25th March 2015 – Panama City – 2015-04-01 18:19

We slept well in our little cabin last night, the seas are smooth and we have a late breakfast, finishing at about 10:00 am. We manage to find a table that is close to a power point, so we set up our charges for our multiple devices. We don’t have wifi so we go through photos, read and talk to other travelers and members of our group. The girls do a bit of shopping in the duty free to pass the time. We start to dock into Colon just after 1:00 pm and we’re allowed down into our cars just before 2:00 pm. There aren’t many cars on the ferry so it doesn’t take us long to drive out, except that we have a problem getting off the ramp onto the wharf as there is about a 25cm drop off.ÿ So Peter organises for the ships crew to build it up with planks of wood and rope that is lying about and we all get off without scraping our exhausts. Once we’re onto the wharf we park and go and queue up for immigration, fortunately we’re ahead of most of the foot passengers on the ferry, but it still takes ages.Then the cars need to be inspected and we have to organise multiple photo copies of our carnet and Michaels passport. A sniffer dog then comes along and sniffs all through each car, even the engine bay.ÿ We make ourselves comfortable on the dock and catch up on some reading.We then have to wait for our compulsory 3rd party insurance for Panama which costs US$20 per car. This takes a long time as each driver needs to go into an office one at a time to do the paperwork.We finally drive out of the port compound just before 7:00 pm, so it’s taken 7 vehicles and 13 people 5 hours to go through immigration and customs. Talking to other people waiting here, last week some vehicles didn’t leave the port until 10:00 pm so we at least did better than them. It’s dark as we drive from the port of Colon to Panama City on a lovely dual lane toll road arriving at our hotel about an hour later as it’s about 85 kilometers. This afternoon has been exhausting in the heat and humidity so we have dinner in our hotel and crash into bed.