I looked at Layne as we pulled out of the frontier post at the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica and I told her I felt like we had arrived somewhere significant in this journey. Perhaps we have, but I’m not sure why I got that surge of adrenaline. Reality is now setting in.
The weather is starting to get to us after weeks of daily rainfall, and frankly it’s about time the seasonal rains ended. But like so much else on the road rain is something over which we have no control. So we keep hoping for more sunshine as the days go by, even as we don’t get any.
We have found a few things we have done right in planning our journey. Muddy soil and saturated grass and wet cobblestones make life hard for our heavy van so we have to pay extra attention to the ground we drive over. In dry season the Promaster copes fine with dirt roads but when the road resembles chocolate pudding we have to think hard about how it will deal with deep water and slippery edges and steep slopes. Not always very well.
Where the van shines is in providing our comfort as a home. After two years full time living we have no mold or damp issues inside. In this weather, near constant rain, our rooftop air is useful not so much to keep us cool but more to dry the cabin. We plug into the household electrical plug at the bathrooms and charge our batteries. Then when we want to run the air, we unplug the van and run the rooftop air conditioner off our charged batteries. Our home is dog and dry as raindrops run down she windshield like an army of small silver ants.
We can stand up inside our home and we have a dry queen sized bed in the back, no damp sheets for us! The air conditioning dries our damp clothes when we hang them overnight and makes our life comfortable. One traveler we met, driving a four wheel drive Toyota with a small pop up camper on the back described rain as the “camper’s kryptonite.” Not a bad description. I felt bad for them as they sought moldy clothes to wash and dry on a non rainy day.
The other drawback at the moment is the chaos in Panama. It’s been more than a month that protestors have closed the country to traffic over a mine approval snuck through with government approval but without any public input. As a consequence thousands of people have shut down the main and often only road across the country. Food medicine and fuels are in short supply and businesses are shutting down for lack of customers. Farmers can’t shift produce and tourism has dried up. We can’t drive to the container loading station in Panama City to get our van to South America.
In the next couple of weeks the Panamanian Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on the legitimacy of the mining contract. If the court finds it unconstitutional the barricades presumably come down and the country should open up. So we get to drive to the container loading terminal, better late than never.
If the Panamanian Supreme Court finds the mine contract constitutional then god knows what happens in Panama. Insurrection? Street fights? And most likely continued blockades. And we don’t get to the container loading terminal.
We have looked at shipping our van from Costa Rica but prices are prohibitive. $2600 from Panama versus $10,000 from Puerto Limon in Costa Rica! Veracruz in Mexico is a possibility but they want $5,000 and we have the problem of how to fly Rusty to Colombia as there are no direct flights from Veracruz. That may be our last resort and will require some finesse to manage Rusty’s journey. We looked at shipping from Florida. They told us we’d have to empty our van before they’d ship from Fort Lauderdale to Colombia. That’s not on, so we never even got a price. Just as well probably as driving back to Florida wouldn’t feel right.
Shipping from Panama to Cartagena, Colombia is routine and easy. The flight is an hour and Rusty can fly in the cabin with us. So it’s extra frustrating being denied that option, the easy and least expensive one. I’d like to think the roads in Panama would open soon in any case considering all the shortages caused by the blockades as well as the all important family holidays coming up. But the protestors show no sign of yielding and opening up Panama.
We’ve been scratching our heads wondering what to do and the only thing we can come up with is to wait and see. We have an issue with legal timing. We have permission to stay 90 days in Costa Rica. After that we can go back to Nicaragua and journey north. Or we have until January 16th to travel through the C4 countries we just came from and be back in Mexico 90 days after we first entered Guatemala. So we either choose to stay in Costa Rica for three months or else leave and drive north in three weeks and give up on going south this year.
I know for many people the idea of driving just to Mexico seems dangerous and foolhardy even. I hope we have shown it doesn’t have to be an ordeal at all. We actually enjoy it. This is a post from Saturday on the main expatriate Panama forum hosted by a Mary Middlebrook, always full of useful information.
Call us foolhardy but the idea of driving into Panama with road blocks and volatile tempers is certainly not to our taste. We aren’t that stupid or impatient.
To sit in Costa Rica for up to three months waiting seems tedious. Perhaps we could pull it off but even in this Eden of great floral beauty after five days we’ve had enough and want to move on. We like to drive and see new places and sitting still is something we are only good at for a few days at a time. So spending 90 days in Costa Rica counting them one by one might be a stretch for our temperaments. However this journey is also supposed to be one personal growth and learning patience is one way we grow.
Weird isn’t it? Sitting still when you can’t travel is frustrating but sitting still when you feel like it is fine. I can’t explain human nature.
So we find ourselves living through this rather odd phase, stopped by politics and sitting in the rain. For me it comes as a reminder that no matter how free you are to come and go you aren’t necessarily as free as you may think! I remind myself from time to time that another wet day in Costa Rica is better than a dry night working 911.
There are days I envy those who went before us, who are in South America, overlanders we met up the road and who were in a hurry, people who don’t travel on open ended schedules so now they are in Peru or Ecuador or somewhere south of here.
The thought of driving north irritates me and I cling to the idea that the situation in Panama can’t continue. Life can’t just come to a standstill for months on end. There again that did happen with all the Covid lockdowns. I try to imagine living six months trapped in some foreign campground as happened to some travelers in those desperate times.
Obviously we travelers on an open ended schedule have to come to terms with delay and obstruction. I think Layne manages this better than I do and no surprise there! I was actually glad to hear her say she is fed up with the rain as she takes everything in stride.
Costa Rica isn’t such a bad place to have to wait. We could have got caught in Panama during these uncertain times and we are in touch with other travelers who are, and life is rather tougher for them scrambling to find supplies in a town, Boquete, without eggs propane or gasoline and other random shortages.
We had planned to be arrived and settled in Colombia before the Christmas holidays and rigid little me needs to forget the brilliance of the plan!
This is a beautiful country, not filled with gorgeous cities or extraordinary history but a place known for calm politics and the preservation of wild spaces and strange species. I’ve seen sloths and monkeys and parrots in Costa Rica so I guess it’s time to reacquaint myself with them.
I’m looking forward to beaches and sunshine, dammit.
Costa Rica has lots to offer, they say. Today we launch ourselves into the project of discovery. Panama must wait.
