Jolly Nice Corruption

Another day, another country. Tearing myself away from the comforts of Xela to head for the long lusted after surfing breaks of El Salvador, I found myself being dragged from my bed at the ungodly hour of 4:45 in the morning to make a direct shuttle transfer bus to my starting point of choice for my wave hunt, El Tunco.

My head bounced up and down on the thick book that I was trying to use as a pillow as I slumped across three seats, trying to make up for lost sleep. Eventually giving up, I raised my head to see that my bus (of whom I was the only passenger) had reached the border. Groggily I dismounted and wandered towards the window indicated by the driver, passing my passport through the tiny window to the official with a scraggy moustache on the other side. He recieved it with the wearyness of seasoned officialdom and tapped at a couple of keys on his keyboard, frowning at his screen.

"There are problems with your passport," he explained in Spanish, "And I can clean them up for you for 25 dollars. Otherwise," he helpfully added, "I will not let you into El Salvador."

"I have 96 Quetzales," I flatly replied, almost expecting this kind of outcome, "Will that be sufficient?". "There is a cash machine one kilometre back up the road." came the merciless reply.

"Make sure that you tuck the money over the counter when you give it to him; they don't like it to be obvious" explained my driver, who had been smiling cheerfully next to me for the duration, as we returned armed with the full exit stamp ransom to the window. "You know," he continued as we drove across the border having completed the suitably subtle transaction, "You were very lucky. We came from Guatemala where the people charge you less than the other direction, and at one of the nicest checkpoints. One of my passengers last week, an American girl, had to pay 140 dollars to get a problem fixed."

So it was that I complied with a corruption payment larger than my disasterous Mexican border crossing with good grace, in the knowledge that I had recieved a discount.

El Tunco, El Salvador
12th August 2009