| Jeff Poulter & Graham Tillotson: 31st August 2004 |
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Panama City (Day 2)
Overcast, hot and humid, all day.
We spent the morning re-organising all the luggage. We might be without the bikes for more than a week yet we wanted to carry as little as possible on to the plane with us. Also we could leave nothing vulnerable on the bikes, so we decided even to remove the top boxes which had both been weakened by the thugs at US Transport Security.
This time we zoomed to the correct Panavia office. En route I tried to establish from the buses we passed how we would identify one on which to return. This is more difficult that it need be for two reasons: the first is that the buses have no numbers; the second is that every Panamanian bus driver's cousin is an errant airbrush artist, so the buses are wonderfully over-decorated. This is good street fun but it also makes it difficult to work out where the bus is going, since the destination may be a wreath around the head of de boy Jesus himself, or written along the writhings of an Anaconda attempting a mischief upon Mr. Terminator. Anyway, I gather that the route may well be known as El Corridor, after the toll road along which it runs. Made sense to me, anyway.
We strip off our trousers and boots, stash them on the bikes and make our way to the Panavia office. To my mild surprise they are expecting us and proceed to prepare the waybills. This latter document merely describes the cargo as "2 motociclietas": no mention of Honda, colour, engine size or number, number plate, VIN number... But we saved $50 each. To date everything had been conducted in Spanish. Then the phone rang and we assumed it was the other office who wanted to speak to Graham, happily in English. Apparently the person who normally types up their paperwork is not at work today and they have to get the bloke in the next office to do it for them. This will cost an extra $40. I thought Graham's elegant reply aptly summarised our views. "Piss off," he said. They did. After weighing the bikes we rode them into the departure shed and left.
Our big worry now was to get our temporary vehicle import permits cancelled and our passports similarly endorsed so that we could leave the country on Sunday when, clearly, we did not have a couple of motorbikes tucked under our arms. So we returned to the customs main office in the Gaumont. It was closed and, the nice man told us, tomorrow is a national holiday, it being the new President's inauguration, an' all. Er, where do we get our... Oh, at the customs office at the gate? Would that be this gate or that gate? That gate being staffed by a bloke who has no idea what a temporary...is. Try the other gate, then. Cheers, mate.
At this gate the customs folk couldn't be nicer but couldn't help either. You need the other gate. Yes, but, at the other gate... So a really sweet lady, clearly a keen observer of human nature who realised that one or other of us might easily burst into tears soon, phoned the other gate and told them what needed to be done and that we were on our way. Angel. And it got better because, as we set out to hike the half mile in the heat and sweat, carrying helmets and jackets and a topbox, one of the customs men turned up in his car and gave us a lift to the gate. This had a double benefit: not only didn't we collapse from heat exhaustion, he also yelled at the dickwits manning the gate that here are the two gringo bikers you were told about. Within minutes we had stamped passports and cancelled papers and walked out to the dust of the free world.
It looked like a bus stop. "Excuse me, squire, does the corridor bus to Panama stop here?" What a result. Ten minutes later we were sitting in an air-conditioned bus, grinning. When we got out, 20 km later in Panama, the fare was $1.50 for the two of us.
We were pretty pleased with ourselves but, as GT pointed out, we can celebrate when we get the bikes out of Ecuadorian customs
Jeff 31.08.04 |
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