Patrick Brunelle

One Heck of a Journey!

By Patrick Brunelle ⋅ November 27, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

This past week I decided to make a stop in Panama. Being on a tight budget flying was out of the question, so I decided to take my bags with me and hop on the Tica Bus. This is a local bus company that takes Costa Ricans from Panama all the way to Mexico.

The departure was at 10pm, so it was plenty dark from the start. I told myself this would be the perfect time to get catch some sleep on the 20 hour bus ride. What I was not expecting was to hop on a freezing cold bus with a broken A.C unit blasting cold air all throughout the trip. To add to this wonderful surprise was the bus drivers decision to play some movies to keep us entertained on the way down. Only problem was I must have gotten on the Steven Segal fan club trip as we got to watch three of his films consecutively, until the late hours of the morning.

Upon arriving at the border we were told to get off and go to customs. I expect the customs to be in Panama, but I had to figure out on my own it was actually the Costa Rican customs office. This meant waiting in line for 40 minutes to get a stamp demonstrating that I had registered my departure from Costa Rica.

Then it was off on an 8 minute walk to the Panamanian border. Two more lines meant another hour and a half gone by. By the way, make sure you pay for the $1 stamp and the $5 tourist stamp before getting back on the bus. When I finally thought we could get on the bus, we were told to take our bags out an bring them in a special room for inspection. Each one of our bags got sorted through and we did not have the chance to go through the actual border until 3 hours later.

When I sat back down in my freezing cold seat a horrible thought crossed my mind, “I´m going to have to do this again on the way back!”.