Deported

Now I know that a lot of you think of me as a good girl. Most of my close friends, up until recent years, would have thought I was a picture of perfection. I never swore, drunk much, spoke only nicely of others...I had one friend tell me once that there was no one I didn't get on with, because I was so nice to everyone. It kind of makes me feel sick thinking about it now. Times have definitely changed! Not saying that I am a horrible person now, I am just a bit more real and don't feel the same extreme need to please everyone! Anyway, I thought I would share with you all a story of a very eventful time during one of my many travels through South America, which involves some people who very much disliked me, and my brother and husband.

Let me give you a little bit of background to this story so that you understand some of our reactions to the situation I am about to mention. Central and South America is nothing like New Zealand or even London for that matter. Back home, generally you will find that people on the whole have your best interest at heart. They do not set out to take advantage of you. During our travels, we discovered that this cannot be said for all countries of the world. Central and South American have the attitude that if you are white, you are wealthy, (in comparison to them we are), and therefore are worthy of being scammed out of as much of your money as possible. Time and time again we were overtly ripped off, and probably more often than we were actually aware of also.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, we travelled by sail boat through the San Blas Islands from Panama to Columbia. Now being that none of us spoke Spanish, and the boys attempts at it were hideously worse than mine, which were also rather pathetic, we were often reliant on the help of others to find our way around etc. As in every country, you obviously need to get an entry and exit stamp when you arrive and leave. As we were leaving Panama, Stephan, our sail boat Captain, put us in the right direction to get our exit stamp. That being done, he then, after much communication with the locals, put us in the direction of getting our entry stamp into Columbia. Now at the time, despite the fact we were aware it was unusual to be able to get an entry stamp into a country when you are not actually in that country, after having spent a week with our captain, drugs aside, we did trust Stephan as being a man of his word, and not being one to rip us off. After all, he had made this voyage many times before. So we gave our details to the lovely lady behind the desk at the immigration office, she stamped our passports, and we were set!

During our visit in Columbia, many a time were we stopped by the police, our passports checked, and sent back on our way. At this point, nothing was suspicious. Our problem arose as we tried to leave Leticia, a city at the bottom of Columbia, on the boarder of Peru and Brazil. We had flown in to Leticia from Bogata, the capital city of Columbia. Innocently we got our bags at the arrivals area of the airport and showed our passport to the immigration officer there. He immediately looked at our passports, screwed up his face, told us “No”, and shooed us away. We wondered what he was going on about as we made our way to the immigration office at the airport to get our exit stamps. Here was where the trouble began. Through much translation, we managed to pick up that the stamps in our passport were not legitimate Columbian entry stamps, and therefore we were in the country illegally. This being the case, the officers refused to give us an exit stamp. The moment it got suspicious, was about the time that they told us they would give us exit stamps for $100 American each. Now to put this into perspective, we had been living on about $30 American per day per person, and therefore this was a ridiculously large amount of money on our shoe-string budget. We started trying to tell them this was not reasonable as it had not been our fault. We had been told the stamps we had in our passports were correct, and if they were not entry stamps, why had the immigration office we got them at put them in our passports in the first place? Unfortunately this logic was lost on them, and the fee was then increased to $150 American each.

It was at this point that it all turned to custard! I had been sick for the last two days, and was not in good spirits. Ben and Aaron had both been in the runny club, (I will leave that to your imaginations), for over a week, leaving them in low spirits also, and we had all had about had our maximum share of rip-offs. So rather than politely dealing with the situation, as is always best when dealing with authority, we made our disapproval of the dishonest situation loudly and clearly known to not only the immigration officers, and most of the shop workers in the airport but many walkers-by also. This should have been where it ended, until Ben decided that he would take a photo of one of the dishonest immigration officers as evidence to use when we rang our embassy to sort the matter out, (which we planned to do). They would not let us ring the embassy, and reacted VERY strongly to the photo. I was at this point we were removed from the airport.

Deciding that we would take our chances in Peru without an exit stamp, we booked into our hostel for the night and were about to go out for dinner when six men turned up asking to see our passports. Obviously word spreads quickly in Leticia. We were then hauled off in the back of a truck to another immigration office to be 'dealt with'. They apparantly did not want us to try our luck in Peru and as we found out, had we tried our luck in Peru, we also would have had to pay a 'bribe'. Thanks to our English/Spanish speaking hostel owner, we were able to get ourselves deported, in preference to paying the large sum of money originally stated.

How different are things outside of Western Society! All in all, I am proud to say, my good-girl status can be officially scratched in favour of a rebellious Columbian deportee! Although I could have spiced the story up by adding some dodgy drug deal in there somewhere!!