Jan 11, 2019 12:08 AM

Corruption alert Guanaja!

Immigration:
We checked in to Roatan, easy and free of charge!
However when we tried to check out of Guanaja, a guy on the street came running to us asking if we were checking out, I said – naive as I am, “Yes we are.” He then run to the Immigration office and entered before us. Shook the officers hand, and took the job as our translator, Which we did not need. But we could not just throw him out of the office, Afterwards he wanted a little something for the “job” of course… This seemed to be a deal between them, sometimes it seemed the immigration officer was faking his lack of English knowledge.

The Immigration officer claimed he could not stamp out my crewmember, because he has been in Colombia 6 months before (stamp in his passport), and it is required to have a yellow fever card if you have been there. (To be clear- that is not the case. My crew checked with his doctor in Norway, and he did not have to have a Yellow fever card to go to Colombia, it is only recommended in certain areas.) He said my guy had to get a flight to la Ceiba to get a yellow fever shot for (he specified) $160 USD, then fly back to Guanaja and then get the stamped passport back. We had to sit there with hat in hand and ask if there was any other way. And of course he could “help” us out if we gave him something for “refurbishing the office”. We ended up giving him 1000 Limpiri ($40 USD got it down from 160…) and we had to give the Translator 100 Limpiri.

Our friend in another boat also had similar issues. He did not have a receipt for the check-in fee in Utila, and had to pay that again ($4 USD? there is no receipt for this fee as far as I know).

Another family tried to check out after that and were told they needed to have a Zarpe for leaving Roatan, and he demanded a fee, He got none.

Port Captain:
He was not corrupt (to my knowledge) but he was rather grumpy, and did not give us (or the other two boats) a Zarpe until after 16:00. At 16:00 we went to his office and we were refused a Zarpe as we were planning to leave the next day. We had to go to him 2 hours before leaving to get the Zarpe he said.

The next day we learned that there was recently 2 boats overstaying for about a month each after checking out, as they were waiting for the weather. This might explain why he refused to give us the Zarpe.