Customs Hang-ups

So my first experiences with Ecuador have been interesting.  The flights were good, no major turbulence and I survived without the usual major headache from flying (I think the motion sickness meds helped with that).  However, everything got interesting when we finally made it to Guayaquil.

For starters, here is some background:  There are approximately 20 of us travelling together as nurses, nursing students, and mentors/instructors, and each of us had 2 checked bags.  In each of those bags was a plethora of medical supplies, CPR training dummies, toothpaste, and vitamins for the work that we will be doing down here.  All of these aspects combined really created the perfect storm of events when we got to Customs.

If you haven't travelled internationally, Customs basically regulate what enters the country as a protection to the people and government.  To help them with this job, they use x-ray machines to check all of the luggage that is brought into the country and then will search bags that appear rather suspicious.  Now, normally you would think that a few bottles of vitamins and some medical supplies is no big deal, right?  Right.  However, we weren't bringing just a few bottles of vitamins, we are talking 6 months worth of vitamins, for 500 children, 5 days/week.  That's a freaking boatload of vitamins--about 284 bottles, spread among 10-15 suitcases.  Kind of suspicious because with that quantity, who knows if we are planning to sell them or if they are even what they say they are.  The short version of the story:  they saw the vitamins and sent us over to the customs office for further inspection.

The long, and much more exciting version:
The first bag containing vitamins was carried by one of our "fluent Spanish speaking" male students.  The vitamin bottles were crammed into every spare inch of a large bag of CPR dummies.  When the Customs officer opened the bag for an initial inspection, all they saw was a bunch of plastic heads and several bottles of vitamins.  The look on their face was priceless as they tried to understand the bag of plastic heads that is filled with pill bottles.  The comment the student made later was "come on, Shakespeare, let's ditch the heads and talk about the pills."  Immediately after this guy in the line, were 3 more of us, including myself, with several more bottles of vitamins and other medical supplies.  The Customs agents were concerned, to say the least, and they TOOK OUR PASSPORTS!  I was beginning to freak.  out.  Here I am in a foreign country, for the first time ever, unable to speak the language, some woman has just taken my passport from me, and now I'm being escorted over to the Customs office for further inspection.  Oh crap.

Slowly, as the lines move on, 80-90% of the people in our group are sent over to join us in the wait for the Customs officials to bring our passports and search us.  Fortunately, our instructor noticed the congregation of students and left the line to come and help us sort out the problem.  She presented the officials with papers, in Spanish, explaining the reason for the supplies, what they are, and what we plan to do with them.  Finally, a couple of guys that work at the US Embassy came over and helped us to explain everything--for the THIRD time--and gets the woman to give us back our passports and proceed through Customs.

Thankfully, they didn't confiscate the vitamins or any of our other supplies, they didn't try to make us pay taxes on them, and none of us are stuck rotting in some Ecuadorian prison.  Haha.

Oh, but do you want to know what awaited me on the other side of Customs?  8 armed men, 2 buses, and a box truck waiting to take/escort us and our belongings to our hotel.  In the middle of the night.  What a great welcoming committee!  ;-)