Into Ecuador

by Dan Grec · April 23, 2010

The Road Chose Me Volume 2 OUT NOW!!
The Road Chose Me Volume 2: Three years and 54,000 miles around Africa

We’re up early and move south through Ipiales, arriving at the border just after nine in the morning, which is quite busy with a long line of trucks and cars moving quickly through. We park on the Colombian side and take our paperwork to customs who keep a copy and give us the all clear. After standing in line for five minutes our passports are stamped and we are officially out of Colombia. Haggling with the money changers is fun and I get everything changed over with no problems.
Ecuador is another country that officially uses the US dollar so it’s nice to be back on familiar ground in terms of money.

The hedge garden in Tulcan

We drive under the obligatory “Welcome to Ecuador” sign, flanked by about ten impressive looking Police in full riot gear. We park, fill in an immigration form and wait in line for about twenty minutes to be stamped into Ecuador for 90 days. In a small, clean office just around the corner we hand over copies of our registration, passport and license and half an hour later the friendly guy has everything typed up and we are on our way. Interestingly, I’ve been using my Canadian drivers license for the entire trip. I do have an international drivers license, though I’ve never been asked to show it once.

This is by far the friendliest, easiest, cheapest border crossing of the journey.