Writings By Date| Panama: A Test of Endurance | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
We waited until the last second, but not wanting to be left behind or abandoned at the border, we got up as well, and gave up our chance to learn the identity of "Tuna". Erin saw that some people were leaving pillows and things behind, so she left our bag of food. I, trusting in her, left my fleece sweatshirt, and filed out.
Unlike border crossings we'd endured in the past, this stop offered nothing in the way of guidance. No signs, no underpaid guides to tell us, not even any stately-looking border guards to point in a direction for us. We — and a handful of other passengers, I'm happy to say — stood around in front of the "Last Chance Steakhouse" looking confused, until someone finally told us we needed to go to immigration, and pointed to a dimly lit building across the street.
We went over there, and found that, for some unknown backwards-seeming reason, we needed to buy a stamp in order to leave. A woman nearby was selling them for 250 colones each, so I ran over and got two. (Important travellers tips: always have some local money left over when you reach the border.) She asked me something as she handed me them, I think asking if the other was for my wife. I just said yes and ran back to the immigration desk to present them before I met with any further obstacles. The stamps got plastered to our passports along with an exit stamp, and we were back to the bus.
But not on the bus. The lights were now off, and the door closed. We stood around looking stupid, until we finally caught the attention of some guys who were talking. They told us we needed to walk across the border into Panama and ... do something. (We couldn't translate that part of it.) Immigration, we imagine, although it seemed awkward to be doing it on foot. Meanwhile, there was a second bus now parked alongside, which I keenly noted was also labelled for Panama. I began to get concerned that there was some kind of bus switching going on, though we had left things on board. I saw an official-looking person making motions to another passenger that had something to do with luggage being moved from one bus to the other, so we figured we'd get to deal with it afterwards.
So, carrying just our backpacks, we continued our border-crossing endurance test. We strode along, last among the passengers to cross the border. In less than 20 steps, we were immediately surrounded by poorly illuminated concrete buildings offering all kinds of merchandise from clothes (in the "Center of Fashion"...obviously not updated since 1975) to handicrafts. In front of these structures were dozens of food carts, offering various fried foods (we think they were all food) and carne asada (meat on a stick) for small change. Bicycles and cars would weave among the carts every so often, and the constant chatter, mixed with the smell of oil fryers and grilled cow, almost made it seem like a real city, if not for the fact that the entire area only seemed to stretch as far as the immigration building, 100 yards away.
Ah, the immigration building. This is where the fun really began.
