Visa Renewal Trip to Panama - Hannah

It's been three months since our trip to Nicaragua, so we needed to leave the country again in order to renew our tourist visas. This time we chose Bocas del Toro, Panama, an island among a group of islands off the northern Caribbean coast of Panama. It is a popular tourist destination for Costa Ricans renewing their visas.

Look at all the stamps :). Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and now Panama!

Michael did a bit of research before our trip to figure out all the nuts and bolts of how to go about the process.

The first thing we needed to do was pay an exit fee at a bank called Bancredito. This is a new law, apparently, and the process is not very streamlined. The problem, we had read, is that for a while there was no Bancredito near the border, so people had to backtrack to pay the fee before they could leave. Then we read that there was a Bancredito near the border, but it wasn't open on Saturday, when we would be there. Of course Costa Rica contracted with a bank with relatively few branches scattered throughout Costa Rica, rather than one of the larger banks with branches in every town.

So a couple days before our trip, Michael and I went to San Jose to pay the fee--$7 per person. It wasn't all bad, though. We made a date out of it and also went out for Costa Rica's sub-par version of Chinese food.

As it turned out, though, when we got to the border, they never even asked to see the receipts for our payment, so it may not have even been necessary. Also, there was a Bancredito ATM in the Immigration office at the border, but it didn't look like it was working (we didn't try). Oh well.

When we arrived at the border, we parked our car in a locked parking lot for $8 a day. It was a good thing too--based on the rough-looking neighborhood, I'm not sure if our car would have still been there when we returned.

We then needed to fill out some forms, cross over a rickety old bridge on foot to Panama, and then fill out more forms and pay an additional $3 per person to enter Panama.

Some local boys climbing and jumping off parts of the bridge.

After arriving in Panama, we got a minibus to Alimirante, about an hour away. We were able to negotiate the price from $60 down to $40. The trip to Almirante gave us a view of the Panamanian countryside, which looked similar to Costa Rica, though with more poverty and more trash. Many of the homes were open air wooden shacks or pieced-together shacks with tin roof siding. 

Once we arrived in Almirante, we took a half hour water taxi to Bocas del Toro, which cost our family a total of $27. The  boat ride gave us a nice view of the homes built near the shore.   

Finally, after an 8 or 9 hour travel day, we arrived at our condo for a couple days of fun.