We rose early on Monday morning and met the guys from Adventure the Americas downstairs in the hotel lobby for our gratis gourmet breakfast of a cup of coffee and piece of bread. We confirmed everything was a GO with Seaboard Marine, our chosen shipping company, and mapped out a plan for the day.

Today mission was to get the initial inspection of our trucks to confirm the VINs matched our import permits and to confirm we had no outstanding warrants/traffic tickets. With this clearance we would be able to move onto the next step of the process.

Keith from Adv the Americas had already loaded up the GPS with the coords of the inspection yard. We jumped in the trucks and hit the crazy streets of Panama City.

After battling our way a few miles through heavy morning rush hour traffic we pulled into a dirt lot in the middle of one of the roughest neighborhoods we have had the pleasure of entering thus-far. I would have thought we were lost if our buddies Brad and Sheena from DriveNachoDrive and 10 other trucks weren’t already queued up waiting in the lot for inspections of their own.

View from the inspection lot.


Nacho sighting

Talking to Brad we learned that he has spent 3 days at this lot now. Apparently the inspection offices were closed the past 2 days for “meetings” of some sort. Of course in standard Central America practice no one bothered to inform the large number of people/cars waiting around outside…

When we arrived we met a long line of trucks hoping to finally make some progress. Lots of fellow overlanders from all over the world. Canadians, Swiss, Germans, Mexicans, and a few American gringos like ourselves. A regular United Nations of automobile travelers.

We were all waiting around in this sketchy parking lot confused and stressed, wondering if the inspector would actually show today.

Eventually a man in a white shirt with a clipboard came out of the inspection office. We all ran to our trucks, gathered our paperwork, and stood tall and straight trying our hardest to impress. After all, clipboard dude was the critical first step of the shipping process and if we managed to screw this up who knows how long it would be before we got another shot.

He went from truck to truck, inspecting paperwork, making notes and giving the royal thumbs up or thumbs down to the owners.

Brad passed his inspection, Adventure the Americas passed. I was up next. I was nervous as hell as “Clipboard” came my way. I locked eyes with the inspector who all of the sudden did a 180 and started marching back to the inspection office. WAIT! What about me!?

I ran around asking random people questions, Is he done for the day!? Is it lunch time!? Did I piss him off somehow!? How do I look?? No one had any answers.

30 stressful minutes passed waiting around in the parking lot, shady characters prowling the fence eyeballing our trucks like hyenas. I was just about to give up in defeat when the office door swings open and out trots Clipboard once again… 10AM coffee break I guess?

He comes over chatting on his cellphone and seems bothered by my presence. Maybe he thought I would disappear if he went away for a bit? He takes a quick cursory glance at my paperwork, makes a few grunts, and says everything looks good. We passed!

On to the next step. We need to wait for Clipboard to process the paperwork and send it across the street to the “Secretaria General” office. This complicated process of walking the papers across the street is estimated to take all morning/afternoon and we are all told to come back around 3PM.

We head back to the hotel to kill some time. Around 2:30 we head back to the inspection lot, park the trucks and then play a high-speed game of frogger across the 6-lane highway.

We receive little badges that say “Secretaria General” and enter a large office full of people waiting around. We ask the bubble-gum snappin’-cellphone chattin’-front desk girl where can find the Secretaria General. She instructs us to take a seat, so we do.

30 minutes pass, No one has moved. We start to get restless. We ask the lady what is going on. She just smiles and tells us to wait.

An hour passes. OK what the hell is going on! Its 4PM now. We assume the office closes at 5. There are 8 of us in here waiting for the same paperwork and we have made no progress past this initial waiting room.

We ask the gatekeeper again, What is going on? She laughs and tells us to wait with no further explanation. Seemingly perturbed that we were interrupting her game of “Angry Birds”

A fellow overlander emerges from behind the gatekeepers magic door. He explains that he was just with the Secretaria General, there is no one in there and he just walked by the front desk lady without saying anything to her about an hour ago.

Damnit! That’s what we get for asking for permission…

We hatch a plan, Brad and Keith are going to cause a distraction and I am going to army-crawl past the desk, through the magic door, and into the office of the Secretaria General. We are just about to put the plan into action when our eyes catch the Camo-clad security officer fingering his pistol and licking his lips. He can sense the gringos are up to something. We put the plan on pause.

Finally the gatekeeper takes a break from texting her loverboy and says 2 of us can enter. Instantly, all 8 of us rise up and rush the door. She starts yelling at us. Only 2! Only 2!

“DON’T LOOK BACK!” I yell to Keith and Brad.

We all keep pushing past the door. We soon find ourselves running blindly through the hallways of the government building desperately seeking refuge. We find the door marked “Sec. Gen.” We fall in and slam the door behind us fully expecting some crazed rifle-wielding Military dude to come kick our asses at any second.

We find the Secretary General pleasantly sitting all alone at her desk. She sweetly asks “Why were you guys waiting outside?…

Brad’s paperwork is processed without a hitch. Everything matches up and he is given his clearance paper. His shipping partner was not so lucky and had to make a last minute mad-dash out of the building for copies.

Keith’s turn came up. The SecGen got 90% through the process when she hit a snag. His import permit listed the truck as an “ALL-TERRAIN VEHICLE” but “Clipboard” had marked it down as a “CAMIONETA”. This inconsistency was all that was needed to flunk the entire inspection process. Keith would be unable to get his clearance until we had the import permit changed at the customs office across town. FAIL.

My shot. I get up with my paperwork, 90% through. Snag. My VIN number was fine but where it asked for Motor VIN the import permit listed N/A. This would not do. DOUBLE FAIL.

We slunked out of the SecGen office defeated.

Next morning we were up early, headed to customs and got the proper changes to our paperwork. Drove back to SecGen office, bum rushed past the frontdesk airhead and went straight to the SecGen. Everything matched up perfectly this time. We received our clearance forms!

With our clearance forms in hand we headed to Panama City customs office to cancel our Vehicle Import permits so we could fly out of Panama without our cars.

Unfortunately no one at the Panama City customs office had any clue what in the hell we were trying to accomplish. They just couldn’t understand why we would want to cancel our vehicle import permit.

We spent about 3 hours going from office to office explaining in vain what we were trying to do. We finally thought we were making some progress when they brought us to the main jefe (boss man) of the entire customs office. However, it turned out he was pissed off to be interrupted by a bunch of gringos and still did not understand what we wanted.

Oh well. Looks like we will have to cancel the permit in the port town of Colon where the customs office did this stuff daily. That’s what we get for trying to be efficient!

Next morning we woke early. We took a few essentials out of the truck and packed our backpacks with some clothes. If everything went according to plan, by the end of the day, we would be loading the trucks into a container bound for Colombia.

We hit the road towards Colon, Panama. In Colon our mission was to cancel our import permit, find Seaboard Marine office, and load our trucks into the container.

Keith had loaded the GPS with the Port of Colons coords. We soon arrived in the gritty city and made our way to the port. Once we arrived there we found the customs office at the port entrance and explained what we were trying to do. They, of course, had no idea how to help us…

This in turn lead us on a wild goose chase all over the entire port of Colon. For about 2 hours we went from office to office explaining our situation to anyone who would listen. Everyone wanted to help but no one really knew what to do. We were sent off in a million different directions. At one point we went on a 30-minute joy-ride inside of one of the ports official vans which was actually pretty cool although completely unnecessary.

We eventually found ourselves at a building which everyone told us was Seaboard Marine office, but we could not find Seaboard Marine. We asked around for 30 minutes and finally someone told us the damn office is on the 2nd floor of the building we are in! DOH!

We walked upstairs and found Seaboard representatives smiling friendly from behind their counters…

We explained our situation to them. They in turn gave us directions to the REAL customs office who COULD actually cancel our import permits.

We jumped back in the trucks, drove all the way back across the city of Colon to find the Aduana agency we had been searching for all along.

Once inside we found the lovely Maria. She knew exactly what we were trying to do! We instantly gave her a huge hug. She told us she was really surprised to see a bunch of white people in her office, explaining that most folks hire a guide to help them through this process. Ahhh Guias? We don’t need no stinkin’ guias!

Maria is flyin’ through the process almost done when *ZAP* all the computers go out. System is offline. No idea when it is coming back up again. Of course, Maria needs the system online to give us a print out of our newly canceled import permit.

Oh well, When in Rome… We went outside and joined the rest of the crew eating some questionable meat outta the streetside food carts. 2 hours later, systems came back online and we finally had the canceled permits we have been chasing for the past 2 days!

With permits in hand we knew we were closing in on the prize. We jetted back to Seaboard Marine, showed them the canceled permits, they gave us some more paperwork and sent us downstairs to the port office. Port office processed even more paperwork and sent us outside to “look for the guys in orange jackets” for inspection.

We got outside and realized everyone had a damn orange jacket on. Eventually I spot 2 guys hiding out in a little shack. I had to beg and plead for them to come out of the shack and do our inspection. They didn’t want to get wet!

Once that was done we headed back into the office, paid some port fees and were finally ready to enter the actual port with our trucks. A final paperwork inspection and we were lead through the gates.

We wound around through the mile-high stacks of containers and eventually reached a large building. We drove up the ramp and parked our trucks inside.

Happy to finally be at the last step!

We searched around for the bossman, told him we were here to load. They gave us some BS about just leaving them the keys and they would do it for us. We pushed back and they agreed to let us drive the trucks into the containers ourselves.

Tight fit!

Adv the Americas loaded up their 4Runner and the port boys lashed em down. We were a bit nervous about the whole process.

Eventually we had to say “Adios”. Our babies were in the hands of the port now. See ya on the other side!

Conveniently located right next the port was the Panama City Railway. We hopped a train back to Panama City. It was my real first train ride ever. Cross it off the bucket list!

Many $2 beers were drank in celebration. Part 1 of the shipping process was complete!

Next day we got our butts on a plane and flew to Cartagena, Colombia. Of course the process wouldn’t be complete without another hiccup. I accidentally booked our flights on the wrong damn day. The lady took pity on us and squeezed us onto the right plane at the last minute. Thanks Avianca!

Stay tuned for Part 2. Getting our trucks backs!

The Pan-American Highway, a series of roads linking the great white North of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska all the way down to the southern-most reaches of Ushuaia, Argentina. At a total length of just under 30,000 miles, Guinness Book of World Records marks it the “World Longest Motor-able” road. Yes-siree, 30,000 miles of awesomeness all navigable with nothing but 4 wheels, a tank of gas, and a sense of adventure.

Except… Except…. Except 54 damn miles of impenetrable jungle full of beasts, FARC rebels, impassable mountain terrain, and native tribes who are rumored to still dabble in cannibalism. I am of course talking about the “Darien Gap”. The little stretch of jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. The little stretch of jungle that has created much headache for all overlanders headed south.

Panama City is where overlanders must arrange shipping around this swath of rainforest. I would say it tops the list of all overland PanAm travelers fears (the ones that have gotten over the whole kidnapping/beheading nonsense at least). Imagine loading your baby into a dark box, hoisting her high into the air, placing her among thousands of strangers, and setting her off to sea… Not to mention travelers have been stuck without their vehicles for months, forced to pay exorbitant fees, and there have been some whose trucks never showed up at all! Lauren and I approached the city with trepidation knowing what lies in store.

As we came upon the sprawling metropolis full of gigantic skyscrapers, super highways, and malls I was instantly reminded of my home city of Miami, Florida. Mix in everybody speaking Spanish and driving like crap and I really felt like I was back home!

We had a few goals for the big city of Panama. #1 See the Panama Canal. #2 Arrange shipping from Panama to Colombia.

We made some friends off the internet who had been traveling south as well. Adventure the Americas is a group of 3 friends who set off in a 4runner from Colorado and are now in Panama City. Pretty cool.. even cooler when you think only 3 weeks ago they were still in Colorado. Yes you read that right. In 3 weeks they managed to drive all the way from Colorado to Panama. A process that took Lauren and I over 7 months to complete! We told them they were crazy. They told us their plan is to circumnavigate the entire continent of South America and return home to Colorado in only 6 months! Then we told them they were just F’n nuts.

Aside from being crazy they turned out to be pretty cool dudes and we instantly hit it off. We spent the night sharing beers, swapping stories, and scheming our plan to ship around the gap together. It is cheaper to double-up and place 2 trucks inside 1 container. They had already laid some of the ground work for the process, found a shipping company, and begin the initial paperwork. These guys were fast.

Team Adventure the Americas and yours truly.

Since it was the weekend and we could not move forward with any of the process we decided to do some sightseeing.

First off we headed out to the walled-city of Casco Viejo. Panama City’s historic district. It was built in 1673 after the old Panama City was completely destroyed by the dastardly pirate Henry Morgan (Yes of Captain Morgan rum fame) and his crew. Casco Viejo was declared a World Heritage Site in 1997. The area itself was getting quite run-down for a while and is now undergoing massive remodeling and restoration. It was crammed to the gills with beautiful colonial architectural, ornate churches, palaces, and now hip bars/restaurants. There is also a seedy side to the place which I can only imagine will get shoved out as real-estate values increase. Ahh progress.

After scoping out the city we headed up to a large forested area called Ancon Hill. Ancon Hill was under U.S. jurisdiction as part of the Panama Canal project and thus avoided urban development. It is an odd island of green surrounded by the urban sprawl of the city below.

We had read that the hill is home to monkeys, sloths, deers, and all kinds of wildlife cut off from any other jungle. Our friends from Adventure the Americas had seen a sloth up there just the other day, we hoped we would be so lucky.

As we climbed the hill we were greeted with sweeping views of the city between the jungle brush.
Panama City

Casco Viejo

CAUTION: GIANT BUTTS CROSSING

We made it to the top of the hill which had a gigantic Panamanian flag flying, viewable from all over the city.

Lauren looking off towards the Panama Canal off the distance.

We headed back down the hill still searching for wildlife. We head some screeches up in the trees and saw a small pack of Geoffrey’s Tamarin monkeys roaming about.

A little further down the hill I am scanning the trees and spot a clump of fur. Looking closer… SLOTH!

Satisfied with our adventure tour we headed back into the city and grabbed some Dim Sum at Palacio Lung Fung. Best Asian food we have had since leaving the states! That’s not really saying much but this was as good as the stuff I could get in San Francisco. Highly recommended. I ate about 1000 trays.

Next morning we headed off to see Panama City’s #1 attraction. The Panama Canal.

The Miraflores locks are located just outside of Panama City. They are one of 3 sets of locks used to traverse 51-miles between the Pacific and Atlantic. Looking at the locks in person and seeing them operate is mind-boggling. Add in the fact they are almost 100-years old is even crazier. A true engineering marvel. The history of the Panama Canal is very interesting as well. Did you know the French were actually the first to attempt digging the canal?

Tomorrow begins the shipping nightmare!

We booked it south from the Osa and were soon at the border of Costa Rica-Panama.

Within an hour or so we had gotten all our paperwork squared away, changed some Costa Rican colones into U.S. dollars (the official currency of Panama) and drove on in. Country #9. Our friends at fromatob.org have a nice writeup on “How to cross the Costa Rica-Panama border with a truck”.

BIENVENIDOS!

A few friends of ours had crossed the border a few days earlier and told us of a town called Boquete nestled high up in the mountains. After spending the last few weeks in sweltering jungle temps we were looking forward to a few days of cool weather. We bee-lined it for Boquete.

Boquete is a small town in the highlands of Panama. It’s cool weather makes it very popular with Panama tourists and ex-pats alike. The dormant and normally cloud-covered Volcan Baru dominates the skyline above Boquete. It is the highest point in all of Panama.

Our guidebook mentioned that most of Volcan Baru was protected national park land. It also mentioned a 4×4 road to the Volcano peak, elusive Quetzal bird sightings, and camping possibilities. We were sold. I guided the truck through the town and started snaking up through some small fincas and houses towards the volcano.

We arrived at the ranger shack around 5PM, jumped out and told the guard we were going to drive the 4×4 to the top. He started laughing. I pointed out the window to the 4runner and he said “Oh. We’ll you can try” and wrote us up some permits. I wondered just how bad this road was going to be…

We drove up the gravel road which quickly turned to dirt then to straight up rocks and boulders. Maybe the ranger wasn’t so crazy after all. We were less than 1/4 mile past the guard station when I first had to engage 4×4.

Example of the road-bed

The scenery was beautiful though. Mountainous cloud forest surrounded us. We inched along up the road navigated around and over gigantic boulders. At one point we took a shortcut through a farmers land to avoid a treacherous looking section of the trail.

After about an hour of driving the sun started to set. We had only driven about 1 mile and had not found any campsites. However, we also had not seen another soul and by the conditions of the road I doubted any joyriders would be making their way up the mountain. We pulled over and setup camp on the side of the trail.

View from our campsite. We are deep in pristine cloud forest, perfect Resplendent Quetzal country.

Made a nice meal and went to sleep in downright chilly weather. It was 45F according to our thermometer. Coldest weather we have been in for quite some time. Had to brush the dust off the sleeping bags and thermal underwear!

I woke in the morning with one thing in mind. QUETZALS.

Those of you following the blog know that we have been trying to see this damn elusive bird for months now. We have traveled through 6 countries that claim to have Quetzals but have yet to see one. We did catch a glimpse of a female back in Costa Rica but the male is what everyone is after. Volcan Baru was our last chance. The rest of Panama was lowlands and they do not exist in South America. It was basically now or NEVER.

I am sitting on the tailgate sippin come coffee when all of the sudden I hear a familar bird call way off in the trees. Could it be!? Back in Costa Rica we were on a quetzal hunting tour with a guide who was making the call himself. I sneakily recorded it on my phone for later use. I jumped in the front seat and played the recording. AN EXACT MATCH! Solid proof that Quetzals do exist out here.

I sat back on the tailgate listening, hearing nothing for a while. Disheartened I started playing the call on my own phone, hoping to lure in some horny males searching for a morning piece. After 10 minutes of messing with my phone and getting no where an idea strikes me.

I get back in the truck, turn on the radio and hook the AUX cable up to my phone. Now I am cranking the call out with 750Watts of goodness. The forest fills with the sound of my female call.

Female Quetzal Call Recording
Quetzal Call

I play it about 5 times and wait. All of the sudden, I hear a strange call I have never heard before. I scan the trees. I hear the call again, this time directly above me. I look up. A iridescent green bird with a blood-red breast, yellow beak and gorgeous 3ft long tail looks curiously down at me. I crap my pants.

I whisper/yell for Lauren to get out of the truck. She looks up and can’t believe her eyes. It is a damn male Quetzal hanging out directly above our home.

I fumble for the camera and pop off a few shots for proof. I knew none of our overlanding friends were going to believe us if we didn’t have solid proof. After all they have been on their own quests to see the bird for months. By this point most of them had decided that the bird is a myth and does not really exist.

Unfortunately our camera has a crappy zoom and it was pretty dark under the forest canopy. Its not winning any NatGeo photo contest but there is no doubt, MALE QUETZAL, IN YO FACE.

Excited as 2 kids in a candy shop we watched the male Quetzal as he made desperate calls trying to find this She-Beast of a giant female quetzal. After all what other birds voice is backed by a 750Watt amp?

Eventually he grew bored and flew off in search of a good time somewhere else.

We started up the calls again, this time even louder. You had to be able to hear the call for at least 1/2 mile in the mountain.

We waited, soon enough we saw another, then another, then another. At one point we had 3 male Quetzals above our heads BATTLING each other to claim this sexy silver Toyota Quetzal/4Runner.

Truly amazing, after searching for months and months we finally had more male quetzals than we knew what to do with. We sat there for 2 hours just messing with the poor males as they flew in from miles around to see what was up with the new lady in the neighborhood.

Eventually they wised up and word spread quick that it was just 2 jack-ass gringos messing around in the forest and they stopped showing up. We decided to try to drive up to the top of the Volcano.

We drove about 1/4 mile further when the road degraded to straight up 4×4 rock crawling expedition. Being out in the middle of nowhere, alone, and with no ability to get ourselves back out if we were to break the truck we decided to stop and hoof it on foot. If we had a partner we would have gone further, I think the 4Runner coulda made it.

I prefer driving, but walkings OK. I guess….

The cloud forest was full of life and we saw tons of other birds, even a few more male quetzals.

Later that night we are lying in the truck watching some scary movie. A big lightning storm is raging outside. Thunder shaking the truck like a tin-can. I start to get concerned about a damn tree falling on the truck…

Back to watching the movie when *BAM* something crashes into the truck so damn loud and strong Lauren and I jump and hit our heads on the roof. It scared the crap outta us. I roll down the rear-window in the rain and shine around with my flashlight. Sure enough, a big chunk of branch had broken off the tree above and came crashing into the roof of the 4Runner.

Not having anywhere to go or much we could to about it, We hoped for the best and went to sleep, the storm stopped soon after.

A pic of the branch in the morning.

New speed dents in the cab over the driverside

We spent 3 nights up in the forest parked right on the side of the road. We saw no other people and only 1 truck, a gigantic old school Ford with 40 inch tires and chains slowly crawling up with a bunch of forest workers in the back. They gave us a thumbs-up for making it this far up and kept on crawling.

If male quetzals are what you seek. Take the recording I posted on this blog and get your butt out to Volcan Baru. They are there waiting for you!

We packed up and hit the road. Destination: Panama City.

We are meeting some new friends and preparing to ship the truck across the “Darien Gap” via container ship from Panama to Colombia.