Panama

The road from Costa Rica runs out and you are in Panama. Just like that. If you look in the photo above the Costa Rican flag is in front of the Panamanian border building, the one with the arched roof. There are no border police or barricades between one country and the other. It’s a mess. But it works! 

When you leave Costa Rica you pay $8 per person online or $9 to a business that will give you a receipt. “Impuesto de Salida” means exit tax. You pay in Colones or dollars and not even a smile. Boy let’s move on across the street. Find your way around and give the receipt to Immigration and they stamp you out. Customs suspended our import permit so if we need to we can re-enter Costa Rica within 90 days. The agriculture guy looked at our permit and said Rusty was good to go. Jolly good. 

First buy car insurance, 30 days for $25 flat fee. Panama uses the US dollar so this is the local currency. Oh and the time changed here, we were now standing an hour later in Eastern Standard Time. 

Isn’t this weird? A bus area with people just milling around inside Panama. The building with the red white and blue squares is the customs and immigration building.  We could have just walked off into Panama. We didn’t though! We need papers to ship GANNET2 and ourselves to Colombia. 

We stood at the customs window for a while as they typed out our 30 day permit line by line.  A Ram Promaster is not a common vehicle around here but she found it in her files. We got our permit. Then cans Rusty. Panama is notorious for being difficult to import animals. During the US Canal Zone era they had a four month quarantine so things are better now for dogs entering by land. 

Our papers from the vet in San Vito worked like a charm. The clerk asked for $25 and we said nothing but handed over the money. “Now the vet inspection,” he said. Our hearts sank. Rusty still has a big bald spot on his bum from his tussle with fire ants. We feared we might get some grief about that. He went out and came back alone. “The vet’s not around,” he said. And with that we fast walked back to GANNET2 . No one inspected Rusty sitting in the air conditioned van. 

A customs inspector checked our van. He peered in the back doors and asked for a tip. I played dumb and that was that. No inspection of our fridge or anything. Fair enough. 

Finally we had to do immigration. He checked our van papers and said nothing about any dog. We thanked him and split. Modern travelers like to put stickers on everything they pass. We met Moonrise Odyssey in Mexico and they drove this far with lots of engine trouble and quit driving. They shipped the truck home and are touring Vietnam. But their stickers still here. 

This place is chaos but don’t let it worry you. We were done in less than two hours. One final panic when the animal health department flagged us down and we thought: what now? Rusty??  No it was just the usual fumigation. $6 and we were done. Like these motorcycles from Britain. They got hand sprayed while we drove through the shed and were in Panama. 

I want to mention in passing a conversation we had with some travelers as we all waited for our papers. There is an easy way to smuggle your dog into Panama around here because the border is completely porous. People from Costa Rica apparently do it all the time to save the $150 fee (which was $25 for us apparently). I was glad for the information if I ever need it but we have to have Rusty legal for our exit by plane to Colombia. Besides I’m not very good at breaking rules. And I’m not explaining here in public how it’s done. 

This border crossing had been on our minds and I do wish we had traveled Costa Rica properly first but it all went well, and rather faster than we expected. Next time…

We expected for sure to be inspected at the police checkpoint half a mile from the border. Nope, we must look innocent as they waved us through with a bored look on their faces. Police all the way from Texas have shown zero interest in hassling us or demanding bribes or any of the other horror stories. Go figure. 

The PanAmerican Highway is a four lane bouncy cement roadway close to the border. Eventually it turns into smooth asphalt and that was lovely, with no speed bumps and no potholes. A steady 50 mph, the speed limit, made for an easy drive. 

Everything is slightly different here of course but the best thing we saw was the local price for regular gasoline. It’s 91 cents a liter which multiplied by 3.78 makes $3:44 a US gallon. Much better than $5:25 charged in Costa Rica. 

We stopped at a fruit stand of course. Rusty got his first sniff in Panama and Layne came back with corn cobs for dinner. 

Villa Paula half an hour down the road has electricity, laundry, swimming pool and dollar beers on the honor system. Oh and a bunch of travelers, more than we’ve seen in weeks. 

$10 a night? Sign me up, this is decidedly cheaper than Costa Rica. Costa Where?