16 November 2010

The only problems I had at the police station were my fault. This morning I went to the wrong office. Needed to be across the street. So I made a turn on the highway that ended up taking me on a long return. I should’ve just gone down the road at the light then cut over a block as the street I was going to turn down was one-way. The first stop took maybe ten minutes. They looked at my car right away. They said to come back at 2 p.m. to the building across the street for my papers. 

So I lounged at the hostel and invited Rachel to come with me and we would drive to the Mira Flores locks on the Panama Canal. This step took an hour because I had to find the right office and there were two people ahead of me. The clerk also entered in the wrong VIN information twice.

The guy ahead of me was a homeless, mohawked older man on his way back to Brazil from Los Angeles. It turns out he is probably the guy I’m sharing a shipping container with. He is eager to leave for Colombia as soon as possible.  He has been stuck in Panama for almost a month because of the ceaseless national political holidays which have kept the government offices closed.

Meanwhile Rachel waited outside lying in the grass. I apologized for the wait but she said it was no big deal. We were off to Mira Flores. Somewhere I took a wrong turn and we ended up on a highway and then back downtown. Eventually I got my bearings and just drove us back home. I apologized for the waste of time but she was okay about it. She said she’d probably take a bus tomorrow. I did my laundry today (I dropped it off at a laundry mat) and ate dinner at a vegetarian chinese restaurant. 

Out of nowhere it stormed and now the power is out.