Border Police

If possible, pay your departure tax online before arrival or at a bank or kiosk in san jose or wherever you are coming from. The line at the immigration is long, hot, and in the sun. The kiosks at the station may or may not be working, and there are only 2 immigration officers giving stamps. Once you get off the bus, walk towards the concrete bridge. PAY YOUR TAX BEFORE GOING TO IMMIGRATION, it was $8/passport. There were 2 places to pay in town. Just ask; people are friendly. Most people seem to be shoe cobblers. There are shoes everywhere. We were in a rush and unfortunately didnt buy any. Be aware that the border hours are 7am to 5pm on a good day! Our experience: we arrived at 2pm, walked the opposite direction of town and had to turn around. Face:palm. Bus driver didn't assist us to town, and nobody seemed to know where to go. Walked straight to immigration and waited in the long line. I'm 6 months pregnant and have a toddler. Two immigration officers approached us and told us to cut the line as I get priority. Woohoo! Then we were informed we had to pay tax in town. Face:palm. My husband walked to town with our passports and I stayed with the toddler. After a bit he came back and said they had run out of departure tax stamps and we had to wait and they would figure it out. We went in the immigration office which is partially air conditioned and waited and they only let us in because I was pregnant. Woohoo! The bathrooms were out of service. Face:palm. The cleaning lady said that only I could use them and the employees, that's all! Woohoo! Unfortunately I had sweat so much that even after a liter of cold water I didn't have to use the toilet. After 2.5 hrs of trying to figure out what we were going to do about paying departure taxes, waiting, listening, trying to figure out a backup plan, they opened the ticket sales again and we were able to cross just minutes before they closed. FYI contrary to popular belief there are places to sleep in town. Apparently the online system was down and they were unable to process tickets for a few hours. Didnt make any sense and they couldn't do it manually, which seemed ridiculous. Also through broken translations they said there wasn't any money in the system that processes tickets. They only process manually if the power is out, or the system is completely down. Believe me it was tempting to pull the red lever outside the immigration door that was attached to the power! Anyways it was the Sunday before semana santa. Who knows what the heck the problem was, maybe they needed money for semana santa and didnt keep a reserve? I have no clue. All I know is that it was not a fun afternoon. An 8 hr bus, border crossing, bus, ferry; became a 13 hr journey. Best advice: PAY BEFORE YOU ARRIVE! the only reason I can give 3 stars and not 1 is that the people were very accommodating for my condition and I really appreciated the VIP service. I'm not saying they were nice just accommodating. Very respectful to expecting families. (Maybe stuff a pillow in your shirt ;))

You must first pay the departure tax at a kiosk or small store that is before the bridge, they are 8 dollars what they charge you to leave the country by land passage Once you pay, they give you a receipt and with that document and passport you go to the immigration and customs office that is before starting the border bridge and do the procedure.

The treatment and the speed of the officials are very good, what does not make sense is having to pay 7 or 8 dollars to leave the country ...

Very good treatment easy access