Bocas and Shipping - Panama

After sorting out our paperwork at the Panama border, which you may remember from here, we made the long and scarcely populated drive to Bocas del Toro. Well actually to Almirante, a pretty fantastic shit hole where the ferry to Bocas departs from. We arrived to Almirante just before dark and discovered there was only one hotel for us to consider for the evening, as it was too hot to sleep in the van. We had one of the last servings of Chinese food at the restaurant downstairs from the hotel and hit the hay in hopes that we would wake up to a fully intact Dolores in the morning. The small trash filled parking lot and consistent suggestions to remove the surfboards from the top of the van did little for our security confidence.

To our delight, Dolores fared well through the night. We boarded the ferry at 7:30am and it was exciting to see the clear water of the Caribbean again as we made our way through the mangrove islands to finally land on the small island of Bocas. We made our way as far north on the island and away from the little town as we could. At the end of the road we found a fantastic little spot for brunch on the beach. Working our way back to town was perfectly timed with school being out so we turned Dolores into a school bus and carted a few kids around.

One day we took a tour by boat around the island and surrounding area. We spotted dolphins, walked around an itty bitty island, sat on a doc and watched all the fish big, small, colorful and scary, swim about, endured a rainstorm and snorkeled above beautiful reefs and shipwrecks. Although, the highlight for me was loosing the bet with Katie about spotting the first sloth. As we approached Sloth Island, Katie quickly announced, “the first person to see a sloth has to buy drinks tonight.” Not two minutes later it was me saying, “there – I see one!” She laughed, knowing all along she was going to win the bet.

After surfing, playing in the waves, fishing, running on the beach, yoga in the mornings, hot sauce shopping, happy hour at the docs, discovering Bocas Brewery, and witnessing the intense and loud celebration that takes place when Bocas wins a baseball game we decided it was time to make our way off the island and towards Panama City to begin the shipping process. The island, however, had different plans for us. “Yes, the ferry runs at 4 everyday except Monday,” everyone told us. We arrived at 3:30 and to our surprise the only thing at the doc were a bunch of kids using it as a diving board. That seems odd, did we miss it? Nope, turns out the ferry doesn’t run on election day and that day happened to be an election day. Yep, we were stuck on an island. I guess there are worse places to be forced to stay for another night. Happy hour anyone?

The next day we repeated the drill from the previous day, but this time ferry included, and made our way from Bocas to the parking lot of the Lost and Found Lodge. It was set in a cloud forest and one of the only safe places we found to park back to the PanAmerican from Almirante. Only two days away from starting the process of shipping the van it was time to get-a-move-on to Panama City. George, possibly in a little too much of a hurry attracted the attention of the police… Don’t worry his new Spanish vocabulary word demostrar (to prove) helped him work his way out this situation ticket and bribe free. Thank you Spanish lessons.

The actual process of shipping was less of a headache than we thought it would be. It was a few days of paperwork, distributing money to different places and running around to crazy government offices in Panama City (one of which was in the scariest ghetto I have ever seen in my life). It was honestly what I thought was one of the most unsafe moments of the trip. The vehicle inspection office was in the ghetto. Since our engine is in the rear of the car, we had to take everything out of the van. There we were in the scariest ghetto with all of our belongings set out for the world to see and a 7 year old came over and peed not 5 feet from the car. It was laughable how ridiculous it was. Again, everything was fine and we passed the inspection with flying colors. Two days later, after they checked records and made sure that we didn’t have any tickets in Panama (good work again on getting out of the above, George), we drove to the shipping yard and loaded the van and our friends Toyota in the pouring rain into the shipping container so it could make it’s way to Cartagena, Colombia and touch down for the first time in South America.

Oh yeah, and then we went to see the Panama Canal!