Jaunted

Border crossing officials and customs agents holding onto passports for uncomfortably long and seemingly disorganized periods of time are all part of the experience of being a world traveler. Every country seems to have their own way of scaring the crap out of us while leaving us praying and then in hindsight somehow impressed. No matter how archaic their system seems it somehow works.

Here are a few of our scariest moments involving our sacred passports. Got your own? Let us know about it.

Crossing from Costa Rica to Nicaragua - We're in a long line of Ticos, Nicas, and some Dutch, Germans and Israeli backpackers. We hand over our passports to some man behind a bullet proof glass. He tosses it in a pile of other passports and tells us to keep moving. Our protests to leave Costa Rica WOP (With Out Passports) are met with a blank stare. We cross the border into Nicaragua by foot. We fork over money to someone that we are nearly sure isn't an official. We go into what looks like an abandoned office which is actually Nicaragua's Custom's office, and are miraculously handed our passports without even having to give our names.

Crossing from Guatemala to Mexico by bus - We enter into utter pandemonium. Interestingly, Guatemala seems to be the preferred country to be in versus Mexico. Our most distinguishing characteristic is we're taller and whiter than everyone. We hand over our passport prepared for a similar situation to the Costa Rica to Nicaragua snafu. This time we cross the border without our passports by bus. When we go to get our passport, must deal with a man who opts to look inside every Mexican and Guatemalan passport for ours despite our U.S. one in clear view, and our repeated cries of: "Passaporte Estadounidense! Passaporte Estadounidense!" He eventually gets to ours and hands it back.

Traveling from Croatia to Bosnia by bus - Our bus from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo pulls over to a checkpoint and a man with a strong resemblance to Manuel Noriega saunters on sporting big mirrored glasses and sort of official looking attire. He has a big, pretty straw basket that he drops everyone's passport into with no apparent method to this madness. Twenty minutes later, he comes back on board and passes everyone's stamped passport back. He smiles as he returns our U.S. Passport and gruffly removes someone who apparently was Albanian without proper documentation.

Arriving at the Dubai airport - After a day and night of travel, forty five minutes of waiting to get your passport back can certainly wrack the nerves. Finally the dishdasha sporting official very, very slowly passes out our passports. One guy for the 50 some people waiting for their passport. His method? Looking at the photos trying to match the person seated in the lounge area. Apparently they don't have a call-out-your-name system in the Emirates. One passenger's Israeli stamp didn't seem to matter. Neither did the surname Levine!

Share with Jaunted some of your crazy border and customs stories here!

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[Photo: Marcokalmann