We woke up in the peaceful, serene bay of Puerto Carreto to the sounds of nature. It was delightful, but we had to clear into Panama, so we left and motored the 8 miles to Puerto Obaldia. A local named, Victor Luna helps cruisers with the clearance process for $20. We had a WhatsApp number (because all islanders are on WhatsApp) but without wifi that number is useless. Matt the persistent and patient one in our group, kept searching for wifi, and finally was able to get something off of GoogleFi which enabled us to make a call. The woman who answered told us that she expected to see Victor at 12n and would send a message. We arrived at 10am.
Our friend who gave us Victor’s info, said that sometimes it’s easier to flag down another panga driver and ask them to get Victor. So, after waiting over an hour we did just that. A panga driver was heading into town so I jumped up, whistled, and waved him over. To our surprise, when I asked “conoce Victor” (translation “do you know Victor”) he said “me” how ironic – what luck!
We grabbed our paperwork, hopped into his panga, and headed to the Panama shore for the very expensive cruising permit we so desired. First stop, police station at the entrance of town. It was a makeshift “office’ that reminded me of part of a fort with no doors and long rectangle windows to stick weapons out and hide from incoming fire. He was pleasant enough, asked all the normal questions, verified stamps in our passports. The dates in our passports were different than the exit date on our Zarpe which caused a little confusion. They informed us several times, we must stop back by the police before leaving and after all the paper work was complete. UNDERSTOOD.
Next up immigrations. They need two copies of everything: boat paperwork, zarpe, passports (need two more copies of everything for the cruising permit). Victor took us by the copy place and for $3 we got our first set of 10 copies. Victor as a tour guide/agent is awesome, the down side is it’s all in Spanish and a long, slow process. The immigration office and cruising permit take the longest and require a substantial amount of patience.
At port authority you meet Victor Oreto, Victor Luna’s nephew who is the port captain. This guy can stamp paperwork like no tomorrow. 7+ copies of each of the 5 documents that get stamped twice including the police copies. We also had the added pleasure of clearing in on a national holiday – Mother’s Day which added an additional $40 to the total fee. For some reason, Matt had to pick a Zarpe location of either Puerto Lindo or Puerto Portobello even though the Zarpe is supposed to be good for all of Panama. Guessing it will become apparent when we get the Zarpe for clearing out.
During our waiting periods I captured some photos of Puerto Obeldia, Panama:
Church at Puerto Obedalia.
School at Puerto Obedalia
After we were all done, we head back to the police hut to make sure our passports are stamped. They wanted to come and inspect the boat which was fine, but first they wanted us to move the boat. We had anchored out a bit and they wanted the boat directly across from their dock.
Sugar Shack only a few meters away, but police asked us to move closer.
Victor our guide and driver.
So, Victor brought us back to our boat where we moved it a whopping 200 meters. Wayne stayed on the boat and Matt and I jumped back into Victor’s panga, and back to the police hut to get our passports. We waited, patiently. Then back to the boat, the inspection was routine, but it’s been a 3-hour long process and our smiles were starting to fade. All is good. After $198 for the cruising permit, $315 for immigration, $40 for Victor (since we had so many back and forth trips) we had our boat paperwork, stamps, and cruising permit.
Since our clearance process into Panama took a lot longer than we expected, we had to shift our plans. We still wanted to arrive at the next stop during daylight, so we decided to head to Puerto Escoses, 25 miles away.
Puerto Escoses is a pretty bay that is well protected from the sea. We arrived at sunset in time to hear the orchestra come alive from the jungle. There were many sounds we could not make out, a sort of howling or something gave us pause about exploring the shoreline. But with no other man-made lights, we had a perfect view of the stars, planets, and constellations. It was extremely peaceful and gorgeous.
Puerto Escoses