“What could get wrong, will go wrong.” That was the motto of my morning.
The plan was to take 3 guys from the hostel to the airport, then to drive to the harbor of Colón, about an hour away from Panama City, where I would have one hour to tidy up and wash my car – as this was necessary for the customs inspection – and still would arrive at the shipping agency’s office at 8am as we were asked to.
Unfortunately, due to oversleeping and miscommunication, we started a lot later to the airport. The drive was smooth, no traffic, only the toll booths stopped us. All the other cars just passed with an electronic ticket. There were no toll agents to pay in cash, so we rang a bell. After a couple of times the bar opened and we were able go. We repeated this procedure at every toll booth and it always worked.
Dropping my friends off at the airport, I only had one hour left until 8am – so exactly enough to get to the harbor on time (with a dirty car though)… Except that due to rush hour my GPS suddenly calculated 1.5h. Shit.
I kept going and reached another toll booth. I was ready to go through the same procedure again, but this time someone answered the calls. Then a guy came up to my car explaining that there is no cash payment and I would have to turn around. I changed my GPS to “avoid toll road”, it found a route via backroads and immediately the estimated time of arrival jumped up by a lot. Shit².
A couple of minutes into the drive on the backroads, I got stopped by the police. This was the first time since Mexiko that I was stopped by the police asking for my documents. Unfortunately it was also the first time on this entire trip that I didn’t have them. My container partner, who had gone to Colón the day before, carried all papers for my car. Shit³. I explained the situation but of course they wouldn’t let me go without asking to pay a ticket of “maybe $100” (quote police officer). I showed them my empty wallet and played frustrated (there wasn’t much acting needed) and eventually they let me go for $20.
The entire rest of the short trip I was worried. Afraid to be pulled over again and insecure whether we would still have enough time to process everything today after arriving 1.5h later than explicitly being told. We could have easily continued tomorrow, but that would have meant that our the boat trip would have to be canceled.
At 9:30am I arrived at the harbor. An agent from our shipping company (though in the end he still insisted on being paid extra by us) helped us going to all the necessary places, file all the necessary paperwork and pay all the necessary fees and bribes. Still it took almost the entire day until we finally handed over our cars including keys in the afternoon. They will be driven into the container on Friday, and leave the harbor on Saturday direction Cartagena.
We took a taxi to the center of Colón, PAN, where we arrived safely. It is a city that isn’t used to tourism and I can see why. There literally is no reason to visit it.
Tomorrow morning we will be picked up and taken to another harbor, where we will board a boat that takes us to San Blas Islands and later to Colombia. I’m excited!