Ecuador

Only four of us dared to, but we were prepared. We emptied our pockets of anything valuable, holding only our passport and enough money to get us there and back. Our plan: to cross the border. Our motivation: to get an Ecuadorian stamp. In travel, only the man with the most passport stamps is king!

The only problem with this border is that it has a well-established reputation for con men, muggers and kidnappings. As insurance I brought my credit card (My assumption was that most kidnappers are likely to accept Visa…).

We grabbed the first taxi from outside our hostel and headed into the desert. Quickly there was nothing to see but sand and road, plus a few sets of road works here and there. Directing traffic at these road works seemed like quite a prestigious job; always performed by pretty women, all dressed up in attractive clothing, wearing make-up and large hoop earrings. They waved their flags with pride.

The first stop was Peruvian immigration. Explaining in Spanish to the officer in charge that we only planned to spend ten minutes in Ecuador was the main challenge. He seemed convinced that we were confused. To get our stamps we stamp out of Peru, into Ecuador, out of Ecuador, then back into Peru. My Ecuadorian entry visa welcomes me for up to 90 days. My exit visa was stamped 30 seconds later.

The most amazing part was the border itself. In the middle of nowhere a dried-out man-made river defines the line where the two adjacent countries meet. A rather battered looking bridge joins the two. One end welcomes you to Peru while the other welcomes to Ecuador. As we walked warily across, knowing that our taxi driver had refused to join us, we couldn´t help but wonder who would take responsibility, were we to be pillaged here and now in no man´s land. On either side of this bridge was the most densely packed market I had ever seen. At every point we were pushing through, attempting to look as uncompromising as we could, while well-practiced hands regularly explored our pockets for expensive goodies. Unfortunately, but for good reason, we have no photo evidence of this bustling trading arena.