Hellacious Border Crossing into Panama

After Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, it was time to leave Costa Rica behind for good and cross into Panama.  This turned out to be one of the longest, most painful border crossings I’ve ever endured.

The infamous Bridge of Death.

The bus ride to the border wasn’t so bad.  It was only like an hour-and-a-half long and we got there still thinking that we might get to our destination in Panama in time for a normal-hour lunch.  We got our stamps out of Costa Rica pretty quickly and all was going well.  Then we loaded up for our trip into Panama.  This required crossing the Bridge of Death.  The Bridge of Death is a long bridge crossing a river from Costa Rica into Panama.  It is held up by steel beams and held together by horizontal, rickety boards that don’t feel like they are able to support a human being’s weight.  In between the boards are gaps in which you can see down to the river.  There are vertical boards as well for large trucks to use when they cross.  I crossed with all my stuff, probably around fifty pounds of it, on my back or in my arms and I had to concentrate with all of my might on each step to make sure that I wouldn’t fall into the river.  The whole trek probably only took three or four minutes but it seemed like an hour.

Once across the bridge, the ordeal was just beginning.  We ended up standing in line for over ninety minutes in the hot, midday Panamanian sun while the folks at the border tried to figure out what to do with a group of eleven tourists trying to come into Panama.  In retrospect, we probably would have gotten through much quicker had we just gone through immigration individually, but instead we sweated through the process until, finally, we were allowed into the country.

After the border crossing, things got much easier.  Ostensibly, we were heading to Bocas del Toro, an island on the Caribbean coast of Panama.  We drove about ninety minutes to the closest part of the mainland to the island but when we arrived, we learned that we instead were staying on a different island – Bastimentos.  Don’t get me wrong, Bastimentos is a charming little island, but there’s not really much to do there.  We checked in to the hotel and, after a while, my new Australian friend and I walked around looking for something to do or eat.  We did come across this bar/restaurant at the end of a pier that looked reasonable.  We went there for lunch and some $1 beers (Balboa) and it was a good enough time.  But there really wasn’t much else to do or see.  There was a beach that I later heard was beautiful close by but I thought I’d have time for that later.  I didn’t.  After lunch, I headed back to the hotel.  I had a double room to myself, for now, because my English friend was going to make an appearance and I had an extra bed for her to crash in.

Shortly after dark, we took a water taxi to the island of Bocas del Toro.  It isn’t a huge island, but it still was considerably more bustling than Bastimentos.  We had dinner there, I finally had ceviche and it was delicious, and then we stopped off for supplies before returning to Bastimentos.  (I wish I had a picture of the ceviche but it was too dark in the restaurant for my iPhone to take a photo.)

That night was jerk chicken night on my balcony along with a bottle of Argentine malbec wine.  I still hadn’t heard from my English friend, but that wasn’t too surprising.  I was hoping that she was getting into town late and that I would meet up with her the next morning.  Was I right?  We’ll find out in the next post.