CENTRAL AMERICA IN CONCLUSION

 Escaping the Paperwork
We never intended to stay in the small town of David for 3 weeks. Crossing the board into Panama, David was the first town we encountered. For what ever reason, we decided to look into selling our car in this town, which spiraled into 3 weeks of paperwork, dealings with customs brokers and lawyers.

To escape from the madness of car related paperwork we spent a few days on a nearby island called Boca Brava. Also, we explored the coffee farming region of Boquete perched in the Panamanian highlands. This place claims to grow the best coffee in the whole of Central America. Either this is a lie or they just don’t know how to brew a good coffee, because we searched high and low but could only get a cup of an urn. However, it was interesting to see where all this coffee that we drink back home actually comes from.

 SOLD!
Panama law required us to import our car before we could sell it. With mixed support from our Customs Brokers who we hired to help us negotiate this process, we stumbled with our broken Spanish from one government department to another. As with any bureaucratic process it was frustratingly slow, but we came out the other side of it with Panamanian license plates on our van. In the meantime, we found a buyer. Saying goodbye to our van, we left the town of David by bus…


 End of the Road
Panama City is the biggest city we’ve seen since Mexico, and it has been good to get back to civilization somewhat. The obvious highlight here was the Canal. We had read a lot about the history of its construction, so it was especially interesting. We saw two massive ships pass through the Pacific locks, which raise the ships about 60 m above sea level so they can pass over a small mountain range and descent again into the Caribbean. All very impressive considering it was constructed 100 years ago.
So, our Central American adventures finish here. We fly to Cuba tonight.