Yesterday I knocked off a bunch of tasks. I fixed the pressure switch on my pump so that I don’t have to turn on the shower, run out, turn on the pump, take a shower, run out and unplug the pump and turn off the shower. I replaced the bilge pump on my boat which was shot and assembled the loose parts on my refrigerator. Good, really starting to knock things off. While I was waiting for the hardware store to open, they have a 12 – 2 siesta I was working on my computer. It died and refused to turn back on. So much for that repair job I got in David.
Taking advantage of the fact that I now had hot running water I washed all my clothes except a ratty pair of pants I seldom wear as the pockets don’t zipper and I have a tendency to have things fall out of my pants when I am sitting down. My wallet contained $40, my driver’s license, which had been missing two weeks but found by my real estate agent in one of his files, an expired credit card and a debit card.
Today I decided to head out to Changuinola, get the computer repaired and get a document to travel inside Panama without a passport so that I could get to Panama City without a passport. First stop was the computer repair place. I explained to the owner that I had spilled half a glass of pineapple juice on my keyboard, that the computer had been clicking loudly a very annoying metronome that filled the house with sounds of techno death. Sometimes it would go away, then return. Finally it stopped making the annoying sound but I wanted the mother board and components cleaned. Yes I had somebody disassemble and wash all the components with solvents three days ago. He turned it on. It fired right up, something I hadn’t managed to accomplish then quickly died. Good. I left it with him and went off in pursuit of my travel document.
As I was down to $40 I stopped by an ATM a block away and withdrew $500. No point in taking out less than the max, the transaction fee is the same. Everybody had a different idea as to the location of the immigration office. Some said it was at the airport, some said it was in the police station, others, next to the super market. I stopped in the market and bought $8 worth of 10% urea skin cream for $30. At least they had it. Then I bought a seafood pizza for $10 and gave a $1 tip.
Hobbling down the street on my gimpy left leg, which I have been told by my neurologist could take up to a year to heal in the sweltering heat I found a couple of taxi drivers who agreed on the location. Great, can I get a ride? They said it was only 400 meters. I was hot, tired and frustrated. I really didn’t give a shit. You can get a ride across town for a buck. They both refused to take me, saying it wasn’t far enough. They wouldn’t take two bucks. I finally found the place and the guard didn’t want to admit me as I was wearing shorts. I explained I live on a remote island in Bocas and it took me three hours to get here. He acquiesced and we walked down a hall, around a corner into an eight foot by twelve foot room with two desks and three waiting chairs. At least it was air conditioned. In order to give me the document the woman said I needed a copy of my passport. I told her I didn’t have one. I last entered the country through Guabito, in November. She putzed around with a large stack of paper that had nothing to with my request for about half an hour.
She went out and obtained a “carga” credit for the prepaid cell phone and called immigration in Guabito who found the hand written record of me entering the country November 14 and proceeded to pull up a word document and start editing it, changing the information about entry date, the person with the missing passport, my place of residence, etc.
Finally I had my travel document in hand. One of the women told me I had to file a missing passport report with the police, who happened to be in the same building. This turned out to be very interesting as he rapid fired stuff to me in Spanish and spoke not a word of English. But I could read enough of the screen to write down the information that was pertinent to the various sections. He stamped and signed the document but couldn’t find the captain so he created a different version with the name of an individual that was available. Then he kept my travel document. What the fuck? I went back to the woman who issued my travel document and she asked when I was going to travel. I don’t know. After I get my birth certificate sent down from the states, god knows how long that is going to take. Well, I would have to come back when I was ready to go to Panama City and travel that day. I wandered around in the heat trying to locate the computer store, again hot, limping and frustrated. I finally found it. The guy was nowhere near done. He told me the last guy had washed the sugar all around the electrodes of the chips and he had to clean them off one at a time. I tried to kill a little time at an internet cafe but the computers all sucked. The guy told me none of them was good enough to run the gmail web interface. Nice place.
Eventually I went back to the shop. It was getting late. The computer was working fine, except for the electronic button to open the drive. I can manually open it but the button doesn’t work and the command line interface instruction fails to open it. Catch the bus too late and you miss the last water taxi back to Bocas. I couldn’t hail a cab. Just as I limped up to the bus a passenger boarded and the conductor indicated there was no room for more. A big fat guy in a yellow Luxman double cab pick, pretty common taxi fare said he would take me to Almirante for $20. Well at least I could make it home tonight. We had a good laugh about a good many things. He stopped at a Chino and I bought another bottle of water. Minutes later we were at Bocas Marine Tours. I took out my wallet, gave him the $20, grabbed my backpack and walked the 20 feet to the counter. No fucking wallet. No money, no ID, no way to get money. A taxi driver offered to chase down the other driver, I explained I had no money. He said if he catches him and he has my wallet I pay standard fare else I owe him nothing. What a hell of a guy. We raced through the hills at speed of up to 140 km/h passing on blind curves and rises. Eventually we caught up with our driver after half an hour of frantic driving. No wallet in the truck. On the ride I tried to check in my fanny pack, an unlikely place to put it for a four second walk. One zipper pulled off the track and the pull on the other came off.
Fuck me. Twenty feet. If it fell out of my pants it was snatched in 30 seconds. Else I was pick pocketed. Now I have to replace my driver’s license, my debit card and I am out over $400 dollars with no ready way to get more. My usual service, BMT had already dispatched their last boat at 6:30 but Taxi 25 had reopened and offered transport at 8 as the owner was on a shopping trip to David and would be transported home at that time. My driver asked how much money I had and just gave me the difference.
To top it off, the dickhead who was watching my dogs for less than two weeks, who received nearly $400 in compensation and then ran all the gas out of my boat while he was operating a tour service tried to extort $360 from me and told me he was going to take me to the labor board. That is not a good thing in Panama.
This has not been a good year.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur