Waiting for Bill to export bike from Costa Rica and import it to Panama. So far leaving the country has been a fairly quick process. We have already exited Costa Rica and paid our exit taxes. It remains to be seen how easy it is to enter Panama…It is hard to avoid the sharks who want to help you with your paperwork. One attached himself to Bill as soon as we approached Panama immigration. There may have been a parking lot somewhere so we could avoid the sharks but we had no idea where. Borders here are always chaos.It is almost noon. I think the offices might close for lunch. They do on the Costa Rica side.They didn’t close but it was still almost another hour to clear Panama customs. Bill has gone off to make another payment. The clouds bunched up and now it is steadily raining.Not sure if we have to take the bike through fumigation… 12:5 sunny with cloudy periods, humid 31″
2015-11-08 03:09 p.m. lunch
2015-11-08 06:28 p.m. ” Hotel vista LagoSantiago, Panama We got to the border and through it that we decided to keep on riding, even past David. Bad move!The highway was under construction and down to two lanes instead of four. However it was Sunday so not much traffic. We sailed along all day thinking to stop at about three o’clock., congratulating ourselves about getting through the construction with no difficulty. Problem was, when we were ready to stop, there were NO towns! Nada! AND the storm clouds were massing over the low mountains. AND we had changed time zones so it was an hour later than we thought.I found a small town with my gps that was about 30 km away. When we got there it was just a village with no hotel. The next town was Santiago 94kms away.We were motoring along toward Santiago when we were pulled over by two cops in a speed trap. One officer showed us the radar that had pegged us at 94kms. Bill gave the other officer a chagrined look and asked him if he knew of a hotel close by. The officer shook his head and said Santiago. Bill then looked at the ominous sky and said that he thought we might get some rain. The officer agreed then told us that the road would be rough for the next 30 km but it would be smoother closer to Santiago. He went on to say that there was no problem, just slow down a bit then sent us on our way.Five minutes after that the sky opened up and poured. There was lightening and thunder and the road did get really rough, the roughest it had been all day.But about 20 kms away from town we were back on smoother road. We saw a sign for a hotel and five minutes later, the actual hotel. We’d had enough and gratefully pulled in. We were expecting the room to be really expensive but it was only 45US. That was okay with us.However another couple on a motorcycle pulled in and thought it was too expensive and continued on into Santiago. We will see them again because they are taking the same boat as us. Rain 33
