Colombia: The only risk is wanting to stay...

30 August

...is the slogan of the Colombian tourist agency. This surely proved true for us but in a rather unexpected way:

We entered Colombia rather wary of the security situation, thinking we'd stay 2 to 3 weeks maximum. But it did not take long before we fell in love with the country, and before we knew it, we had spent 5 wonderful weeks in the country!
A bit sad to leave the country, we stand in line at the border to get our exit stamp from the Colombian immigration office. As usual in this very efficient and well organized country, the line moves along smoothly, and soon it is our turn. We hand over our passports, already thinking of Ecuador . . . unexpectedly, the officer asks us to come around to his office . . . what could this possibly be about?
Apparently, we completely failed to notice that upon arrival, the immigration officer in Cartagena, placed a stamp in our passports with an exit date on it: we had been given 30 days and not the maximum allowed 60 days! Oh no, by the 30th of August, we had been in the country illegally for 8 days. The fact that we could easily have stayed much longer if we only got the immigration stamp right doesn't matter – now it's too late. The immigration officer at the border refuses to let us exit, has us wait 30 minutes in his office while he processes a long queue of people, and then explains that we are liable to pay a hefty fine! According to the rule-book this has to be done at a bank – but they're all closed on a Sunday (as is the embassy which we try to call)! Looks like we have to turn around, spend another night in the hotel at the border, go to a bank in town the next morning to make the payment, and return to immigration again.... or . . . well let's just say a few minutes later we're on our way to Quito in Ecuador.

I'm not sure this was the scenario the tourist officials had in mind when creating their slogan, but wanting to stay became rather expensive for us in this so far safe country.