36. Border Crossing - BORDER CLOSED

We arrived in the Colombia border town of Ipiales last night. We planned to tour the town today (Sunday), and hit the border crossing to Ecuador, 5 miles away, first thing tomorrow.

We have since learned that the border is closed due to protestor activity, and has been for a few days. There is limited info on when it will open again; the protestors are apparently scheduled to enter discussion with the gov't Monday. Word is, it may open Wednesday. It also may not. To add to the mix, the Pan American Highway from the Ipiales border to the capital city of Quito Ecuador (about 4 hours) is filled with political activist based road closures.

The other border crossing opportunity through San Miguel is 10 hours away, and while we would dread the drive, partially retracing our steps (which included a construction based delay, stopped dead, of over an hour yesterday - ugh), we're not entirely sure that that border is open either. In addition, the roads leading to that crossing are labeled with a US travel advisory level of 4 (do not travel here).

"Official" information is impossible to obtain. Craig is gathering information from fellow Overlanders through an Overlanders blog. We are also in touch with the Frenchman with whom we shared the shipping container for the car from Panama to Colombia. He is in the exact same situation as us, except he has a fellow Traveller who needs to catch a flight back to France from Quito. (Not sure that's gonna happen). There's another guy whose Colombian visa is expiring. If he can't get out of Colombia before that, good luck crossing the border afterwards. He'll have a weeks worth of administrative paperwork and fines to deal with.

Do we stay in Ipiales, and hope that the situation with the protestors resolves itself, and that the border opens in the next few days, as opposed to the next few weeks? In which case we can get to Quito in 5+ hours.

Or do we travel the "travel advisory 4" dirt & rock roads leading to and from the San Miguel border crossing, adding 2 days to our journey?

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