i´m hanging out in david, panama for a few days so i can renew my tourist visa in costa rica... i´m only allowed to stay there for three months at a time and need to leave the country for 72 hours before i can return. so here i am in the third largest city in panama. i might as well be in miami, except that the internet is 50 cents and hour and beers are 32 cents.
I went back to Uvita for two days to visit some friends, and originally i was supposed to take this little vacation to Panama with my friend Tom in Uvita, but he had his dogs fixed last week and they were having some problems. Soooo... I didn´t really have a choice but to come by myself. I talked to Jack extensively about getting here, the buses, the border, where to stay, if it is safe, etc... and i was all set.
so, on the bus right before neilly, about 20km before the border, there were a few cars stopped and two seriously mangled cars in between, car parts and gasoline all over the road. it had been a head on collision that happened a few minutes before we arrived. there was a huge crowd of people around the area, and everyone got off the bus. not surprisingly there were no medics or police in sight, but the drivers had been pulled out of the cars and were being helped by people in the surrounding neighborhood. it´s unbelievable that they were conscious. about 10 minutes later, the fire medics showed up and a few minutes after that the drivers were both taken to the hospital in taxis. about a half hour in the police showed up to do some measurements, and two hours into this traffic started moving again.
during that whole incident, i met a young mexican couple, Sara and Miguel, that was on the same bus and they were also headed to david, so we shared a taxi from neilly to the border. at the border, i got my exit stamp from costa rica, and went to get my entrance stamp to panama, but the woman at the counter was telling me i needed to first buy a $25 ticket before i could enter, a ticket that showed that i was going to leave panama... I knew she was full of shit, i told her i knew that i didn´t need to spend $25 bucks to get into panama. i was so pissed off at this point, the mexican couple were also told the same thing. we were also told that we could each pay only 10 bucks if we give it to them directly and they would let us pass. so, i ended up having to slip 10 bucks into my passport to these corrupt assholes just because they can see that i´m a stupid american chick. the mexican couple had to do the same.
the different between panama and costa rica is a lot more drastic than i expected. i figured it would be like passing on I-95 from south carolina to north carolina. the first thing i noticed is that there are real four-lane highways that are paved and without potholes! these people know how to maintain their asphalt. Most alarming to me is that the people are sketchy as hell, and there is not even a hint of the pura vida vibe. it´s a lot like the united states here. they even use the US dollar.
well, i have a few days to explore the country and change my mind. the mexican couple tried to convince me to take the overnight bus with them to Panama City but I was so furious about the border and exhausted that I just decided to stay here for the night. I might head to Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean side for a night, but for now I´m going to look for a cheap CD player...
I went back to Uvita for two days to visit some friends, and originally i was supposed to take this little vacation to Panama with my friend Tom in Uvita, but he had his dogs fixed last week and they were having some problems. Soooo... I didn´t really have a choice but to come by myself. I talked to Jack extensively about getting here, the buses, the border, where to stay, if it is safe, etc... and i was all set.
so, on the bus right before neilly, about 20km before the border, there were a few cars stopped and two seriously mangled cars in between, car parts and gasoline all over the road. it had been a head on collision that happened a few minutes before we arrived. there was a huge crowd of people around the area, and everyone got off the bus. not surprisingly there were no medics or police in sight, but the drivers had been pulled out of the cars and were being helped by people in the surrounding neighborhood. it´s unbelievable that they were conscious. about 10 minutes later, the fire medics showed up and a few minutes after that the drivers were both taken to the hospital in taxis. about a half hour in the police showed up to do some measurements, and two hours into this traffic started moving again.
during that whole incident, i met a young mexican couple, Sara and Miguel, that was on the same bus and they were also headed to david, so we shared a taxi from neilly to the border. at the border, i got my exit stamp from costa rica, and went to get my entrance stamp to panama, but the woman at the counter was telling me i needed to first buy a $25 ticket before i could enter, a ticket that showed that i was going to leave panama... I knew she was full of shit, i told her i knew that i didn´t need to spend $25 bucks to get into panama. i was so pissed off at this point, the mexican couple were also told the same thing. we were also told that we could each pay only 10 bucks if we give it to them directly and they would let us pass. so, i ended up having to slip 10 bucks into my passport to these corrupt assholes just because they can see that i´m a stupid american chick. the mexican couple had to do the same.
the different between panama and costa rica is a lot more drastic than i expected. i figured it would be like passing on I-95 from south carolina to north carolina. the first thing i noticed is that there are real four-lane highways that are paved and without potholes! these people know how to maintain their asphalt. Most alarming to me is that the people are sketchy as hell, and there is not even a hint of the pura vida vibe. it´s a lot like the united states here. they even use the US dollar.
well, i have a few days to explore the country and change my mind. the mexican couple tried to convince me to take the overnight bus with them to Panama City but I was so furious about the border and exhausted that I just decided to stay here for the night. I might head to Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean side for a night, but for now I´m going to look for a cheap CD player...
posted by Jennifer at 11:36 AM
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