Writings By Date| Panama: A Test of Endurance | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
We waited for what seemed a lifetime as some woman in front of us led the immigration official and his supervisor through more paperwork than a French government election. Of course, during that time, at least three people went directly up to the window to interrupt the agent for some other transaction that might take as much as two minutes. (Line cutting seems to be the other national sport, right after paperwork.) At last, we showed our passports and the tourism cards, and watched in awe as the guy stamped the living hell out of everything: ink, STAMP, ink, STAMP...switch to pen, check check, check check...ink, STAMP, ink STAMP...shuffle shuffle...ink STAMP, ink STAMP. There were no fewer than eight stamps for each of us, even though we just had one piece of paper. Boy, these Panamanians love their paperwork.
Finally, he returned our documents, now hopefully officially "stamped", and we returned to customs to find...an empty room. We called out a few times, as I wondered whether there was anything that would keep us from just going right back on the bus and saying we already went through customs. Finally, a very bored looking customs agent meandered in from outside with a cigarette. He saw our passports, and asked if we were American, and if we came on the bus that was outside. Yes, we said. Then he tapped our bags and said "La ropa? (clothes?)" Erin, who knew what he was asking, said yes. Everything, he asked? Yes, again. That was enough to satisfy him, and we were on our merry way.
Sometimes happiness is nothing more than a bored customs agent. (Although I suspect it can sometimes be misery, too.)
So we went back outside to wait again for the bus to open up, realizing that we needed to stow our bags again, because everybody else had already done this. So it took 15 more minutes for us to progress through the line to get back on, where I asked the guy to open the baggage bins. After going around to deposit them, we had to get back in line to get on. By now, we were just about the only ones still off the bus, so it didn't take too long before we got on and showed our ticket, along with our passport and tourism card as evidence that we passed the intelligence test (barely).
