ODO: 323,993
Five hours to Panama City with forty eight hours to make it happen. Our police inspection is at 7am on Friday, and we can’t be late. We make it out to the Pacific again, finding a sleepy town with a sleepier hotel right on the water. The hotel says they’re pretty slow right now and offer us a cute even closer oceanside cabin for a fantastic deal. So fantastic that we stay for two nights. The restaurant has delicious food and good drinks, which makes this a really easy place to recover from all of the hustle driving we’ve been doing the past few days. They even do our laundry! In the past, we would regularly drive long days, late into the night for many days in a row. We easily crossed the US last year in a week. Down here, its different. The roads are unpredictable, the other drivers are unpredictable, the nights are much much darker. Several hours of driving down here gets us about half as far, maybe less, than it would in the US.
Panama City here we come! And an end to our long days on the road. The weather starts out grey and drizzling. Along the way it takes us four tries to find a copy shop with a working copier. Lots of copies are needed here. Copies of passports, copies of the registration and title, copies of drivers licenses. Each border asks for different copies of documents, so always lots of copies. The way into Panama City from the Pacific is a giant bridge that crosses the Panama Canal. Good start. The city is very American feeling. They style of the buildings, the look of the downtown core, the way people follow the rules of the road, all very familiar. Our spot for the night is the campground run by Overland Embassy, the shipping liaison we are using. We share the campground with a guy who has been riding his bicycle around the world for eight years, and will be paddling a kayak around the Darien Gap. This journey is full of interesting people.
Wow we get up this morning! Can’t be late for our police inspection! The station is in a rough part of town. We get the truck parked and check in. Now we wait. And wait. When it’s our turn, a nice gentleman comes over to check that our VIN matches our paper work. That’s the entire inspection. Nice, quick and easy. Then we need to drop off our documents so they can make us a certificate. I forgot to mention one of the rules for the inspection was to wear long pants. Apparently someone was denied their inspection for wearing shorts. To enter the document drop off building, there are no tank tops allowed. Silly rules for a place that is 80 degrees by 7:30am. There is a very nice security guard that gives KoKo his jacket so she will be dressed appropriately. We head to a Panama Canal viewpoint to watch boats while we wait for our certificate to be prepared. A tug boat is maneuvering a large cargo ship into position when we arrive. Neat! Once our certificate is ready, its time to get the rest of our shipping paperwork squared away. The Overland Embassy takes care of everything else, so we are free to plan our to do/repair list for the next few days.
First order of business: Change the alternator. This should be quick, but we’re limited on time, and its so, so hot out. The plan is to change it once the sun goes down to give us cooler temperatures. Spoiler, it doesn’t really cool off at night here, but at least its a break from the sun. The alternator fights us, but we persevere (because we have to) and after two hours, success! Everything else on the list can wait for tomorrow. It’s time for a shower, and some hotel air conditioning. Thanks to hotel points, we can stay in a nice place for free, which we do for the next couple of nights. Our high points status gets us a nice upgrade to the top floor and 4pm check out! Maybe also due to our status, hotels usually let us park right in front! Or it’s because the truck is too tall for most covered parking so this is all that’s left.
The nice cool room helps us a good night’s sleep in before its time to track down some steel for the rest of our repairs. Stainless steel and stainless steel rivets are the shopping list. A torrential down pour starts as we start our search, and proceeds to flood a lot of streets, and overflow a small river by several feet. A sheet of ~1/16″ steel is all we manage to find before giving up and heading for traditional Panamanian food. We order a sample platter of several different things, some of which are awesome, some of which are…less awesome. Full and damp from the rain, we head back to the hotel to wait out the storm. Which turns into staying in for the night.
Our hour at the Panama Canal viewpoint was cool enough that we want to check out the official visitors center. There are elevated viewing platforms so you can watch the locks operate, and they are packed with people. We arrive in time to watch a round of the small trains guiding a cargo ship into the locks, the locks lowering the boat, and the boat passing through. It takes about thirty minutes total. Most of the visitors are shorter, so we still get a decent view. The visitors center includes an IMAX movie about the history of the canal, which is very informative. The French were the first to attempt to build the Canal, but malaria and yellow fever killed too many workers to complete the project. It wasn’t until it was discovered that these are mosquito transmitted diseases, and the entire jungle was sprayed for mosquitos for two years that allowed the project to continue. We loved watching the locks so much we stayed until they closed. We were the only people around for the final ship we watched before they politely asked us to leave. The weather today was very wet again, great for covered sightseeing, terrible for working on the truck….We make no progress on our list.
Our last mission critical repair is the 4WD system. The weather gives us a clear morning, so we head back to the Overland Embassy to rent some shop space. Berne manages to figure it out in about an hour. Turns out it just needed to be unplugged and plugged back in. Now it’s time to head across the isthmus to Colon, where we will be loading the truck in a couple of days. Our first option for a camp spot is a swamp. Literally. Our second spot if beautiful, but there is a large gate that locks for the night at 6pm, and this makes us uncomfortable so we keep looking. The third spot is an eco reserve in the jungle, with a large dry parking area, a covered cooking area, and possibly sloths and monkeys. Also, strong WIFI for all our working needs! This is the clear winner, so we get settled in.
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