Well, here we are looking for a safe spot to camp for free the night before our inspection. Tomorrow morning we were headed to where another Overlander watched a guy get shot and killed directly in front of him, for a mandatory police inspection of our truck. To say we were a bit nervous was an understatement.
So, we drove out the "causeway" to a parking lot for the Smithsonian museum. We asked the security guard there with exhausted and pitiable faces whether we could camp in the lot for just uno noche. He obliged and said we had to be gone before his boss showed up at 6AM and we happily agreed. Just a few minutes after popping the top on our truck "Goose" he came by with a big flashlight and told me to follow him. Just a few feet away he shined the light above our heads and illuminated two sloths moving slowly, do they have another speed, along a power line above our heads. I ran back to get Kelsey and we watched them make their way along the power line and back into the trees on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institute. Well, that just made our night!
Still, we found it a bit hard to sleep while listening to cars drive and people walk by throughout the night. We were also keenly aware of a story a new Overlander friend had told us about showing up TOO early to the police station inspection site. He got there at 4am because there are a limited number of inspections performed each day and if you're not one of the first 25 vehicles there, you're out of luck! While sitting there just outside the police yard in the dark he saw a gang of men walk up and shoot another man. So close that blood spattered on the front of his truck. The gang told him and the police that they saw nothing and they dragged the body away. With that sobering story we were tense to say the least. The community we drove through to get to this police yard was the starkest and most sad view of absolute slum and poverty I've seen (Not that I've seen it all, but from building houses in the tent/plywood city outside Tijuana as a teenager to the slums of Cairo, Egypt, this was worst I'd seen) It was a sea of trash and for the first time in our trip, we really felt unsafe.
Once inside the police yard we were given a #7 inspection ticket and we hung out with the other travelers in line. We also met the folks we'd be sharing a container with! (This saves on total shipping costs and there is an app called "Container Buddies") This inspection is to ensure that stolen vehicles are not leaving the country. An hour later the police looked at the frame stamped numbers on Goose and said with alarm that it was not matching! I looked down to see that he'd found the FZJ80 model stamping that Toyota puts on the frame. I directed him to the VIN as my heart rate was finally slowing down. "Okay, come back here at precisely 2PM and the paperwork will be ready. Then you will take it across the street and down the block to the other station to complete." Off we went and back we came. We walked to the other station and within a relatively short amount of time we were done and it wasn't even dark yet. 1 full day of work to get a sheet of paper was fairly routine at this point after dealing with all sorts of bureaucracy elsewhere during our trip.
Last night in Panama.
Sleeping employees at Aduana.
