To Latitude 0°0’0” - Stories from PANAMA
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In to Panama, continued...
May 29, 2010
The bridge we had to cross to get to the Panama side of the river was, well, scary. We couldn't figure out why there were so many people walking across the bridge and not taking the very obvious pedestrian walkway until we got half way across and ralized it was completely destroyed because the bridge was so old and worn down. We made it safely to the other side (holding our breath the entire way) and were in to Panama customs.
This crossing was very easy as well (probably the easiest broder crossing we've had since Belize). We had to get our passports stamped for entry then we had to buy insurance for the car before moving on to customs to do the car's paperwork. The office is past the migration offices (which are on the left if you're going from Costa Rica to Panama), up and ramp and in a shopping center. If you ask eople can point you in the right direction. The insurance costs around USD$15 and is painless to purchase. After you have the insurance paper then you can to go customs and fill out the paperwork. You don't have to pay anything for the paperwork and it only takes about 20 to 30 minutes if you don't have to wait in line.
Then we were off on our all day drive through Panama. We drove from the border to Chitre where we decided to stay for the night. Chitre is only about 250 kilometers from Panama City, so we thought it would be nice to get the majority of our driving out of the way in one day. The drive was beautiful and we saw highlands and sea and it was nice most of the day. We only got pulled over twice, once at a migration check point and a second time by a police officer. The first time nothing happened, they checked our passports and sent us on our way. The second time we were pulled over because we were "speeding". The office was definitely looking for money, but we used our English and got out of paying him a large amount of money and just giving him enough to buy some soda... Central American police have really scarred us.
We made it to Chitre around 5:00, checked in to a hotel (it was close to the town center and had A/C!) had some dinner, and explored a bit. We went to some of the local shops (shopping really seemed to be the thing to do), and then headed back to the hotel. While we were sitting on the hotel's second story outdoor patio we met a guy from Germany named David. He had been traveling for a while and was country hopping around Central and South America. We chatted with him for a while, then Arturo and I went to the roomand Becky stayed up talking with him and ended up inviting him to have breakfast with us in the morning.
Tomorrow we'll explore Chitre a bit then drive to Panama City
Here are some photos from our drive today...
The car at the Costa Rica/Panama border crossing (on the Panama side)
A view of Boca del Toro, Panama from the road
View of the highlands in Panama
Another view of the highlands in Panama
Coming out of the highlands on to the southern coast of Panama
To see more photos from our adventures in Panama click here. (si quieres ver mas fotos de Panama da un click aqui)
Total mileage driven so far 5,801
Total miles traveled so far 6,084
294 miles from Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica to Chitre, Panama
Average gas price in Panama - $TBA
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Panama City, the city lacking signage, where the only instructions are "dale recto"
May 30, 2010
We spent the morning relaxing, having breakfast, and walking our new friend David to the bus stop. We didn't have to check out of the hotel until 1:00 PM (check out times here in Panama are wonderfully late!) so we took our time and hit the road around 11:00. It was only a 2 or so hour drive to Panama City (about 250km or 150 miles) and we made great time... until we hit a semi accident. A semi truck had driven off the road and a tow truck was attempting to pull it out of the ravine it had fallen in to. There were two tow trucks, and one of them was ripping up the pavement because it had to hold itself in place with this giant metal thing it inserted in to the highway. This insighed a great debate in the car about who pays for the repair of the highway, the trucker, truck company, government and tax payers? We relized that we don't even know the answer to this questions in the United States, so our question went unanswered...
I know the focus seems to be the guy in the yellow shirt, but it's actually the truck behind him
Thankfully the tow trucks took a break and let traffic go, so we were on our way again after only a 30 or so minute delay. Then we were in to Panama City!
The Americas bridge entering Panama City, Panama
Arturo crossing the Americas bridge in to Panama City, Panama
Entering Panama City, Panama
Today was a day of figuring out how to maneuver around the city. Driving in Panama City is hard to describe. Think of a large city you've never been to before with lots of one way streets (got it pictured?), then add crazy drivers who think of the rules of the road as suggestions. Then take away all the street signs that may help you in any way. And that my friends is Panama City!
Our map had no direction arrows on it, so it took us a couple of runs around the block to figure out which streets went which way, but eventually we sort of figured it out and found a place to sleep. We ended up staying on Avenida Cuba at a resedencia called Resedencia Cuba (creative name, I know). It was cheap and had air conditioning (which I'm starting to not be able to live without), cable TV, a clean bathroom, and seemed to be relatively quiet. We only had to pay $10 per night per person, which was fantastic because everywhere else was asking $15. The only downside, no wi-fi and nothing really close to steal wi-fi from. We found an expensive hotel restaurant not too far away to have dinner at and realized they had wi-fi so we were set.
Our room at the Resedencia Cuba in Panama City
However, come night fall we realized that we were in a pretty sketchy place. As with our hotel in El Salvador (those of you who have been following our journey may remember my ode to Auto Hotels...) we realized that our resedencia doesn't get most of their business from overnight guests like ourselves. In fact, I think we were the ONLY overnight guests they had... But they seemed to have the resedencia divided so those who just needed a room for a bit could use the rooms at the front and those of us who had booked longer stays could stay at the back. We got a good laugh out of it, but weren't really all that bothered.
Tomorrow we have to figure out how to ship the car... wish us luck!
To see more photos from our adventures in Panama click here. (si quieres ver mas fotos de Panama da un click aqui)
Total mileage driven so far 5,954
Total miles traveled so far 6,237
153 miles from Chitre, Panama to Panama City, Panama
Average gas price in Panama - $TBA
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How to ship a car
May 31 and June 1, 2010
First let me say that there are TWO BOATS per week to Cartagena from Colon. There is a boat on Wednesday AND a boat on Sunday. The Wednesday boat is the faster boat (accordingly to Yaniceli) and only takes 1 day to arrive (although I got the impression that the Sunday boat arrives on Monday, so I'm not sure what makes it faster... The important thing is that there are two boats per week, not one).
We showed up at the Barwil office at 7:45 on the 31st to meet with Yaniceli Armuelles. Let me just say now, we used her because she came highly recommended from other travel blogs, and they are all right. She is amazing! If you are going to ship your car from Panama to Colombia use her. You can contact her via email at Yanicely.Armuelles@wilhelmsen.com. She is wonderful!
They opened at 8:00 so we had time to grab a bite to eat from the breadshop on the ground floor of the building that the Barwil office is in. The office is pretty easy to find and is located right of Avenida Balboa in a shorter white building. No one will know where it is if you ask (people are horrible with giving directions in Panama), but with a bit of persistance you can find it. Just go "recto" haha, kidding (sort of). Yaniceli invited us in, brough us coffee, and walked us through the paperwork process.
Here are the steps from phase 1 of shipping our car:
- Meet with Yaniceli and get paperwork from her.
She will need a copy of the driver's passport, entry stamp in to the country for the car, permission for the car to enter the country you received when you crossed the border, car title, and copy of the driver's license. She will attach these to the paper that she gives you which details the shipment your car will go in and outlines the car's details such as type, model, VIN, etc.
At your meeting with Yaniceli she will also give you instructions for your next steps along with a map of where to go - The next step is to head to the police office to have them look at your car and your paperwork. They will review your entry paperwork and the paperwork from Yaniceli and either approve you or let you know that changes need to be made. For us, the officials from aduana (customs) had left our motor number blank when they should have put the VIN number a second time so we had to go to the migration office and have them correct our paperwork and then return to the police station. They had also made a mistake on our actual VIN number, so we had to have that fixed as well. We thought for sure we would have problems when there were so many mistakes on our entry paper, but we didn't have to pay any bribes and had no problems! Hooray! Dont' pay ANYTHING for this step! What they do during this step is make sure the car is not stole or wanted in other countries.
This office was open only from 10:00 - 11:00 for the specific thing we were doing. Yaniceli will confirm this time with you when she meets with you. - After you get the police okay you need to move on to the office of the police secretary and she has to write a letter stating that the car is okay to leave Panama and that it's not stolen or wanted in another country. We had to wait until 2:00 to go do this as the secretary doesn't work on this paperwork until that time (yes, we tried to go early). The reason you have to wait is because the police walk the paper over to the other office, so don't expect to get a paper from the police when you leave. When you go to this office you have to wear long pants (both men and women) and guys you HAVE TO WEAR SHOES. No flip flops allowed! I had to pull the upset pregnant lady trick to get Joe in to the secretary's office in his flip flops. Once again, you don't have to pay anything for this step!
You will walk away from this step with a letter from the secretary that you need to keep.
- After this step you need to return to see Yaniceli with all of your paperwork. She will compile sets of documents for you to take to Colon for the actual car departure process (no, you're not done at this point, sorry).
Yaniceli will give you a map of Colon and information about the steps you will need to take in Colon. The Colon office should also help you with these next steps once you're there.
At this point you can choose to pay Yaniceli or you can pay in Colon. I highly recommend just paying and getting it out of the way. You can only pay in cash and I felt much more comfortable paying cash in her office and after seeing the Colon office (and Colon itself) I think we made a good decision to pay in Panama City. Because we shared a container with Joe our shipping costs were $950 each. It would have been closer to $1,300 if we had a container to ourselves. (hooray for Joe and container sharing!)
This took us most of the day. I think we finished around 3:00 then we went to Joe's to look at flights to Colombia. We found flights through Aires (a Colombian airline) for around $175 per person, way cheaper than we were seeing on Kayak.com. Their cheapest was $355 per person. We decided that Arturo, Becky, Joe, and I would all drive to Colon the following day (it's about an hour drive from Panama City) and then we would take a public bus back together.
We met at 7:00 am at the Barwil offices to head to Colon. The drive went quickly, but our directions once we got to Colon were pretty bad. We got lost several times and had to ask for directions on multiple occasions to find the Barwil office in Colon. Once there we found their staff to be less helpful than the Barwil staff in Panama. However, we still got things going and started on what ended up being an all day process.
Here are the steps you need to take on Colon:
- Go to the Barwil office in Colon (once you find it) and get a Bill of Lading from their office.
This Bill of Lading will make the paperwork that Yaniceli did for you in Panama City null. You will no longer need Yaniceli's copies and can file them away. You will replace Yaniceli's document with the new Bill of Lading. I think they gave us 4 copies. 1 we attached to all the copies of stuff that Yaniceli had done for us, the other 3 we kept separate. - Then you head to the immigration office to have them stamp the passport of the driver. It is a very hidden office and once again you will have to ask for a lot of directions to find your way there. They do a bit of paperwork for you as well, cancel your visa (but it will say cancelled for car only, so don't worry you won't be illegal!), and then stamp the Bill of Lading with some stamp that seems to be important.
- After you have this you head to aduana (customs) to have them put another stamp on your Bill of Lading (this also seems to be quite important, but again, no idea what its for)
- Then you head to the window that says "almacenaje" (which means storage) but here you pay for fumigation that never seems to occur. We paid $5 and this is the ONLY amount you should have to pay all day! (as long as you've already paid for your car shipping) They give you a receipt for this.
- After you had paid the $5 you are supposed to go to the RORO (roll on roll off) office to put the car in the container. We decided to go back to the Barwil office to have them look at our paperwork to make sure everything was okay. I highly recommend this.
- After the Barwil office okayed our paperwork the drivers take the cars to the RORO area to put the car(s) in a container. While this is happening there is a police who watches and writes a report (they do not give you a copy, but we requested one. Again, not required, but I highly recommend this), and there are several other people who watch the car go in to the container. They allow you to stand there the entire time and watch the container being sealed. You should stay and take lots of pictures and videos. We took a picture of the container and of the key number for the container. You will be emailed a document later from Barwil with this information on it, but we felt better knowing what it was and having photographic evidence.
- Then you're done and the car is off! This took us literally all day. I think we arrived at 8:30 and caught the 3:30 bus back to Panama City.
The buses back to Panama City leave every 15 minutes and cost $2.50 per person. They are very easy to take so don't even sweat this part of the process, it's the easiest bit!
So all in all the process took us two full days. After paying for the shipping we only had to pay a $5 fumigation fee, no bribes, nothing. The process was relatively painless, just ask a lot of questions! If you would like to know more about this whole process you can email me or my husband, Arturo.
A video of our car going in to the container in Colon, Panama
We took pictures of our car and all the things in it before it went in the container
We taped all of our doors and the gas cover, but then had to roll down our windows when putting it in the container so they didn't explode due to heat... oh well...
The RORO area in Colon
The car going in to the container
The boys with their cars all ready to go
And they're off... the container was sealed in front of the boys
Total mileage driven so far 6,003
Total miles traveled so far 6,335
49 miles from Panama City, Panama to Colon, Panama (and 49 mile bus back)
Average gas price in Panama - $TBA
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A day of exploration... the Panama Canal, Casco Viejo, and artisan markets
June 2, 2010
Today we had a day to be tourists! No paperwork, no border crossings, no car shipping, nothing, just exploration!
We picked out a couple of areas we wanted to visit, slept in, had a late breakfast, and then were off to the Panama Canal.
The Panama Canal at Miraflores
It's quite a taxi ride out of the city (15 minutes or so without traffic), but we were able to negotiate the ride for USD$5 for 3 people. When we arrived we checked out our options for visiting the canal. All of the options cost something. The cheapest is $5 and is just for the observation deck. The more expensive option is $8 and includes the museum and a movie. We opted for the more expensive version figuring it was good to have some historical context to what we were seeing. We were happy with our decision to opt for the $8 option.
The museum was 3 stories of information about how the canal was made, the benefits it offers to the surrounding areas and populations, and the future of the canal. Then we got to go to the observation deck and see an oil tanker cross the locks. It was so incredibly hot. Undescribably hot! But we hung out for at least 30 minutes while the tanker crossed the locks and it was really cool to see!
Here is a video of the locks opening to let the tanker through.
Here are some photos of our time at the Panama Canal. To see more of our photos from the Panama Canal click here. (Para ver mas fotos del Canal de Panama da click aqui.)
After spending a good couple of hours at the canal we headed off to Casco Viejo, a very old neighborhood in Panama City that is being restored to become a historical center for tourists and government officials alike. The government has offered to purchase people's homes (the locals say for a reasonable price) and then redo them and turn them in to places of business (such a restaurants and handcraft shops), government offices, or hotels. It was a wonderful area and offered a beautiful view of the city of Panama.
One of the streets in Casco Viejo
A great picture of one of the buildings in Casco, Viejo. I liked this one because it had a random leg sticking off the porch.
The view of Panama City from Casco Viejo.
Another shot of the view of Panama City from Casco Viejo.
Another part of Casco Viejo
The square in Casco Viejo where the French Consulate is located (it's the blueish building on the far left).
To see more of our photos from Casco Viejo click here. (Para ver mas fotos del barrio Casco Viejo da click aqui.)
After Casco Viejo we stopped by an artisan market to check out the local handcrafts. They make very beautiful stitched squares along with masks made both of a solid paper mache and hand woven masks. I really wanted to get a woven mask, but we deicded it probably wouldn't survive the rest of the trip. But if you ever make it to Panama and think a mask like this would survive the trip you're taking take advantage and get one! The one thing we noticed about Panamanian handcrafts is that they're much pricier than in Ecuador or Guatemala and people aren't as willing to negotiate on prices. They had similiar woven items to those found in Ecuador and they were asking USD$40! These same items cost closer to $15 in Ecuador, so there is a HUGE price variation! We were trying to negotiate for these squares that the indigenous women stitch and there was such a large variation in price it was incredible! So, if you're in Panama and you're negotiating, we were able to get people down to $5 per square for the squares that are about a foot long. Don't pay more than this! One woman was asking $35 per square! Don't get ripped off! Okay, I'm done with that tangent...
After our shopping spree we went back to the hotel and all took very cold showers after our very hot day outdoors! Then Becky and I indulged and took ourselves to get a spa pedicure. For only $12 we were pampered for about an hour each, it was amazing!
Tonight is our last night in Panama City. Tomorrow evening we're off to Colombia! But we're beat, so we're going to bed.
Total mileage driven so far 6,003
Total miles traveled so far 6,335
Average gas price in Panama - $TBA
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To Colombia
June 3, 2010
Total mileage driven so far 6,303
Total miles traveled so far 6,635
300 (approx.) miles flown from Panama City, Panama to Cartagena, Colombia
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Recapping Panama
June 2, 2010
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Panama - Tips for Travelers
June 2, 2010
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If you have any questions about how much we spent, time travels, etc. please let me know. You can email me at rebecca@elnomad.com.
