Preparing To Leave

In ten days we load GANNET2 into a container to be shipped to South America. Read on if you want to find out how we have to prepare for this epic and unnecessarily complicated shipment! 

The repairs have been completed thanks to the Ram dealer in Davíd whose chief mechanic said he was happy to try flashing the computer in our weird van though he doubted it would work.  It took about ten minutes and all the brake parts were suddenly talking to each other again and all was well. 

“No charge,” he said after he saw the look of relief on my face. To complete the physical replacement of the ABS module we needed a dealer with the proper computer code to tell the units to talk to each other, which I find weird but such is modern automotive computer technology. Autostar totally saved our bacon.

We took a test drive up to the town of Volcán, rising three thousand vertical feet in ten miles before coming back down; and all seemed well so we have spent a month and several thousand dollars but we are finally back on the road. More importantly we have now learned what we need to do the next time we break down.  Stay calm, make a cup of tea and order parts. Lots of them.  Sigh. 

We are energized by being back in working order but that’s lucky as there is a lot to do. On Monday we go to Copa Airlines to organize our one hour flight to Colombia. The cheapest flights are on the Saturday after we load GANNET2 into the container so Layne has reserved us an apartment in Panana City for four days. We can’t get airline tickets online as we are buying a third seat for Rusty to ride in the cabin with us so we go to the office in person to arrange that. 

On Friday, after a last few days of lounging in Boquete we go to town and see the vet to  get Rusty’s papers to leave Panama and enter Colombia. He has his own passport to register his vaccinations. We started it in Mexico before we went to Belize. 

Then we go back to the mechanic’s shop to meet Sergio the electronics engineer. He has been really helpful working on GANNET2 by improving the cooling system for our house electronics. The 110 volt inverter runs much cooler these days as does the induction cooktop after he opened up new vents for us. He installed our spare rearview camera after the original broke in the US and he has built a new shoe cabinet for us out of unused space. The van is much tidied up thanks to his work. 

Friday morning the plan is to remove the rooftop air conditioner and put it inside the van so we will fit in the container. We have found several a/c installers in Colombia and the one we contacted said they would be happy to de-install it. This one is a new truck to so we will video the process hopefully helping the installers later. Also we will have knowledge we can use for future container journeys…

On Monday we have to be at the main police station in Panama City at 7am to get our papers to permit the export of GANNET2. Basically you stand in line and wait until they check the vehicle identification number. Then they issue the certificate…on Tuesday! And you thought the DMV at home is a bureaucratic pain?! Oh and you have to wear long pants in government offices. Even if it’s 100 degrees outdoors.

Let us not forget we need to extend our car insurance and renew GANNET2’s temporary import permit as our current papers run out the we ship! More long pants this time to visit customs to get our final extension. 

That’s another weird thing about bureaucratic Panama, they give you 90 days, and our permit runs out March 12th, but your vehicle only gets thirty days. renewable twice at no charge. Why you can’t get 90 days straight is baffling.  

So if you are exhausted just reading this long list of steps remember we need a dog friendly hotel in Cartagena the night we arrive and rental car for our first week in Colombia to explore the hot Caribbean coast before GANNET2 arrives. Plus we’ll need an apartment in Cartagena as we wait for customs to release our van which will then need the due conditioner reinstalled…Layne is expert at this thank god. 

If you have skipped all these paragraphs of nonsense remember all this hacking about is required because the US cattle industry never allowed across to be built across 60 miles (sixty!!) of the Darien mountains. The thinking was such a barrier would prevent the accidental

import of foot and mouth disease to North America. As there have been no outbreaks in the US since 1954 I guess it has worked. But what a pain! 

Personally I can’t wait to discover Colombia as we’ve never met a traveler with a bad word to say about the country, its people, its physical beauty or it’s food. I’m excited to see Andes and start acclimating to high altitudes. Simply put I can’t wait be a tourist again and stop being a mechanic’s helper.  

It’s hard to believe we may be in Cartagena de las Indias in two weeks and in our van there in three. Let the traveling resume. 

Interim

GANNET2 is repaired and we have a date to load our Promaster into a forty foot, high-cube container for the journey to Colombia. We are looking forward to being traveling tourists again very soon. 

Testing Days

We have the brand new brake module finally and it was installed Wednesday. All our hopes were in the cardboard box from Jerry Ulm in Tampa. Installed, it fixed the brakes but the electronic stability control is now not responding. Drive too fast and the van tips over!

Somehow we have been learning patience through this process and so far our patience has paid off in that we aren’t at each other’s throats, we aren’t blaming Rusty for our delay (!) in the tradition of kicking the cat…and we aren’t spending too much time wishing for what might have been.  But GANNET2’s  computers are giving us fits. 

So, as part of our program of trying to enjoy the unplanned as much as the hoped for, we went out for a beer.

One of the benefits of being stuck in Boquete is that we have come to quite enjoy this peculiar, ugly and yet attractive town. Everyone loves the climate up here, bug free, sweat free and even in the wet season not as bad as the swampy humidity at sea level.

If you have aspirations to flee the United States for whatever tin foil hat reason Boquete is the answer. You are expected to speak only English here as weird as that sounds. I’ve seen Americans flummoxed by making a simple greeting in Spanish, or being unable to formulate the Spanish to ask the clerk to sell them two of something instead of one. There is zero incentive to speak the local lingo.  

For travelers like us who have spent months eating locally and getting used to all manner of local customs each slightly varied in each tiny Central American country to find ourselves suddenly immersed in small town America is refreshing after we got over the weirdness of finding ourselves in Panama USA. Especially as Panama has made a big fuss about reclaiming the cabal and gaining “total sovereignty” as the slogan says on this old license plate I found at our campground. 

So we take advantage and enjoy the American-ness of our unplanned stop. Tuesday afternoon it was Boquete Brewing indistinguishable from any similar business in the US with no compromises! 

Layne had a glass of hard cider and I had a session pale ale because I don’t like strong beer that resembles battery acid. It was very pleasant and gave us a chance to get out of ourselves for a while. There is the underlying worry running through our lives that this latest repair may not work. 

We saw an appetizer menu on the food truck which gives customers a buzzer when the order is ready. It is I suppose a measure of how long we have been traveling because the idea of being served in this familiar North American way was half the fun of ordering a brat. 

Layne asked a passerby how the burgers were (they got a big thumbs up) and that turned into a lovely session of chit chat with two snowbirds who have been coming to Boquete for many winters from their home in Pennsylvania. Naturally o forgot to ask for their photo. 

The fact is we are in a bit of a jam. We are going to see if the Ram dealer in David van or will flash our van’s computer to get the stability control turning again.  They don’t sell Promasters south of Mexico so it’s uncertain if our computer does can be solved here. 

If we can’t get the can running properly we will have to make our way carefully north. Possibly we could get it checked in Mexico most likely in Oaxaca where we have a known comfortable base to camp in. We may even have to go back to the States. It’s all just a huge unknown. 

As we strolled back down the hill from the brewery Rusty freaked out as he watched carefully for signs of movement in a painted tire going double duty as a flower pot. He got on guard, stalked it and carefully checked it out. It didn’t fight back much to his relief. 

Disappointment stalks us but if we have to go back we shall and then we shall see how to press on. This journey is filled with delays and difficulties but I try to convince myself that is what makes the drive  worth while. Perseverance. One step forward two steps back. More perseverance. 

Chocolate At Altitude

Gaetano took us to one of his favorite spots overlooking Boquete whereupon I decided it was the time and place for a hot chocolate.

We had met him in Pedregal the River port on the outskirts of the big city of Davíd. We had talked across the tables and he helped us choose some fish dishes for lunch which was when I discovered he was retired Italian civil servant from Bologna. 

After Layne got over her bout with Covid he invited us to go up the mountain with him to a coffee shop with he promised, splendid views across Boquete and down to the sea. 

It was a lovely afternoon marred somewhat by me forgetting to bring my camera. Rusty stayed behind in the van for a couple of hours which he doesn’t necessarily enjoy but it gives him a chance to sleep. 

The Barú volcano across the valley long since dormant. 

It’s a funny place twenty minutes up the mountain above Boquete at around 4400 feet, and that much cooler than the city itself which lies at 3500 feet above sea level. 

I ordered hot chocolate, Layne had a blackberry juice and Gaetano had a cappuccino which we took at a table inside a little warmer than the viewing platform. 

He grew up in Sicily and went to engineering school in northern Italy in Bologna and stayed there after he got a government job. It was funny to hear his life story which meshed in odd ways with mine. 

His father a plumber emigrated to the United States for five years and made enough money to set himself up at home supplying the building trades in his home town and becoming a wealthy industrialist in Italy. His son wanted his own life and wanted to see more of the world on his own terms and do he set himself up in the north off the country away from his fathers influence. 

Now retired Gaetano wanders Latin America will though he settled for the foreseeable in Boquete. 

I enjoyed being a passenger for a change with Layne taking notes as Gaetano reeled off a list of places to eat that we should check out before we see him again. 

We got back to town in time to get tangled in the evening’s flower festival traffic: 

In point of fact his first recommendation worked out very well when we tried out what he rated as the best seafood restaurant in town. 

Fried calamari rings promised well in the clean tidy unassuming eatery. 

I had the red snapper in a lemon caper sauce and when Layne tried to order it in Mexican (!) we discovered the name for red snapper in this Spanish speaking country is quite different. Even our confused waitress got a laugh. “Huachinango” in Mexico and “pargo rojo” in Panama. Go figure! 

Layne had the Greek sauce on her red snapper and it was easily better than mine with olives feta cheese and tomatoes. Plus we had leftovers for lunch. 

The days go by pleasantly enough but at the back of my mind is that irritating thought gnawing away as I ask myself if soon, very soon we will be back on the road. 

The Decisive Week

This I hope is the week our much awaited brake module will arrive in Panama and with any luck will be shipped to Boquete and who knows, might even fit and solve our over heating brake problems. If it doesn’t…well I don’t want to think about that.

Life goes on of course, ten pounds of laundry washed dried and folded for $14, a sum so large the purser of the expedition grumbled about the bill all the way back to GANNET2.

The infernal music festival with all the crowds pushed on into Sunday night, one final effort to keep us awake before Boquete relapses into its normal weekday torpor. The number of residents at the Topas Pension has produced quite a few visitors fascinated by our camper van lifestyle. Layne the purser has been kept busy giving tours. 

My sister in Italy called me yesterday wondering where we were and what we were doing. That we were still in Panama came as a surprise, as the last she had heard was that we were going to ship before Christmas. Yup, stuff happens. And if you see a milk crate on the edge of the road, don’t ignore it or you might well fall in: 

As evening falls the flow of festival goers increases to a flood right past our van. The other night I was sitting up in the doorway (we put our camp chairs away at dusk to avoid loss by theft) and a figure loomed up over the fence. “Do you live in your van?” a drunken voice asked in Spanish full of harmless curiosity. I was not in the mood at three in the morning to satisfy his understandable curiosity and I fear I was a tad bit curt. By way of punishment the thumping music went on well past four am. 

We had an idea Saturday to go into town, away from the festival across the river, and try out the craft brewery in town. We strolled several blocks navigating traffic with Rusty taking the lead on his leash but we just had to give up. 

Downtown was a crush of cars trucks and buses and crowds of people were surging up the sidewalks in the manner of a football crowd released from the stadium. It was too much so we ducked out onto the side streets and weaved our way home. 

On Sunday we hoped things might be calmer and we tried again this time leaving Rusty home in the van. 

We made it to the Tap Out a restaurant listed on Google Maps with a long list of barbecue dishes all in English. Kansas City ribs and brisket danced before our eyes. 

Well I think the place must have got sold because the menu was a rather undistinguished sports bar listing of fried food and rather uninspired. My pulled pork plate showed up with a weird green slime of a shade never seen in nature and the barbecue sauce tasted straight from the bottle. 

Chalk that up as another revolting meal in Panama. 

Time to go home and get a nap before the nighttime entertainment blankets the town.