Our Panama Problem

As I write this we are comfortably parked in Nicaragua having a very enjoyable time. 

I will write about our travel experiences as the week progresses but today I feel compelled to discuss the overarching problem that is never far from our minds. Panama is closed to traffic and we have to go through Panama to load our van in a container to ship our vehicle to South America to bypass the notorious Darien Gap where the road ends. In the map below note the location of Santiago a city critical to todays post: 

The situation in Panama has deteriorated rapidly over the past three weeks with roadblocks cutting the country in two. Travelers from Costa Rica cannot reach Panama City. Indeed the protestors are not allowing anyone through on the PanAmerican Highway so that food fuel and medical supplies are running out across the country after three weeks of blockades. Panama City, the capital on the Pacific Coast is dealing with street demonstrations and riots, and random street closures which  are annoying powerful people, very much limiting supplies and reducing movement within the capital itself. The powerful people are calling for force to clear the crowds and riot police have been having street battles with the protestors. 

In the middle of the country at the city of Santiago twenty four hour blockades have cut the country in two for three weeks. There is no way to get past this choke point if you are coming from Costa Rica. Farmers and ranchers for example cannot get supplies to the capital and attempts to run blockades have ended in injury and damaged vehicles as protestors stop vehicles. The newspapers report 150,000 people have missed their medical appointments in the Public Health Service across the country. Schools are supposed to be open but with teachers picketing no one is showing up. Two teachers were shot dead at a blockade two days ago by a local protesting the blockades and he had a handgun. Here he is shooting the peaceful protestors as photographed by a reporter. I guess it’s alleged but judge it as you like. 

His name is Kenneth Darlington Sala and he’s 77 years old, a lawyer and a dual national of Panama and the US they say, and faces up to thirty years in prison or, owing to his age, house arrest. I can only imagine how well that news will go over in Panama. House arrest for a double murder of protestors. 

You have heard nothing about all this as Panama doesn’t rate a mention compared to Israel and Gaza and even the Ukraine has been bumped off the limited headlines we are allowed to see in our monolithic press. However Panama seems headed for the headlines sooner or later as violence is probably going to get worse and violence is what makes the headlines unfortunately. Frankly I’m surprised the protests have been this solid this long but for us the bad news is they aren’t letting up not even to let ambulances through, never mind food and fuel or tourists in RVs sightseeing. It’s terrible news for the suffering people of Panama but it’s giving us a headache. How do we get to South America?

So here’s the background to all the trouble. 

A few months ago the president of Panama presented the National Assembly with a bill -Law 407- that would benefit the country (not him he insists!) by billions of dollars by opening up hundred of thousands of acres of forest for strip mining. It took three days with no public comment and the National Assembly passed Law 407 so when the news got out the unrest began. Since then the National Assembly met in special session three times and managed to pass a law banning any future mining lease sales but they declined to rescind Law 407 which is the mining contract that  is causing the problem. They say breaking the contract  would leave Panama open to massive damage lawsuits if the country tried to back out of the contract with the excuse of buyers remorse. 

So the only way out of this mess now is for the Supreme Court to meet and declare Law 407 unconstitutional as it was not approved with proper public input etc. Such a ruling would protect Panama from being sued for breach of contract. Problem is the Supreme Court is nowhere to be seen and the current President, Laurentino Cortizo running for  re-election next May firmly supports the contract, so he’s not pushing the court to act. A couple of lower court judges have spoken up saying they think the law is unconstitutional and the government promptly attacked them in the papers. The president has offered the people a vote on Law 407 in December but the protestors don’t trust him and say they are holding the line and continuing the blockades. This is a grade A mess. 

Minera Panama, a Canadian corporation gets a 40 year contract to open strip mine vast areas of Panama for anything it can find of value and pays Panama $375 million a year for the privilege. The protestors argue the contract wipes out vast areas of preserved rainforest and threatens water supplies for the entire country. Even the head of the Panama Canal commission has weighed in saying he’s concerned they may mess up the already low supplies of water needed to operate the canal. Beyond all that the people are enraged because the contract was never debated and was approved practically in secret. Unless the Supreme Court steps in and declares it unconstitutional there is no easy solution here. 

We have to be in Panama City by the end of this month to get police clearance on December 1st to put our home in a container on December 6th for shipping to Colombia December 12th. How do we do this? I have no idea. Gas is being smuggled across the Costa Rican border and is selling for $15 a gallon in northern Panama for people who think they need gas. Legal gasoline is being rationed to five gallons per car in the capital. Rice and beans -the staples!- are rationed wherever they are sold. There are no eggs or milk for sale anywhere.  

The town of Ocotal in the Nicaraguan highlands where we are now all nice and normal! 

The woman who operates the American expatriate news link in Panama has shut down saying she is trying to get her family and her dogs out of Panama while she can. Our biggest source of news is bugging out: 

We have two back up plans and neither involves us putting ourselves in harms way! Friends of ours stuck in northern Panama are unable to return to Costa Rica or go forward  and are waiting and hoping for the best telling is not to take the situation lightly. Others have parked their vehicles and have flown back to Canada and the United States. 

Beautiful Nicaragua where we have a permit for sixty days. 

Plan A is in effect and we are in contact with a shipping agent in Puerto Limon on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. He is currently researching options to flat rack our van to Cartagena Colombia. Flat rack is an open sided container that can accommodate our tall van.  He’s not used to this kind of attention but he told us he has been overwhelmed by requests for shipping from travelers.

So here we are on the blue dot (above) figuring out how to fly Rusty from Costa Rica to Colombia…if it comes to that. 

Plan B) is to return to Mexico for some winter relaxation and see what happens. We have visa limitations on how long we can stay in Central America so if we can’t get to Panama we have to go back to Mexico.  We could try to ship from Veracruz to Colombia but the flights for Rusty get longer and longer and I’m not a fan of shipping from Mexico for that reason. Panama to Colombia is an hour long flight and there are ways to have him fly in the cabin with us as they allow emotional support dogs in Panama. But putting him in the freight compartment for several hours freaks me out. 

In short we’re up shit creek  with several possible options but no clear choices. This we did not expect and you can imagine my frustration! If it seems like we are dawdling in Nicaragua this is because we are. Costa Rica is expensive and rather boring so we don’t plan to enter that fresh bureaucracy until Panama opens up. 

If Panama’s mess continues and if we can’t easily ship from Costa Rica we shall go north and spend time in Guatemala until our Central America permit (we get 90 days total within the customs union of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua together known as the Central American Four- C4) runs out in January when we will return north to  Mexico and regroup. We are even prepared to wait a year and try again if we have to but whatever we do we will travel and have as much fun as we can where we can. 

Entering Nicaragua

The first thing I noticed about the border between Honduras and Nicaragua was that there is no bridge at the Fraternidad/El Espino crossing point. There is a raised barrier and a cement post striped in yellow paint and suddenly one country ends and the other begins. 

The Hondurans were charming and easy as we said goodbye and I will confess my stomach was churning as we drove the fifty yards from the Honduran customs building to the “Welcome To Nicaragua” sign. They have a fearsome reputation for being bloody minded and awkward at Nicaraguas border. We have spoken with travelers who took five hours to cross here’s after being subjected to probing interrogations by angry officials. 

You aren’t supposed to wield cell phones in the border offices of any country (including the US) and in a left over from Cold War years photographing border facilities  is forbidden so our pictures in this post have a rather poor quality which you can attribute to my feeble spycraft as we attempted to document our arrival in Nicaragua. 

Before we even arrived at the border post a man in a hut came out and inspected our passports and gave us an entry form to fill out. Then the disinfectant was sprayed on our wheels.  Then an officious police woman motioned me to follow her so I got out and walked to what looked like a Girl Scout gathering under a tree and from among the women sitting in a circle another angry looking policewoman with a giant bosom asked for my entry forms I had just been given. She stamped them and handed them back. She stared and I hoped I was going to get a spanking but she motioned me away with a bored look. I backed out of the August Presence feeling like a school boy in the study of yet another disappointed headmaster. I was educated at a school resembling Hogwarts and the trauma never leaves you. 

Then we did immigration and I joked around with the Immigration lady and I had them all smiling pretty quickly so that went well. It was ten o’clock on a Sunday morning and there were just a few truckers in the building and no lines. We were stamped into Nicaragua. Okay then. $26 in US currency. The exchange rate is about 36 Nicaraguan Cordobas (“baskets”) to the dollar but we had none and no one wanted any. And being Sunday there were no currency exchange touts wandering around. That was weird and annoying. 

A young customs agency hung out and kept us up to date with our progress. Soon she sent me off to the “eh scanner” a modern expensive US donation to fight the war on drugs. Again there was no line and I drove in, parked the van and watched as my home got x-rayed. Everyone was patient and kind and helpful as I had roughly no idea whatsoever where to stand while these weird operations were underway.  Then we had to wait for the results. In the meantime Layne went to the duty free shop for some light shopping - rum beer and chocolate - and I went off to present Rusty’s papers to Agriculture. They had a cute dog in the office which they offered to me to adopt. I’d have loved to but Rusty (and Layne) would have thrown a fit…They too were friendly and cheerful and took $11 after they inspected my dog and pronounced him nice (and disease free just like his vet papers said). 

Our tactic at border crossings is to settle in and ostentatiously show we are in no hurry by reading a paper book (no cell phones remember?) so Layne got out my copy of “A Single  Wave” a collection of Webb Chiles’s disasters at sea and I got a colorful Italian comic book which sat large in my hands as I stretched out. We were soon interrupted by a posse of young customs agents who needed to show activity. Their inspection looked fearsome but it was as cursory as any checkpoint we’ve ever been through. They opened the toilet door and recoiled at the sight of our toilet. Binoculars are illegal in Nicaragua (!) and ours are safe behind the toilet and will stay out of sight as long as we are in the country. One unpleasant you g man asked if we had a drone and he was fierce. They too are illegal in Nicaragua and overlanders routinely ship theirs across to neighboring countries. I said no I’m too old, they are toys for youngsters. He scowled. I avoided answering if I had a camera. We carry four plus two cellphones and two iPads all capable of taking pictures. And that was the only brief moment of Cold War grumpiness at the border. We passed the scanner test and the inspectors found nothing objectionable. Welcome to Nicaragua! And we were done in two hours. 

The only guy touring for business was Martin who offered to clean the van. I gave him five bucks and he did actually nice job. Then he showed me pictures of his lovely dogs. I told him to look me up next time we’re at the border for another clean. 

We showed our receipts on the way out as usual and we were free to wander Nicaragua for 60 days. All done in under two hours and no stress at all. 

You know how you worry about stuff and the more you worry the less it comes true? I should have known I was being an idiot worrying about this border crossing. 

A Night In Honduras

On the road Saturday afternoon in Honduras we slotted ourselves into the flow of traffic on the Panamericana the Pan American Highway where “pan” from the Greek means “all” as in all the 17,000 miles of highway from the US through the Americas, the Andes to the fjords of Chile and the Argentine Patagonia…Around here it’s labeled CA1 - Central America 1. 

Google Maps told us we had about three to four hours of driving to get from El Salvador to Nicaragua across a hundred mile neck of Honduras which gives this country modest access to the Pacific Ocean through the muddy brown waters of the Gulf of Fonseca, a body of water where El Salvador Honduras and Nicaragua meet.

Our plan was to honk through Honduras pausing to sleep one night and then warily approach the Nicaraguan border at El Espino mid morning on Sunday well rested well nourished and ready to wait out the minutiae of a border crossing known for its bloody minded persnicketyness. My hope was that Sunday might catch them relaxed with less commercial traffic and if we aren't impatient we may disarm their wariness. On the other hand they might be direct and charming if we have prosperity ducks all in a row! Exciting! We are ready having done our part: 

So our visit to Honduras was planned to be necessarily brief so we filled up with fuel and water in El Salvador with gas at $3:99 a gallon and we found regular in Honduras to be about $3:80 a gallon not enough of a difference to worry about. We changed ten dollars at 25 Lempira to the dollar at the border so we could buy snacks on the road like grilled corn. 

As we drove we checked possibilities for stopping for the night. iOverlander had a few sketchy options, street parking and gas stations which are okay but we like to stop at gas stations closer to dark and not spend hours parked in day light near the pumps. 

One issue for travelers in these modern times is figuring out how to get phone coverage as you go. Typically overlanders stop to buy local SIM cards for their phones when they enter each new country. It’s a clunky system because you have to find an office (without a phone map!) by remembering to set up your route before you cross the border and lose your coverage. Also local phone companies won’t sell you contracts and in most countries you need a local credit card to add time to your local SIM card. And then we discovered Verizon’s monthly international plan.  

At $80 a month it’s more expensive than buying time locally at 5 gigabytes at a time but boy is it convenient! With unlimited data just like at home when we cross a border we get a cheerful “Welcome to Honduras!” message and our phone doesn’t miss a beat. We just keep driving. I’m certain AT&T and T-Mobile must have similar plans for people on the road. We are lucky we can afford them and can kiss Claro and local phone offices goodbye. Between that and Starlink we are connected. 

Sometimes friends tell us when they go on vacation they like to unplug which is fair enough. We are at home not on vacation. 

We travel with Google, air conditioning, refrigeration and clean pure water without a care in the world. And we pass pedestrians bumping loads of firewood home to their shacks. I can’t get over the contrast. 

Since independence in 1810 the countries of the Central American federation have signally failed to get their lives together. They tried to form a federation with San Salvador as their capital but that fell apart. Mostly these days they argue on the football field and soccer determines the winners. The Pool not heated but  wonderful: 

I knew we’d figure something out before dark and sure enough we located Las Tekas, a public bath and gathering space alongside the PanAmerican. For $20 US ( no Lempira needed!) we got a safe place to park for the night. Mitchell is 76 years old and retired to life on his farm. His wife rules the roost in their town house in Choluteca but out here he strides around like a Honduran peasant carrying his machete. 

Rusty figured this was a bit of all right and next to exploring a place with no visible local dogs. 

The restaurant was closed to accommodate a religious revival “My wife’s thing,” Mitchell shrugged. “There will be some singing but they should shut up soon,” he added and they did in point of fact. We had plenty of food inside our well insulated van. 

There was that pool and no point in wasting the refreshingly cold water. Followed by a sparkling cool shower, followed by a dinner of salad and roast chicken bought roadside. 

We had the whole place to ourselves except for the music which shut down miraculously at eleven when god sent rain to send them all home. But they had their revenge.

Gunshots at five am rang out sitting us up straight in our beds wondering what the hell was going on. Then more loud music. It turns out the thunderclaps and music were a wake up call to get the religious camp moving. At 5am. And us. 

Culture clash? You bet! Life on the road. Up next Nicaragua. 

And those trucks made the road to the border a wreck. Here’s a sample of the worst bits of Honduras highways: