Intellectually, when one crosses from the Caribbean (East) to the Pacific (West) you’d be traveling from East to West, don’t ya think? When you start reading about the Panama Canal though you hear about ‘Northbound’ and ‘Southbound’. Huh?
Well if you look at a map of Panama you will see that the country does sort of bend East-West, and the Canal does indeed run from the North (from Colón) to the South (to Panama City), to which I offer a loud Harumph! as it is confusing to talk about it that way. Sort of like when you are riding on those highways that join together and you see a sign that says you are on “33N/19W” and your GPS tells you that you are in fact heading South.
But I’m heading West!?!
When you come to the Canal from the North Side (Rrrr…) you come to the charming and quaint waterfront city of Colón.
OK, I made that up. Colón is a deeply dangerous and dirty place. It is recommended that tourists never go there at night, and if do go during they day you travel in a group, take a taxi, and don’t carry anything flashy or attractive like jewelery or dangly like purses. Its primary charm is that the government offices you need to get your paperwork are scattered around town like leaves after a wind storm.
To be fair to Colón the downtown part is really the truly horrid area. Outside the center of the city is some decent shopping, hardware stores, and other services that you can reach without fearing for your safety. Also there is the Colón Free Zone, which is an enormous area where duty free low cost goods can be purchased though the specifics of how you execute your purchases seemed confusing enough that we gave it a pass. There is even a Dunkin’ Donuts, which does tug at the heart strings of anyone that has ever lived in Rhode Island even if you can’t actually read the Spanish menu.
Fortunately for us we were using an agent to handle our Canal paperwork and clearances. Unfortunately for us, I didn’t realize he was handling ALL of our paperwork for us – we expected he was doing the Canal work and we were on our own for clearing into the country and getting our visas. Which was a time wasting and expensive mistake.
Panama has the most expensive and convoluted check in process we’ve experienced to date. This is further complicated by the fact that our Spanish is limited. In my case limited to the point of being able to order a beer and maybe ask (but not understand) directions to the rest rooms. Kathy had a bit more experience with her medical training, but most of the language she learned in residency was medical in nature – being able to ask a Customs Officer “how long has it been since your last menstrual cycle” is perhaps less useful in the whole clearing in process than other phrases might be.
We had read that there as a customs office “conveniently located” at Shelter Bay Marina where we were planning to stay while awaiting our Canal transit time. What it actually is, is a utility closet where there is someone in some sort of official capacity there that doesn’t speak a word of English. He doesn’t look like a customs official either, he looks like a groundskeeper, so it kind of fools you the first time you look in the shed trying to find the office. But you give him your boat paperwork and he asks you a few questions as he fills things out (such as “Are you using an agent?” but not in English), then hands you a seven part form and says “Now you must pay Visa”.
OK. Clearly I’m not paying it here since he’s given my paperwork back to me and doesn’t appear to have any means to handle money. I later learned the paperwork he gave me meant essentially “Yes, you are in Panama and you now have three days to complete the REAL paperwork”. Next a comedy of pantomime and pidgin Spanglish ensues that goes roughly like this:
Me: “Were do I go to pay this?”
Customs Guy: “Colón.”
Me: “Where in Colón? How long do I have to pay this?”
CG: “Talk to the guy on the phone, he is a taxi driver that speaks English.”
While this was going on, his partner (Partner? I was never clear if the other guy in the room worked for the government or was just visiting his friend at work all day) was dialing his phone which he handed to me. Apparently it was his cousin, who spoke English and had a taxi that could take me to Immigration. He could pick me up in half an hour and take me to the Immigration office.
So I think “OK, we can get all this paperwork done today and then relax” – keep in mind we’d just spent three and a half days sailing from Aruba and have not actually had a full night’s sleep since before we left. I go back to the boat and convince Kathy that she might want to make a quick trip with me to Colón to get the paperwork secure and it might be nice to get a look around. I think she has forgiven me for this by now.
When the “Taxi” driver shows up it is in a beat up blue car, apparently his Yellow cab doesn’t have a spare tire or something so he took his own car. We discuss price – $25 each way to and from Colón plus $10/hour for any waiting time we need in any of the offices. From what I’ve read that wasn’t unreasonable so I agreed. He then asks me if I have a “Cruising Permit” which according to him I need to get the Visas. He sends me in to the marina office to make a ton of copies of all of our original documents (ship documentation, crew list, passports, etc.) and off we go.
Shelter Bay Marina is a bit out of town, it is on a property that used to be a U.S. Army base back when the U.S. controlled the canal. The city of Colón is on the other side of the canal, and there is no bridge. This actually gives you a pretty cool and up close view of the Canal, as you have to drive THROUGH it. The locks close and bridges swing out and you drive right across under the locks. It is a little freaky though to see 800 foot cargo ships crossing the street in front of you.
The Fun Begins
We arrived at the office that handles Cruising Permits around 11:00 in the morning. It is in an unmarked whitish building in an industrial looking section of town. To get to the office you walk up stairs to the third floor, where you enter an unmarked door into a room that looks like a dirty store room for broken office furniture. On the left is another unmarked door, this is the office we were looking for.
Not a soul in this office speaks a word of English so we have our helpful taxi driver to translate for us. We get some forms to fill out and turn them back in. And we sit down to wait. And wait. And wait some more.
After more than an hour of waiting they come back to us because there is a problem – the address on our vessel’s documentation does not match our mailing address. I had made the stupid mistake of using our actual mailing address, rather than our old address which was still on the ship’s document. This caused a lot of discussion and a couple of phone calls and more discussion before we finally convinced them that it was our old address on the document and we hadn’t received an update from the Government yet. Now we’re cooking…so we sit down to wait some more. And wait some more.
Workers leave the office and come back with lunch, people start eating and joking together. We wait a little more though we are starting to feel a little peckish. Eventually one of the gentlemen behind the counter comes forward and says there is another problem with our paperwork. In the “Place Built” section of the form we filled in “Ellos, Sweden” which is where Hallberg-Rassy builds their boats. Apparently this was not in their computer system as an option.
Even more comical, not a single person in the office was surprised by this since not one of them – including the Taxi Driver – even knew that Sweden was a country!
Cruising Permit Guy (via Taxi Driver Translator): “Where is it?”
Me: “Northern Europe”
CPGvTDT: “Is it a big country?”
Me: “Yes, it is.”
And so on…
More phone calls to the IT department ensued, apparently they had to have the IT guys add Sweden in to the valid list of options. That we were the first Swedish boat to come through the Canal from the North ( :-x) was ridiculous of course, since there where three other Hallberg-Rassy’s at Shelter Bay and we knew of people that had taken them through the Canal into the Pacific. I started discussing this with the taxi driver a bit.
Me: “So you’ve seen Volvos on the road here in Panama, right?”
TD: “Sure.”
Me: “They are made in Sweden. I’ve listened to your taste in music, (he favored American women pop singers in the Taxi) surely you’ve heard of Abba?”
TD: “Yeah, I know Abba.”
Me: “They are Swedish.”
TD: “But they sing in Spanish.”
Me, trying to avoid slapping my forehead or doing a facepalm: “They also sing in English too, right?”
Eventually an enterprising soul in the office Googled “Hallberg Rassy” and found that it was indeed in Sweden and then found a map with Sweden on it. The entire office stopped work and came over to look at this guy’s computer to see Sweden.
The question of Sweden’s existence resolved, they were able to move on and get things sorted with IT. Eventually IT called and said “Go Ahead”. This was taking HOURS, it was now two o’clock and we were famished, exhausted and thirsty. I asked the Taxi driver if we could leave and come back. “Not without a receipt” he told me. Apparently we were waiting all this time for a receipt for the funds and application to take to Immigration. He assured me that normally they took two days to process a Cruising Permit but he was there to make sure we got ours today. So we waited a bit more. Eventually…we got our receipt and headed out to the Immigration office. No lunch for the wicked.
The immigration office was located in the second floor of a strip mall, with the entrance between something like a sandwich shop and a hair stylist. We got up there and the taxi driver started speaking rapidly in Spanish with the Immigration folks and waving our receipt around. Things started to get a little heated and questions were directed at us, to which we answered the only way we could – with dumb looks. Apparently they didn’t like the Receipt and wanted the original Cruising Permit which we did not have. Eventually they relented and told us we need to give them $420 for the Visas. This was WAY more than we had read they were supposed to cost and I balked at spending that much money when it was in no way clear to me that the taxi driver that got us into this had any clue what he was doing. I told him I didn’t want to pay that and I needed to talk to my agent before I did anything else. “Oh, I have your agent’s phone number let me call him” he says, then dials and hands me the phone. Yes, he knew all along I had an agent and who he was.
When I talk to the agent he sort of sighs and says that I should take the paperwork I have already, go back to the boat and get some rest. He also tells us that it isn’t uncommon for these guys to get someone like me that doesn’t need their help and doesn’t realize it, then run us all over the place to make money doing what doesn’t need to be done. He says he will stop by the next morning and sort everything out. So we tell the taxi driver this (except what we aren’t supposed to repeat about being scammed). He says we can go back and pick up the Cruising Permit, as it should be ready. Being that it is after 4:00 in the afternoon I ask him how late they stay open – 5:30 he assures me.
Back at the Cruising Permit office we find a Canadian couple in the process of tearing their hair out while trying to get their permits sorted. We talk a bit and we get a better sense of what we’ve been experiencing. And we wait and wait. Eventually, around 5:20 or so we are handed our permit…finally. Then they hand me another piece of white paper. This is a bill for “Overtime”. Are you freaking kidding me?? I’d been there since 11:00 in the morning and I got whacked $20 for “Overtime” because the idiot cab driver told me they were open but didn’t bother to tell me it was not Overtime to get my documents finished.
I managed not to completely lose it in the office, though I did give the driver a bit of grief before we rode in stony silence back to Shelter Bay.
The lesson learned – the first person you call when you arrive in Panama shouldn’t be your mother (to let her know you are alive) or anyone else but your agent. Erick Galvez of Centenario Consulting was our agent, and from the moment he walked on board it was clear that he was on top of things. He took our paperwork, filled out some forms with us, and gave us a detailed, itemized invoice for all of our fees. It was his job to get us the Cruising Permit and the Visas and would have saved us a lot of cab fees and aggravation if I’d had a clue and called him first!
Now I know for next time.
