0114 Monday 6th & Tuesday 7th - Panama City

Monday.  Today we had to go to the DIJ to have our car inspected so it can leave Panama.  Basically all they do is check that the paperwork they did on entry to Panama from Costa Rica is all correct, and give you clearance to leave the country.  Simple, right ?

WRONG !!

What a fun day.  Luckily our French friend Gregorio had done his inspection last Friday while we were lazing in the mountains at Boquete, and had kindly sent us the directions to enable us to even find the inspection place !  The main Direccion de Investigacion Judicial (DIJ) office is easy to find – But that is not where the Inspections are done.  Oh no, they are done on the OTHER side of one

of the busiest freeways in Panama, over which there is no easy or direct crossing ! Luckily Greg had advised us of this, with details of how to find it, and told us to be there on the dot of 9 am.  Which we did.  This inspection place is in one of the GROTTIEST parts of town, and the car park where you wait is just revolting – The smells are to die for – literally !  We sat there with the A/C running and the doors closed for most of the time !

First hiccup was that you have to be there at 9, but they don’t start inspections until 10 am, so you spend that hour waiting – in the smells and the heat !  Mauro from Brazil rolled up in his car while I was waiting, so we chatted about our journeys in a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Australian, and seemed to get most of it across !  He ended up inviting us to his home N of Rio if we make it there, which was very kind of him.   Anyway, 10 am on the button, the inspectors come out, and I am first in line – Woo hoo.  He takes my import paperwork which was done by the Panamanians at the border from Costa Rica a few days ago, and first thing he checks is the VIN number – And he calls me over.  Problemo – The VIN number they typed on the form is missing a number !!!  They missed a 6 off the end, and as it ends in “66”

when I did a cursory inspection in the dark at the border, all I saw was the 6 and thought it was correct.  Major problem.  He tells me I have to go to Customs and get it corrected.   Hmm – Where is Customs ?  Luckily someone there spoke English and they write out rough directions, but they are too rough, and after 3 missed tries at finding them, and a lot of “retornos” and swearing by me, we are about to give up, when we hit the jackpot and find them. That took an hour and Customs is about 5 minutes from the DIJ place where we started.  By now lunch was getting close, and if we didn’t get it sorted before lunch we would not only miss our deadline with the DIJ, but would have to start the whole process again at 9 am tomorrow morning.  After sitting around Customs for an hour or so they finally made the changes, and we set off back to the DIJ to try to get the inspection completed.  When we got back there the inspector was very kind and just took my correct paperwork and told me to make sure I was at the other (main) office (on the other side of the busy freeway) at 2 pm exactly in order to pick up my exit clearance. He didn’t even want to inspect the car – Just make sure the VIN number was correct !   So after a quick lunch at our hotel, we rushed back to the main DIJ at 2pm, and they refused to let me in !!   No shorts allowed in the DIJ offices !!!!  Luckily Troopie was only parked 100 yards up the road and I had a pair of long trousers in there, so I rushed back there, changed, and back to the DIJ.  I think the policeman was a bit surprised I got back so quickly – Most people don’t drive around with a spare pair of trousers in their car !!

Anyway, into the DIJ, and straight into this office where after a short while they handed me my exit permit.  Checked the details VERY carefully this time – Oh no, now they had typed the engine number wrong !   (Everything is done in triplicate, remember !!)  So she did it again.  Checked again – This time she had typed the rego number incorrectly -  MY 111 instead of MYI 11.  By this time Mauro and his wife Giovanna have arrived to collect their paperwork, and we are having a laugh about it all.  It turns out Mauro had a paperwork problem in Mexico similar to mine, and it cost him US$400 to get it sorted, so I was lucky mine was only costing me time, not $$.  But it serves as a warning, as people say on every blog or travel site – Check your paperwork at each border crossing to make sure it is correct – It is easy to fix at source, but can be a nightmare if you don’t find the error until you are leaving the country. 

Anyway, all done in the end, and now I am just waiting on the shipping people to contact me – They do not seem very good at contacting customers !!  Since the shipping people haven’t called, and because I know the vessel is delayed by one day, I have gone ahead and booked Troopie in for an oil change and lube tomorrow morning, so we will have to leave the hotel at 7 am again and drive to the NE of Panama to the Toyota dealer.  That should be finished by lunch time so we will either stay here one more night, or we will head to Colon where we can go and find these shipping people. It seems that a lot of these cheaper hotels are pretty full so it will depend if they have room for us tomorrow !

Overall, Panama City seems just like any other big city – Busy.  And very dirty too.  Traffic wasn’t too bad, but the main trouble is NO ONE stops for a stop sign or Yield sign here – They just close their eyes and barge out.  So driving is quite an art – You really need to have eyes in the back of your head – And on both sides too !  I am exhausted after driving for just 2-3 hours here in the city – And I am thankful Troopie is so big and has big bull bars down the sides as well as on the front – I seem to get quite a lot of respect here and manage to push my way around with the best of them !! It would have been MISERABLE here in the Lotus – Just would not have worked. 

Tonight (Monday) we are off across town to meet Greg and Estelle at their hotel for dinner, and Ravi, on his motorbike who we met at the Costa Rica Border.  They all managed to get their vehicles handed over to the shipping people today, and Greg and Estelle are flying out to the Galapagos Islands for a few days until they fly back to Cartagena to meet their motorhome which is on the same ship as Troopie.  So we will have a few laughs about our recent adventures tonight, I am sure.  I just heard from Greg and they had a flat tyre in their taxi on their way back to the hotel !  ROFL.  You never know what is going to happen next over here !!

Tuesday morning.  Had a fun dinner with Greg and Estelle and Ravi at a Thai restaurant near their hotel, then taxi’d home. We will meet up with them all again

next week in Cartagena.  Yesterday I managed to book Troopie in for an oil change at 8 am on the other side of the city, so this morning it was up at 6 am, a quick breakfast, and then off on the freeway to the Toyota dealer.  The freeway is quite something, first winding along a Copacabana-like waterfront road,  then winding through the city itself, with some incredible buildings,

and then out on a causeway across the water !  We had to go through a toll booth that was about 10 lanes wide, and it was chaos, with about 20 lines of cars trying to all squeeze in and push forwards !  One Chicken bus beside us had changed lanes so often he had a plastic traffic cone stuck underneath his bus ! (We saw it later in the middle of the freeway so obviously it eventually

worked its way out !)  We had to buy a pass card and pay for the toll – Bit of a waste since we will probably only use it once.  Arrived at the Toyota dealer, Ricardo Perez, in time, although it took a while to work everything out and get the car up on the hoist.  But at least they have a pleasant waiting area with wifi and coffee, and a glass window out into the workshop so I can see the car being serviced.  At the moment they are having trouble lifting it because it is so heavy !!      

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, we are off to Colon at the Caribbean end of the canal, to do the paperwork and hopefully leave the car with Wallenius Wilhelmsen who are handling the shipping to Columbia.  These are the same people who shipped the car from Australia, and I use them because Brian Booth is a neighbour in Australia, and his company arranges all the sipping for me.  We are not sure how long all this will take, so we cannot book our flights to Cartagena yet, which is a bit frustrating.  We are not even sure how many nights we need to book a hotel for, which is equally frustrating – We just have to go one day at a time.    

LATER Tuesday night.  Well, always a surprise round every corner !!  First of all the mechanics had a bit of a problem lifting Troopie up on their smaller hoist – O forgot to tell them she weighs about 3.4 MT !! Whoops !  So it was about 10 am before they started work on here, and about 2 pm by the time they finished everything.  Then they advised me that a) the rear brake pads were getting thin, and b) that  the water pump was leaking.

Well, I am a bit surprised about the pads because they were new just before I left, but if they are worn, they are worn – Must be from coming down all those steep mountain passes !  The water pump is a real bugger, but I really can’t take the risk of it being a problem as I head down into S America.  Unbelievably they were able to find a new pump, which considering the rarity of V8 diesel Toyotas down here, I am really surprised about.  And knowing that Troopie has to be delivered to the shippers tomorrow, they have worked until 9 pm tonight to fix everything.  I am VERY impressed by this Ricardo Perez Toyota dealership – All the staff have been really nice, and they have worked their tails off to get the car fixed in one day.  Definitely will be a nice email going to the boss.

Once we knew the car wouldn’t be ready today, we left and caught a taxi back to our hotel.  On the way we decided it would be good to go to a big shopping centre (Albrook Mall) where there was a Panamanian restaurant serving Panamanian style food.  So having missed lunch because of being stuck at the Toyota dealer, we had an early and delicious supper, and then wandered round the shopping centre which really could have been anywhere – London, Dubai, New York – Just shops galore.  We then caught a taxi back to our hotel and are packing ready to leave early tomorrow to go and pick up Troopie.

Once we have got the car it is off to Colon at the other end of the canal to do the shipping paperwork.  I was advised by them today that the car will now NOT be going in a container as expected, but will be going RoRo, so tomorrow I have to fix up the mesh screen behind the driver’s seat to prevent any thing disappearing from the back, and also remove everything from the front cabin for the same reason. So I have got a bit of work to do on the car tomorrow.  We will probably overnight in Colon tomorrow, and then if we can leave the car with the shippers, we might explore then canal a bit before flying to Cartagena so we can enjoy a couple of days there before the car arrives.  We will see.  The important thing is that hopefully Troopie is now ready to deal with another 40,000 kms through S America !  Fingers crossed.

 Pics here

 https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0112PanamaCity?authkey=Gv1sRgCPa-3oSSwNWz_AE#