We felt that we had learned all the right lessons from our border crossing into Ecuador.
- Do all the exit paperwork in the country you’re leaving
- Get your entry paperwork sorted for the country you’re entering
- Go through the process of importing your bike
- Do a happy dance, because you’ve crossed the border!
It turns out that we were wrong. Even though all the steps were the same, it was a much more frustrating process.
3pm
As Elizabeth and I neared the Ecuador/Peru border, we were on the lookout for a plaza similar to the one we encountered when crossing from Colombia into Ecuador. Instead, we saw a sign:
Bienvenidos a Peru!
And then about a kilometer later, we came across a plaza welcoming us to Peru. At no point did we see any kind of plaza to get our exit paperwork for Ecuador taken care of. We weren’t quite sure what to do, so we went inside the plaza and asked. They told us to drive a few kilometers across the border to a building we had missed. Once we arrived, we were directed to a small line that allowed you to have your exit paperwork for Ecuador processed and your entry paperwork for Peru filled out. This took about 45 minutes.
3:45pm
We hopped on our bikes and rode back to the Peruvian side of the border and asked about importing our bikes.
After a lot of back-and-forth, we finally realized they were telling us that before we can import our bikes into Peru, we have to fill out the exit paperwork from Ecuador…and that can only be done on the Ecuadorian side of the border, at yet another building…about 4 or 5km even further back across the border.
4:15pm
Tensions were high between Elizabeth and me. It had been a long, hard day of riding and we still had two hours to go once we got all our paperwork sorted. We split up while looking for this building…they kept saying “Aduana,” which I now know means customs. However, there were no signs pointing to the customs building. We had to take a couple of detours before we finally found the right building. It was super crowded. There was a huge pile of rotting onions sitting out in the sun, covered in flies. I assume they were illegal onions and had been confiscated.
Elizabeth found the building before I did, and she was standing in line to have her paperwork processed. Once she got to the window, she discovered that she didn’t have her import paperwork that we had originally been given when we entered Ecuador. They told her that she had to go to the police to tell them she had lost her paperwork. Since it was a Sunday, close to 5pm, it was likely she would have to wait until the next day to get a copy of her import paperwork printed out. She went back to her bike to search through her belongings, hoping to find the missing piece of paper
I, however, had managed to hold on to my import paperwork and presented it to the official on the other side of the glass once I made it to the front of the line. He handed it back, and said that I needed a copy.
I was nonplussed. Where the hell was I supposed to find a functional copier in the middle of nowhere?
The customs official said that there was a convenience store across the street that could make a copy for me, so off I went. I found the convenience store he was talking about, and they made a double-sided copy of my import paperwork for ten cents. I walked back to the customs building and Elizabeth had just managed to find her import paperwork. I told her about needing a copy, so she walked over to the convenience store and I got in line.
I have no idea what the person in front of me needed from customs, but here’s what was happening. The customs official would hand this guy a few papers to sign. The guy would sign the papers, and then hand them back to the customs guy. The customs guy would then do a bunch of stuff behind the counter, and would then give the guy in front of me even more papers to sign. This went on for close to 15 minutes and seemed as though it would never end.
Finally, it did end and it was my turn at the front. Or so I thought.
One thing that seems to happen every now and then down here is that people queue up in lines horizontally. There were two people in front of me, side by side. Once the guy signing all the papers finished, the guy standing next to him slid sideways in front of me. This has happened enough that I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of cultural thing going on that I’m unaware of, but in the moment it was pretty frustrating. I was next, dammit!
After this next guy was finished, it was my turn. By this point, Elizabeth was waiting in line with her copied paperwork. Once the customs official had my paperwork, it didn’t take long to process. He stamped the paper in all the right places, and told me I was good to enter Peru. I walked back to my bike and started getting everything packed up…it had been necessary to unpack some of it in order to get my papers in order. By the time I was ready to go, Elizabeth had her paperwork sorted as well. At long last, we crossed the Peruvian border.
5pm
However just because our paperwork from Ecuador was sorted didn’t mean that we were done. We still had to import our biked into Peru. We drove to the Peruvian side of the border and walked to the import area. Since we had all of our other paperwork taken care of, this didn’t take nearly as long. After about 15-20 minutes, everything was processed and we were legally in Peru. It only took two and a half hours we weren’t planning to spend stuck in customs hell.
5:30pm
We finally get on the road in Peru to head to Mancora. The geography in Peru is a lot different than it is in Ecuador. The road we’re traveling on, for one, is really different. It’s super-straight and generally very well-maintained. The roads in Ecuador were pretty good, but Peru kicks it up a notch.
Every once in a while there’s a slight detour, but there are plenty of signs and we have time to slow down so we can safely navigate the turns when they come up.
6:30pm
After an hour, the sun starts to set. We do our best not to ride after dark, but after talking about what to do we decide to press on. We only have about an hour left until we get to Mancora.
The ride is pretty uneventful, but it’s really unnerving to be riding along on an utterly straight road in complete darkness. I keep worrying that we’ll run into potholes or something similarly dangerous, but overall the road is fine.
7:30pm
We arrive in Mancora. Elizabeth’s phone has died, so I’ve taken the lead. It started to rain a little bit, and the raindrops keep hitting my phone’s screen and turning off the navigation. As soon as we get off the main road, we discover that Mancora is filled with poorly-maintained dirt roads. There are “puddles” filled with water that span the width of entire streets.
The biggest problem is that there’s no telling how deep the puddles are. They can be shallow, or they could be really deep. If our bikes fall over in the puddles, it would have been nearly impossible to get them upright again…and we would have gotten soaked in the process.
We slowly made our way to the hostel, and wound up following a mototaxi.
What’s a mototaxi? Good question.
There’s one in the left side of the picture above. Mototaxis are modified motorcycles. Their back half has been removed and replaced with two wheels and a passenger area. Mototaxis are really common in Peru; we had noticed them as soon as we crossed the border. It’s like a giant motorized tricycle.
Since we didn’t know how to navigate these puddles, we watched what the mototaxi in front of us was doing and tried to go where he was going.
As I made my way through a puddle, I started to fishtail, and cranked the throttle so I could regain traction. It worked, but I swerved over to the right. I hit the brakes after I was clear of the puddle.
And then Elizabeth hit my bike with her bike.
We were both at fault. I was so focused on not falling over that I forgot that Elizabeth was behind me. Elizabeth, for her part, was following me too closely. Once I stopped, she didn’t really have any way to avoid me.
This was a really low speed collision, but there was still a lot of power behind it. As soon as she hit my bike, it went careening into a nearby sand dune. I had enough presence of mind to know what was happening, so I was able to leap clear as the bike was falling over. Elizabeth was pretty freaked out; she kept asking if I was okay. I was fine. The mototaxi in front of us had stopped and the driver got out. He helped me lift my bike. I asked if he knew where our hostel was, and he said he did. I asked him to lead us there, which only turned out to be a few blocks.
As we drove, I realized the my right footpeg had snapped off in the crash. I had to awkwardly place my foot near the brake, but we weren’t going far so it wasn’t a huge hassle.
So after a long, frustrating day. We had finally arrived in Mancora. We were in a beach town, and we could finally relax for a few days.
There was only one problem. I really hated Mancora. But I’ll get into that next time.