Crossing the Border by Bus
Well, on foot, actually.
By the time we arrived at the Costa Rica-Panama border, we'd been riding on a Tica Bus from San Jose, Costa Rica for seven hours.
We were well into the fifth movie of the ride — Iron Man (dubbed in Spanish) — when we arrived at border control.
It was 7:15 p.m., and just getting dark. All the passengers shuffled off the bus and stood in line as one weary immigrations employee scanned, stamped, and initialed every passport and set of customs forms handed to him. There were about 40 people on our bus, so it took awhile.
Three of those people, however, hadn't paid their Costa Rica departure tax. This seemed to cause a few problems. We weren't sure what happened exactly, but they were pulled out of line and wandered off to settle the matter elsewhere.
The situation apparently got sorted eventually, because these folks joined up with the rest of us on the Panama side a little later. But it didn't look like they'd had a lot of fun. So, again, remember to pay your departure tax.
Has anybody seen the bus?
After we were cleared to leave the country, we turned around and ... the bus was gone. As it turns out, you can’t ride across the border — you have to walk. This would have been good information to have earlier in the process. But when you're a long-term traveler, you adapt.
The whole situation was a little chaotic. There was no obcious path we were supposed to take to cross over into Panama. So we joined up with a few of our fellow equally confused bus passengers, shouldered our backpacks, and headed in the most likely direction.
We walked past a series of storefronts, dodged cars across a traffic-clogged street, and resisted the siren call of bored street vendors as we strolled right into Panama.
A word on the police. During our time in Costa Rica, the police had looked reasonably friendly. They dressed in blue uniforms similar to those we're used to in the United States. But on the border, the Panamanian police wore their armored vests and brandished assault rifles. They looked a lot more like military than police.
Entering Panama
Now that we were officially out of Costa Rica, we had to officially enter Panama. As we walked beneath the Welcome to Panama sign, someone handed us the necessary customs and immigration forms. Always travel with a pen for situations like this.
It cost us $1 per person to enter Panama, and you need to have proof that you're going to be leaving. Without that, they won't let you in.
A Warm Welcome in Panama
Now that we were officially in Panama, it was time for customs clearance. All of us bus passengers had to retrieve our luggage from the bus which had entered Panama without us.
Once we had our luggage, we were directed into a small, really hot room with a series of tables. One of the officials read everyone’s name off of a passenger manifest. The whole thing had an odd high school gym class feel. Then everyone rushed the tables to get their bags inspected.
The agents really gave some of the passengers a hard time. From what we saw, no one had any contraband removed from their luggage, but a few of our fellow passengers had to empty out their bags. One of the agents was particularly angry at people who didn't speak Spanish.
We were near the end of the line, so we got lighter treatment than some of the earlier inspectees.
All the passengers (and luggage) were back on the bus by 8:30 p.m. and soon thereafter we were off to Panama City.
But there were no more movies playing on the bus — as soon as we hit the road, it was lights out the rest of the way. Even my overhead reading light didn’t work, so I tried to get a little sleep.
We all slept fitfully. We woke occasionally to feel the bus rocketing down the highway or teetering wildly as it took the tight curves or passed some slower moving vehicle. A few times I woke freezing, wishing I’d worn long pants.
I remember stopping, briefly, in Santiago, Panama at midnight, but other than that the last half of the ride was all a blur until we pulled into Albrook Bus Terminal (also known as the Gran Terminal Nacional de Transporte at 5:00 a.m.
In total, the ride had been 16 hours (we had a time change when we crossed into Panama). In the last 24 hours, we'd spent 19 in some sort of vehicle. We glad to get some walking time in as we debated our breakfast options.
Events of November 23 and 24, 2014. Days 95 and 96 of continuous travel.
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Header Image: Welcome to Panama. Image from the author's collection.