The plan is to leave the campground Sunday morning and drive to another campground close to the city of Pasto about four hours south. The PanAmerican Highway is the only road to Ecuador from Cali and it’s a safe corridor to the next country on our list.
You will see two other roads to the border but neither one runs through country controlled by the government and we aren’t keen to meet the cocaine traders face to face so we stick to the main road like the old farts we are.
We have an appointment in Pasto to get Rusty his border clearances. Technically he has to check out of bureaucracy riddled Colombia and into Ecuador. We’ve heard the agriculture inspectors at the border don’t care about traveling pets but in the event they decide to care about Rusty I want to be able to present his papers to save hassle. They could stick him in quarantine if they felt like it, if he doesn’t have his papers. Or they could do worse if they deem him a threat to agriculture in Ecuador. The vet in Pasto said it will cost $55 to make him legal. No problem to keep Rusty safe. The iOverlander entry:
The border crossing itself the rules are up in the air in Ecuador. For some months land travelers have had to present a police clearance from their home country saying the travelers have no criminal history. In many countries these certificates are routine but for us in the States there is thank god, no tradition of having to prove one’s innocence to the authorities. Which is a problem if you want to drive into Ecuador from Colombia. The requirement has been dropped for travelers driving from Peru so I suspect recent guerrilla attacks in Colombia have Ecuadorean authorities concerned about the violence spilling into their country.
Fortunately there is a campground operator three hours inside Ecuador who has contacts with the ministry of tourism and has got permission to send our names to the border to guarantee our entry to the country. When we arrive at Ecuadorean immigration our name on the list should get us a 90 day permit. Frankly all this faffing around is annoying but it’s how you have to play the game sometimes. This sort of stuff is the daily reality behind the glamor of travel portrayed on YouTube so I write about it here to keep things real.
Cora and Clint from the Netherlands bought a Mercedes Vito van in Chile and in two months will hand it over to a buyer back in Chile while they go home. In the US the Vito is called Metris a gasoline powered version of the diesel sold around the world. The US Metris is discontinued but it makes a great small camper if you’re thinking about one. These two young travelers left for Ecuador and as far as we know they got through okay so we aren’t worried about the border dance. We are still coughing a bit but we both feel much better. We’re sleeping more and coughing less so we’re ready. Actually I’ve been ready for a while as four months in Colombia has been plenty but I notice Layne has been hitting the Ecuador guide pretty hard. I don’t know much about the country so it’s going to be a learning curve for yours truly.
