Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Shipping Patience to Colombia

Panama City
On the way to Panama City we stopped to check our email one more time to see if we’d received our official departure date. To our surprise we found out that our ship was due to sail a day earlier than we had expected so now we had to start rushing. We quickly emailed in copies of our passports and vehicle registrations in order to get our bill of lading which we would need to do the next steps. The next day we were further shocked to find out that we had to load our cars onto the container the next day so we asked around and researched where the PTJ (police) office was, and then headed there following a homemade map, thankfully even though we missed one turn we still ended up at the right place. Our first step here was to get the van inspected. We made it there just in time because they don’t do inspections after 11am and it was now 10:55am. When we entered the inspection yard we were shocked to see Axel and Katarina (whom we’d met in Costa Rica) waiting there with an Australian couple. The inspection lasted all of ten minutes and then we had to wait until 3:30 for the next step to take place. We sat around in the parking lot killing time mostly listening to the Aussie couple, Chris and Elayne’s stories. They’ve been traveling the world in their homemade dune buggy for three years and have four years left. After about 3 hours Axel, Katarina, Elaine, Max, and Pete walked across the street to another office to wait for step number two. Unfortunately the cars were parked in the worst part of town where the police wouldn’t even let us cross the street to get some food which at first we thought was a bit overkill, but later found out that it really was for our safety. So while the rest of the gang waited safely in the air conditioned office and went out for lunch, Karen and Chris were left in the ghetto parking lot in the hot sun with no food to guard all the cars. All was going well until Karen and Chris decided they needed a 30cent ice cream cone across the dreaded street. They were approached by some kids who seemed friendly enough, but were promptly chased off by the local police and Karen and Chris were escorted back to the parking lot. Then not 5 minutes later the first gun shots rang out. At first Karen didn’t believe that it was gun shots, but then she saw one of the “thugs” holding a gun down his pants across the street and the second round of shots was enough to send her running into the nearest building. A few minutes later after it was confirmed that it indeed was people shooting in the streets Karen went back out and discovered that it had been 13 year old kids shooting at each other and that a tourist bus had been caught in the crossfire and had it’s window was shot out. The passengers were quite shaken up, but no one else seemed to think much of it. We’ve now learned that it is smart to heed all the police warnings. After another sketchy hour of waiting Karen and Chris were approached by a really nice man who told us in no uncertain terms that we had to vacate the lot in the next 20-30 minutes because things would get really ugly. Another 25 minutes later the rest of the group still hadn’t returned so Karen went off to get them whether the paperwork was finished or not. Luckily just as she rounded the corner she ran straight into Pete and Max, but not Elayne, Axel or Katarina. So the four of us had to wait another anxious 45 minutes for them to get their paperwork done as well. It was a nerve racking day, but we were successful!

Colon
We were up early the next day again and off to Colon, the only place that could be any worse than the ghetto in Panama City. We weren’t looking forward to this trip but it had to be done. Since Max had already been there we had no troubles finding the Sea Board Marine office at the Port. We checked in at the office got some paperwork then found out that we had to pay the whole shipping fee at the HSBC bank in Colon before anything else would happen. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that we had been told that we could pay later in Panama City so we didn’t bring any cash or many cards with us, due to the fear of getting robbed in Colon, which is highly probable. The good news was that Pete had brought his visa, but they could only do $1,000.00 a day, which left us with 880 dollars more to pay. All we had left were Pete and Max’s bank cards, but Max’s card is very temperamental. By some miracle both transactions worked and we could breathe a sigh of relief. We returned to the port for some more paperwork, and then visited three different offices trying to get our vehicle stamped out of the country. They kept sending us back and forth to the same places where no one knew what to do. Finally our friendly port inspector helped us and found out that we had to go across town to another immigration office. He tried to explain how to get there, but then grabbed his buddy and his car and personally drove us the 15 minutes to find the office which was in the middle of nowhere, but where we were finally able to get our cars stamped out of the country. Once again we went back to the port were we had to pay a two dollar bribe to an overweight security guard so he could get some lunch, then drove into the shipping yard. We waited for twenty minutes in a parking lot, got some more paper work done and then loaded the vehicles into the container. We were left all alone surrounded by thousands of containers and none of us had remembered a camera, bummer. We wanted to wait around to see them strap down the cars and lock the container but this wasn’t going to happen for a long time and we were exhausted so we left and hoped that the job would be done. We said our goodbyes to the cars, celebrated with a round of high fives then boarded our first bus of the trip back to Panama City.

Cartagena, Colombia
Armed with 5 copies of all of our important documents, some food, a book and some cash we were up and raring to go early in the morning to get Patience safely into South America. This was quite an involved procedure....
Step 1 – Take taxi #1 to "Muelle Del Bosque" (our port), to obtain our official "Bill of Lading" from the Seaboard Marine office.
Step 2 - Get taxi #2 to the DIAN (Direccion de Impuestas y Aduana Nacionales) office at the entrance to the Port of Manda. At this office we were supposed to be issued our Temporary Vehicle Import Form (Formulario De Importacion Temporal de Vehiculos) and assigned a customs inspector, but unfortunately when we flew into Colombia Max’s entry stamp didn’t include how many days he was allowed to be in the country. The office worker told us that we were going to have to go back to the airport to fix this problem. Luckily we talked to another guy and found out that for half the price of the taxi ride we could go to the “DAS” office in town to get it done.
Step 3 – Taxi #3. Spent 45 minutes in the “DAS” office just so they could write 60 days down in Max’s passport
Step 4 – Taxi #4 back to step 2 where we were assigned an inspector who was heading over to the port right then and could do our inspection. Perfect!!
Step 5 - Took taxi #5 back to "Muelle Del Bosque", where we went to the Document Centre (Centro De Documentos, of the Port Authorities to find out where our car was and pay the Port Fees so that we could get our vehicle inspected. ROAD BLOCK!!! Our container hadn’t been unloaded yet. It was 11:00 in the morning and they didn’t think that it would be done until 3:00 that afternoon. Sadly we had to let our inspector go with promises that he would return at 3:30.
Step 6 – After over 4 hours of waiting our container still wasn’t unloaded. Then at 3:15 our inspector showed up. We were nervous because he wouldn’t wait long and this was our last chance to get the cars that day. Luckily they gave us the thumbs up and we quickly paid our fees and went to get our first view of Patience. There she was just as we had left her perfectly in the container. The inspector did his customary check of the VIN numbers and Karen quickly snapped some shots before she was told she had to stop and we were surrounded by officials telling us all the things we were doing wrong; taking pictures, not wearing shoes, hard hats or long pants. Oops. We were escorted out of the yard and told to return with the appropriate clothing.
Step 7 – Taxi #6 back to the DIAN to get our Temporary Vehicle Import Form. We were running low on time and as always it took forever to get a simple form printed out and signed, but eventually it was done and we ran to catch our final taxi of the day.
Step 8 – Taxi #7 back to the port where we handed in all of our forms that we’d collected during the day and were issued our Vehicle Exit Form (Planilla De Salida Del Vehiculo) which we had to sign 9 times and verify with 9 finger prints and were also given our copies of the Temporary Vehicle Import Form and Customs Release Forms (Levante), which we would need to exit the country. Holy paperwork!
Step 9 – We’d read that you needed closed toed shoes so we’d come prepared with shoes for the boys who somehow talked their way out of the rest of the gear and were allowed into the port to pick up the cars.
Step 10 – We completed some more paperwork for who knows what and then found the exit where they checked over all of our paperwork one more time before letting us out of the port and into COLOMBIA!!!!

It was a lot of work and took 11 hours, but we did it in a day and out of the 2 other groups who also did it we were the fastest, hehehe.

This was the biggest road block of the trip and now it’s over and we are so excited to be road tripping in South America!!

Click on a picture to enlarge

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Panama

Lost and Found Hostel, Chiriqui
The border crossing into Panama was relatively painless but it still took a couple of hours of running around. Thank goodness there weren’t any lines. Our first stop after the border was a mall outside of David. We wanted to stock up on groceries but the supermercado was closed, so we ended up checking out some other stores to take advantage of the air conditioning for some much needed cooling off. Karen bought a few things and then found the deal of a lifetime...a pair of Teva sandals for four dollars, yah. It was strangely nice to be in a mall again, but we were soon off as we were on our way to the Lost and Found hostel north of David. We’d arranged to meet up with our shipping container buddy Maxim who was volunteering there. The hostel was located up in the cloud forest with nothing else around for miles so we made another stop at a grocery store and were impressed by the selection and prices of the food and alcohol, 35 cent BEERS and 2 dollar bottles of wine! What a relief after the prices in Costa Rica. After a long winding drive up into the mountains we finally reached cooler air and the base of the 15 minute hike straight up to the hostel. Hmmm, maybe we should have thought about that part before we went grocery shopping. We took our first load up and ran into Max. It was good to see a familiar face! Then we found out that the hostel was having the busiest night in their history, but luckily they managed to find us a bed. Unfortunately we had to go back down to the van so we could park it in a safe place and hike a second load of luggage and food back up the steep trail. The hostel was amazing!! It’s located near the top of the continental divide in the cloud forest with views of the valley and the country’s highest volcano. They have wild animals visiting night and day and humming birds that will fly right up to you. They even have a pet Kinkajou a “vegetarian monkey raccoon” that loves to be cuddled and bite Pete’s nose. Behind the hostel is a national park with a series of hiking trails that bring you up and then down to a secluded river with swimming holes and waterfalls. On our second day there we did a treasure hunt which involved hiking, swimming, river crossings and of course riddle solving. In the end we succeeded in finding the illusive one eyed monkey. Up until this point we’d been lucky enough not to share a room with other people, but because the hostel was so busy we were thrust into our first crowded dorm room. The first night we were kept up by a group in the lounge drinking and playing cards late into the night followed by the duelling snorers in our room. The second night there were a few less people in the dorm so we moved to the corner bed with a nice fat mattress. After hiking all day and having little sleep the night before we passed out early with ease and were sleeping soundly until we were woken up to some guy choking and spitting on the floor. We then heard him getting up and the sound of water running, Karen immediately sat up and asked him “Are you peeing? Are you peeing on the floor”? She jumped up, hit the lights, and told him to “get out”. He was standing with one leg up on a vacant bed (where we had slept the night before) over a puddle of piss denying what he had just done. Karen yelled at him to get out numerous times before he finally left the room. A little while later he came back and we then suffered through three drunken people’s snoring for a few more hours until we finally gave up and went to sleep on a concrete bench with the mosquitos. What an experience! The next night we were a little nervous, but the guy promised not to drink again and we ended up having a great night’s sleep. All in all the hostel was a great experience. Pete won a foosball tournament, we cooked up some amazing meals (good thing we hiked up all that food after all), met some great people and were able to hike around in the jungle. We spent three nights there and then left in a convoy with Max and another friend Itay to hit up another mountain hostel.

La Qhia, Santa Fe
We didn’t think anything could top the Lost and Found hostel until we showed up at La Qhia. The Argentinian-Belgian owners have created a beautiful and artistic getaway in a place where the climate is perfect. The four of us spent our nights cooking and playing dice and our days lounging around and going for hikes. One day we hiked up this insanely steep road and then scrambled our way to the windy summit of Cerro Tute. It was a great 6 hour hike that seemed to be up both ways. Not sure about Max’s ability as a guide, just kidding! We ended up spending 4 nights here as we were able to camp out and we were avoiding leaving this perfect climate for steamy and busy Panama City.

Panama City
We were hoping to ship on Saturday so finally on Monday we admitted to ourselves that it was time to get going and the four of us got up and convoyed out early Monday morning. It was a strange feeling passing over the Bridge of the Americas knowing that we were about to encounter one of the biggest road blocks on our trip and then be in South America. Neither of us could believe it was already happening and that we’d made it this far!! Somehow we managed to navigate the one way city streets without losing Max and ended up at our hostel where we had a 3 bed dorm for 4 people. It was really tight, but at least we all knew each other. The hostel was packed full of backpackers who seemed to sit around drinking, watching movies, and blaring music from their lap tops all day, not our scene but it was a place to sleep. After three nights Itay left and we got tired of the hostel so we moved down the street to a seemingly nice clean hotel with A/C and a T.V. for the same price of the hostel. We were enjoying our stay until one night at four in the morning an argument broke out across the hall from our room. We think a prostitute stole $2,000.00 off some guy, he was yelling, she was crying, doors were slamming until finally the police showed up and quieted it down. Definitely a bizarre experience. Our stay in Panama City was a bit longer than we would have liked due to the shipping process (see the section on shipping for more details) but we made the best of our time there. We seemed to keep getting sucked into air conditioned malls so most of our time was spent shopping (mostly for new sandals for Max), eating at the food courts, and finding a killer sandal deal for Pete. We also took advantage of the ability to go to a movie theatre and went to see Avatar in 3D. Awesome film! One day we ventured out to see the Canal, which was interesting but definitely not the highlight of Panama City. We also explored Casco Viejo, the old city, which is an interesting mix of rebuilt colonial buildings and decrepit ruins side by side. There is only a block or two separating the presidential palace from one of the worst ghettos in Panama City. Max wanted to take us to some cafes but he kept going in the wrong direction, we were first turned back by the police who said it was a “zona roja“ (meaning you would be lucky to survive your visit there), then we were turned around two other times by locals once again telling us how dangerous it was in that neighbourhood , finally we stopped following Max and found a nice cafe for happy hour. Finally the day came when Patience was off for Colombia and we could follow suit.

Goodbye Central America!!!

Just click on a picture to enlarge.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Costa Rica

Playa Samara
We left the beach in Nicaragua early and were ready for another border crossing. After the previous chaotic crossings we were not nervous about this one at all. The drive to the border provided great views of Lago Nicaragua, the only lake home to fresh water sharks and Isla Ometepe, a large Island made up of two volcanoes. 6kms before the border we passed hundreds of semi trucks lined up on the side of the highway, our first clue of what was to come. When we arrived at the Nicaraguan side we couldn’t believe how many people were lined up at the office. It took us over two hours to get our exit stamps and then we had to run around and track down the right officials to get our car permits cancelled. Off to the Costa Rican side to join the same crowd who we’d been waiting with in the other line. After getting our passports stamped we had to buy car insurance then visit two different offices to import our van. By the end of it all we spent over four hours at the border, our longest crossing yet. When we reached Liberia, the first major town, we were seduced into McDonalds for a big mac combo and most importantly air conditioning and Wifi. We got out the map and searched the internet for places to go in Costa Rica, we had many interesting choices, but we decided to stick on the paved roads and headed for Playa Samara on the Nicoya Peninsula. Before leaving Liberia we stopped in at the grocery store and were shocked to find that the prices were the same if not higher than in Canada, but we were heading to the beach to camp so we stocked up. By the time we reached Samara it was dark and we had to search for a campground. We thought we’d found the jackpot with a spot on the beach, but that was when the fun started. First off we were parked under some potentially windshield smashing coconuts so we decided to turn around only to find out we were stuck!! Karen and a very old man dug and pushed us out to hard ground and then we hit the next roadblock, they had no water. No problem, a girl filled up our shower bag at another campground and we started getting set up. Next roadblock, Karen had to pee and they wouldn’t let her use the washrooms and there was nowhere to go behind a tree. By this point we were exhausted and done with the “management” so we packed up and moved down the road to a campground where we could shower and use the washrooms, perfect! We decided to stay there two nights so the next day we went out to explore the town of Samara and go for a swim. What a beautiful place!! Huge beach, mellow waves and a town big enough for there to be stuff going on, but not be too crazy. On our first walk down the beach we stumbled across another campground where we heard a bonjour as we entered. We turned around to chat and found our Christmas family!! We were welcomed with open arms by three other groups of travellers who had been running into each other on the road and had met here for Christmas. Perfect!! We spent one more night at the other campground as we had already paid and then Christmas Eve morning after a surf and big breakfast we made the move. The three other groups consisted of a family from Quebec; Réjean, his wife Nathalie and two daughters Eve and Charlotte who are travelling around Central America for a year and Oliver and Karina from Germany and Val and Jeff from Alberta all doing the same trip as us. What a nice surprise!! We hadn’t run into other travellers in a long time and hadn’t met any doing our trip since Mexico. We spent Christmas Eve drinking Sangria, phoning home and then eating a great group meal cooked by Oliver and Karina. It was a great way to spent Christmas and even better having two little girls around who were spoiled rotten by everyone around them. They were able to experience Christmas traditions from various countries including “El Tio” a tree branch with a painted mouth that you feed every night and then on Christmas Eve you beat with a stick and it “poops” out a gift, hehehe. We ended the night with a roaring campfire on the beach and then went to bed to wait for Santa. Christmas morning everyone got together again and we helped Val and Jeff make pancakes for 20. It was great fun and we were able to feed almost everyone at the campground including a huge group of musical international students who in turn played some rousing tunes on their various instruments. We had a relaxing day and then that night we took over dinner preparations with some fish help from Réjean just in time for a giant rainstorm. Luckily there was a big central shelter so we set up and ate by candlelight. Ever since we entered Central America we’d heard how crazy the beaches get with locals flocking there for the holidays so Dec 26th we were semi prepared for the onslaught. It happened fast and we were glad we’d set up clearly defined camp borders as the locals take every available space around them even if it’s occupied. All in all we faired well, but some other campers had dogs sleeping against their tents and hammocks strung across their site. The Costa Rican’s like to party for Christmas, but we were able to sleep through it and met some really nice locals who fed us tamales and gave us advice on where to go. We ended up spending about a week in Samara enjoying great big dinners with everyone, playing pelonk, swimming, lounging and getting to know everyone. We were also joined by Axel and Katharina from Germany who are travelling the world on motorbikes. What a great gathering place. Slowly everyone started to leave and we knew it was time to move on, but such a great surprise and wonderful way to celebrate Christmas surrounded by amazing people! That’s what the holidays are really about.

Bejuco/Uvita
We’d read about a beach near a nature reserve that sounded really relaxing so we decided to skip the tourist trap of Fortuna and MonteVerde and remain on the coast. After spending a week not driving we’d forgotten just how hot and tiring it was so after 6 hours we were spent and pulled into a random beach on the map called Bejuco for the night. After being in Nicaragua where all the best beach front is blocked by private homes we were pleasantly surprised to find a strip of land between the road and the beach that was free for camping! We found a great little spot, chugged some water and had a heat exhaustion pass out in the hammock. Then we were joined by two local Costa Rican guys Carlos and Orlando who were staying at a friend’s place right across the street. They were super friendly and we spent the next 3 hours watching the sunset and chatting with them until one disappeared and the other got progressively drunker and our understanding of his slurred Spanish started to diminish as he tried to get us to promise to start having kids as soon as possible. It was super muggy and we were sticky from the day’s drive so thankfully they let us use their shower to clean and cool off and then went in the van to take refuge from the bugs. The next morning the bugs were still bad so off we went to Uvita. We’d been on the beach for over a week so when we were confronted with 100’s of Tico’s camping on a muddy stretch of road on the beach we weren’t too enthused and went in search of another option. Luckily we came across Hostel Toucan and cute little place with clean bathrooms, wifi, lot’s of hammocks and they let us camp. We spent almost the whole day and night catching up on the blog and staying in the cool of the shade. Just what we needed. The next day the hostel was hosting a New Year’s Eve/50th birthday party so we decided to spend another night there. We were trying to decide what to do for the day when we met a couple from Sweden, Brita and David who were going to Finca Carolina to hike to some waterfalls. It sounded great so we joined in. We were picked up by a guy from the states who had bought the farm with a couple friends, driven up a steep and muddy road and then dropped off to fend for ourselves. We followed the path all the way down to the river and were able to swim in our coolest fresh water pool yet, awh. Then we decided to follow the path further downstream and finally came to another waterfall. This one didn’t have a pool so we settled for a lay down in the river to cool off before the long hike back up. Once we got back up to the road Pete spotted a whole flock of toucans in the trees. Then a little further down the road we heard some more rustling in the trees and looked up to see a bunch of howler monkeys. We snapped some photos and then started walking again when all of a sudden one of the monkeys jumped out of the trees and started coming at us making big scary howler monkey noises, uh oh. We know what to do with bears, but what do you do with an aggressive monkey?? We decided it would be best to keep moving so he chased us down the road a bit more and then finally went back up in the trees. Spooky. We were treated to the last sunset of 2009 as we walked down the road and by the time we finally made it to the highway we were starving so we decided to eat out. We ended up at a soda that served great fish and cold beer, mmmm. Then we went back to the hostel just in time for a shower and for the party to start. It was a bit of a weird scene with old hippies from the states who moved to Costa Rica, but there were live bands, an acrobat swinging from 2 ribbons off a tree and a capoeira group who displayed their skills and got the crowd moving with their drumming. It was a great day and night. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!!! It’s going to be a great year full of excitement for all. The next day we were too tired to move on so we tried to repair a flat tire and gave Patience an oil change (her Christmas present).

Cerro Chirripo and the border
We were ready to retreat from the heat and head into the mountains again so after Uvita we headed to the highest peak in Costa Rica with plans to do the 2 day trek for the summit. Unfortunately when we got there we were told that the hike was full and that we’d have to wait at least a day to start the trek. We were anxious to get to Panama so we decided to spend the night by the river, visit the hot springs in the morning and then head for the border the next day. It was a short trip, but the air was fresh and the river was cold so we were happy we made the trip up there. The next day we drove close to the Panama border and after being told by the local police that camping by the river was a bad idea, we splurged on a hotel room with air conditioning and cable tv. The bonus came in the morning when we were surprised by squirrel monkeys in the trees. Onto PANAMA!!!