chris was being yelled at to hurry, by the official, he made a critical error and just jumped over the metal railing rather than go back and forth and push his way past people to get to the front of the line. THIS made the immigration people VERY nervous and they reacted accordingly. Suddenly they were all yelling at him to go back and stop right where he was and he later said that he saw two immigration officers put their hands on their guns. Wow, I missed it all! Luckily he had reached the officer that was calling for him and he calmed down his comrades and proceeded to check with Chris on why he was our leader and did we indeed have local help. Most of these countries are very touchy on using their own people whenever possible especially if there is a problem with high unemployment. As local people are usually the most knowledgeable on a country and the stuff that’s in it, a good tour company will always use local guides. Chris satisfied him with his answers and our group continued to go through the passport line and before too long, everyone was finally out!
We were met by our guide as soon as we came out. Guess it was pretty obvious as to our group although there were a few other European types or North American types but none in our age bracket. As Chris spends a lot of time on the phone, I’m sure he could have described each of us to a T before our guide walks up to us and introduces himself on the Suriname side. Our bags are going into a separate car. I climb onto our bus and get us a good seat. There is our first guy who made it through hours ago, sitting with his beer and just waiting.
My hubby comes out about 15 minutes later and comes to the bus with his backpack but there’s no room so I direct him to the van with the luggage but he can’t find it. He finally finds our local guide but somewhere between exiting the immigration and finding the local guide to take his backpack, he has lost his hat. His beloved hat that covers the neck as well and has a nice ventilated rim and the hat that we have never seen on anyone else before but three other people here have the same hat. Lucky for us they did because we were able to get the brand name and order some more hats for both of us as I had lost mine several years earlier.
Finally, our oldest group member is the last one to emerge. We get everyone on the bus (that’s always hard as people start getting off the bus again if they have to wait too long on others!) and our local guide says it’s going to be about 5 hours if we’re lucky and don’t run into too much traffic. Geez again and double geez. This is not a very nice day. Again, a total waste of time in my thinking AND I am realizing that I have another trip in OCT where we are doing a border crossing in the 'Stans! It has got to be because it’s easier for tour companies to get a group visa for land crossings than for air crossings.
The one tour member who had come through this area 42 years ago is in the front seat of the bus next to the driver. He is quite happy because he wants to see what the country looks like after 42 years. The rest of us, not so much. But we doze and try to relax as we are rolling down the road, sometimes stuck in traffic and sometimes not. We pull into a gas station for gas and some food and a toilet break. We are directed to a small building towards the back of the station. There are several ladies there already in a queue. Some men come up and are directed around the corner of the building where there is a stone wall coming off the corner that is maybe 3’ wide and maybe 4’ tall. The urinals are behind this so all the men coming to go to the bathroom have just barely got enough room to get unzipped without us seeing it all. Luckily, not too many men come over to use the toilet. The church bus pulls into the station. I recognize several of the women that get off as being in the church group from immigration. About 4 come over for the toilet and they don’t want to wait in the line so they go around the corner to the men’s urinal wall and just squat on the ground. This small building is right above a creek on a small hill so they are squatting on the hill side and while they are probably shielded from people in the gas station, they are definitely in view from people who are on the other side of the creek going about their business.
Our group gets through the bathroom line and we go to the food line. There is a small store and a small restaurant. Hubby had gone in there to get food but he’s always a bit testy on what he should order for me. Guess I have been more than a bit testy with him on more than one occasion for possibly making the wrong decision on what to get me. While we are waiting, the cooks tell us they are all out of rice and only have noodles. Our local guide says he knows another place down the road and we should hurry to beat the church buses that are probably going to stop at the same place. So I run back into the store and get a few things – nothing much good but something to eat – some chips and cookies and that’s about it. Since I had to hurry, couldn’t look at everything. We all jump back on the bus and take off in a hurry to get to the next place so we can get some food of any kind that is cooked and hot.
It’s not too far down the road where we stop and our guide and Chris get off to go get vegetable spring rolls. They were possibly the best ones we’ve ever had. Wish we had gotten a few more but they could have been the worst ones ever too. You never know with these small roadside stands.
We are off again for a very dull and very long ride into Paramaribo. But we finally did reach it and get to our hotel and get checked into our rooms. Unfortunately, one couple, who was really tired, got a bad room. I thought they were going to come unglued! He was screaming and yelling and it took them through another room that was unacceptable until they ended up in the room next to us. When we went into our bathroom, you could hear everything said next door. I am glad that he spoke first because we knew to keep quiet then when we were in the bathroom.
We were so tired from the day and the drive and the early rising that I honestly just wanted to go to our room and go to bed. We must have had dinner at some point and somewhere that night but it’s blocked out right now. So we’re just going to say “day over, day end”
Border Crossings - Poo
Tuesday, March 03, 2015
Paramaribo District, Paramaribo, Suriname
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