This morning I safely arrived in Panama City, PAN, where I went directly to the shipping agency. While I was waiting for my turn, another foreigner entered and mumbled bad Spanish at the receptionist. After he sat down I asked what his intention was, and he responded that he wanted to send his car with the next ship to Colombia. I told him that I did too, so we didn’t even have to speak out loud what we already had decided that exact moment: We will ship our cars together in the same container saving a little bit of money.
We were attended together and got explained the process. It included several steps in Panama City, Colón (where the cars will be shipped from) and Cartagena. After about 1.5h we left the office and started doing the steps in Panama City, which the agency estimated to take 2 days. Being really quick and lucky in some places, we managed to get everything done today and went back to the agency.
There we got the next steps explained and had to pay. $1050 each. In cash only. So we used all the credit cards we had and I raided all my secret cash reserves. Luckily we got exactly the necessary amounts together.
Then we went to the hostel and discussed the next steps and how to get to Colombia ourselves (by boat? by plane?). We decided to stay one more day in Panama City to explore the city (also to clean up our cars as this is required for the customs inspection) and to go to the harbor in Colón on Wednesday.
The traveling method for ourselves is not yet decided.