El cruce de la frontera

Oct 22, 2023
3 min read

I could never be a backpacker. Carrying 20-40 pounds strapped to your bag spending hours on unconditioned buses through winding roads is a motion sick girl’s worst nightmare. The opportunities and stories that come with being a backpacker are everything I could dream of, but unfortunately I am burdened with the curse of motion sickness. If I could have any superpower in the world, it would be teleportation. I want to see the whole world. But being cramped on a plane, train, bus, car, or boat fills me with dread, anxiety, and nausea. There is simply no good mode of transportation, in my opinion. They all include uncomfortable seats, in small areas, crowded with lots of people, moving at high speeds. Until teleportation is invented, I will have to stay stocked up on Dramamine, paired with plenty of time with my feet on the solid Earth during my travels.

Thanks to Dramamine’s superpowers, I was able to survive the trek to Nicaragua. We first hopped on the bus from Coco to Liberia, which takes exactly one hour. Once we arrived in Liberia, we rushed over to the adjacent bus stop to catch the second bus to the north border. This was my first time at this bus stop, and overstimulating barely describes it. I’m just grateful we managed to snag seats so we didn’t have to stand the whole way. The bus was packed, shoulder to shoulder. Between people coughing, sneezing, and clearing their throats, I’m not sure how I didn’t end up with the Vid or the flu. While there isn’t AC on these buses, thankfully the open windows and speed of the bus once we get moving is enough to stay cool.

When we were about 15 minutes from the border, the bus that was once packed shoulder to shoulder, with barely enough room to breathe, only had 6 people remaining. 4 of them being my three friends and me. Nearly everyone grabbed their bags, hooted and hollered, and hopped off the bus, sprinting into the woods. That’s one way to cross the border, I suppose.

Once the bus dropped us off at the actual border entrance, we paid our entry fee, got our passports checked, then began our trek across the physical border. During our walk, we got our passports checked about 8 more times between the multiple officers at each checkpoint before arriving to immigration and customs. We answered questions, paid another fee, got our passports stamped, then sent our bags through customs before we were on our way! We had about 100 more meters to walk and another passport checkpoint before we got to the taxis, where we negotiated the price while trying our hardest to ignore the catcalls and heckles. I’m not sure if the taxi we ended up in was an official taxi, but we ended up at our hostel, nonetheless. I truly wasn’t sure if we would make it there alive between the flickering headlights, unlit backroads, and concerningly deep potholes, but we lived to tell our story.

While the stories of the backpackers from all different continents staying at our hostel filled me with awe and envy, I must know my limits. Days like these could never be a norm for me. If there was a magical cure, a surgery, or permanent fix for motion sickness, I would do it in an instant. I still don't think I could be the type of backpacker who ends up in a new country every week, I like to settle in. But border hops and bus rides within town would not be nearly as dreadful. Until then, I'll stay strapped with Dramamine.