BORDER CROSSING GONE WRONG [This is ridiculous!] VANLIFE
![BORDER CROSSING GONE WRONG [This is ridiculous!] VANLIFE BORDER CROSSING GONE WRONG [This is ridiculous!] VANLIFE](/pic/border_crossing_gone_wrong_this_is_ridiculous_vanlife/MkdiNU9IaFJPX0E_.jpeg)
we're heading towards panama today first stop for the last night in costa rica pavones which is a very popular surfing beach then tomorrow we're going to get tested for covid 19. right now panama only requires the antigen test and then after to the border we go people had recommended pavones so i read into it and back in the day a famous surfer was flying over the coastline looking for a perfect break and then he bought all the land around that wave it's supposed to be one of the longest waves in the world and it should be a tranquil little surf town before heading to the hectic border crossing so the last couple things that we have to do before we cross the border is basically just clean up the van we're gonna head to the border tomorrow night to sleep there we're gonna also get together our border crossing stuff like our passports our copies the pet paperwork the current paperwork and then we also bring all of the expired paperwork just in case they need to see any of that stuff this is like the health pass from costa rica insurance from costa rica that kind of stuff we're almost ready to go i'm really really excited to go into panama well this is an interesting bridge that we found here no no railing on our drive we're passing fields and fields of palm plantations these palms have no nourishment for wildlife which destroys the habitat for so many creatures this is a huge problem in central and south america palm oil is in a lot of processed foods like nutella and cheap peanut butters it's super bad for the environment so best to find alternatives ah pavones is shaping up to be a really nice spot that would be corcovado national park out on the peninsula there the osa peninsula because danny's got some friends while he's swimming today sombrita so at least the cows get a nice little soak in this humid humid warm weather then he's got his soap on going for a little swim with cows what did you think of the cows girl and healthy at the beach cooking our own food the ultimate maxin and relaxin in here when danny pulls up the hammock got the side door open for a nice breeze got some vita sleeping over there grammy's sleeping in the front this is uh of our sadness leaving costa rica heading towards the border now from pavones which was a beautiful place it's definitely rainy season and that's why a lot of people go to these countries at certain times but we're gonna have to hit a rainy season at some point and i honestly think that the weather in costa rica has been beautiful the entire time we were here even if there has been afternoons thunderstorms or days that we had to walk in the rain i still don't think it was not worth coming or rescheduling to go down another time i think it was always really nice and because it rained so much here you can see like right here how good they are with guiding the water where it needs to go jeez i don't know if that's a live wire or what i guess that truck is just waiting back there but you think we can sneak over here holy let's see looks like the surfboard is going to clear it great oh my gosh oh that was tight wow that was just scary oh my gosh uh we just got our nose jab it's been a while we didn't need one to come to costa rica they just have a health insurance you have to buy luckily it's the cheaper test to go to panama the antigen the more expensive ones called the pcr so while we wait for our results for the cobid test tell you guys some other things we did to prepare for the border we also got the pet paperwork we looked up online which coveted test we would need make sure you check a pretty valid source because it seems to change quite a bit we can get an antigen or pcr which is nice so we spent the night here for 2600 colones, have a bathroom and a shower here and we are very close the borders just probably a kilometer away here so we're gonna get into it quick this morning it's uh 8 am i think we got up at 7 45 hopefully we'll be in panama by noon come on good morning we're going to panama today we're starting at 8 30. here we go passing all these trucks so as always so this is stop one here aduana customs of costa rica we parked in the right spot here at immigration but you actually have to cross the street and pay your exit tax over here i just paid the departure tax now we're gonna be able to get stamped out of costa rica just around the corner from where we got stamped out we're canceling the costa rican tip the agent gave us a piece of paper to fill out referencing the current tip how's everything look oh it looks good it looks good yeah i just i'm just gonna double check we actually got kind of lucky because i noticed the vin number was wrong on the import permit and we put the correct vin number on our leaving paperwork and uh he didn't even read the bin on the van so but that's like a really good lesson for panama because we were like we have to make sure every single paper is done correctly and that's you know i can't believe that we accidentally had the wrong bin but now we know that it is possible to have the wrong number on the paper so they better be careful the whole time so now we get to go to panama happy that this one's so quick yeah this is a lot faster than nicaragua leaving maybe nicaragua took like two hours that was it's only 9.7 oh on to the next side oh please i gotta read a little bit of the steps on my overlander put a gps pin to the exact right spot to park and head on over wow so panama is already different off the bat we have military officers here during the inspection and costa rica actually doesn't even have an army apparently the process has changed a little so we're looking for where you actually get this insurance he said it's by the taxis over on the other side here over here probably by these taxis this is vehicle insurance you need for panama we just found the engine number we've never needed it before but we're worried when we ship to colombia that if any number is is not there or wrong they'll give us a hard time so make sure to wipe off this nastiness and get a good picture of it awesome emily got the insurance i'm having a little brekky things are going well things are going well but the one we worry about is the pet paperwork sometimes a vet will even say oh the worst that could happen is they decapitate your dog and i was like i'm not listening to this bet anymore sometimes you hear some really alarmist things to try and pressure you into money right now we're getting a slight tactic of that up here there's a guy with a huge crate for animals and he's been looking at some burritos so but supposedly entering this country you do have to pay a lot for each animal 136 dollars per pet even though we paid probably 60 each animal to costa rica and vets there for inspecting the animals giving us papers leaving costa rica we didn't really do anything for the pets but that step will be coming up here entering panama so fingers crossed everything goes well now we came back to sort of the beginning of the building here to do the migration and somebody left a passport here poor guy so that's why i've been really careful every time we put something down to remember we filled out our customs declaration and we're just waiting for the doctor i guess the doctor had to move his car it's probably not a thing they would be doing a year ago have a doctor here and it doesn't seem to be a smooth process yet okay time to get a temporary vehicle import permit for panama we have to get the tip before i the passenger can get stamped into panama well when trying to get the inspection you know they took a peek and whatnot they sent us back here to the doctor apparently she works with pets too and we have to do something with her then the guy will sign off in the inspection of the car and now that we have the permit for the car emily's got to do her migration stamp over there now we have to pay for our pets to be imported it's true it's 130 per pet which we think is quite expensive actually it's the most expensive yet but we have to do this to get our tip since the agent saw the dog in the cat we would not recommend doing the export paperwork in costa rica since no one has looked at it and it was unnecessary money spent on our part unfortunately and you can get your COVID-19 test here at the border for 46 dollars a person which is actually cheaper than we got but then you'd have to wait 30 minutes so now that we've paid 260 dollars for this tiny piece of paper and the lady never looked at the animals once we got to go to another agency and pay more money basically paid 250 to get from one country to the next nothing similar has happened but now going from costa rica to panama all of a sudden it's a ridiculous amount hi hi baby anyway we're getting into the country and it's important to have the right paperwork because when we go to the next country it'll be by boat you really want to have the right paperwork to do that so that's the only reason we went through the whole thing otherwise i would try to get around it if you just walk the dog across the border you avoid that whole thing on the rabies vaccination papers they have some but it was her weight when she was three months old so he tried to put eight kilos on there and i said no no she's like 22 kilos and he's like what like how one was she eight kilos like she was only three months old so um then i had to find a different health certificate in our in our barely used um expired paperwork from nicaragua so it does help to have all the papers from every place ever they signed off on our our temporary import permit for the vehicle now that we've finalized all the stuff in there aka animals so last step we're gonna go pay over here and get fumigated the guy with the pet paperwork danny had talked to him before i went over and did the rest of the steps and said oh it's so annoying that we do all this stuff for the pets and no one ever even looks at the pets so whenever i was finished i he he was finished with the papers he gave me the papers and he said oh we'll do an inspection now and i said okay so i took him around to the side door and he said oh is this your dog and it's like somebody done just pet her a little bit she gave him a couple legs he was excited he was like oh nice pets where's the cat and then he started petting the cat i don't think it was a health inspection i'm pretty sure he just wanted to pet the animals because danny said no one ever looks at the animals yeah you know whatever it looks at you pay 250 dollars each it's like let's see how expensive your dog really is the 250 includes 90 each for the paperwork that we thought was going to be required from costa rica that nobody ever saw i'm going to pan them on my voice okay our entrance to panama just gotta get fumigated coming in here so i'll shut off the intake oh there's just a light mist oh how nice welcome to panama okay so yeah we have to show basically all of our paperwork one more time to this guy which is a nice fail safe you know if you find out like oh shoot i don't have every paper then this guy at least is gonna tell you before you get too far before you get to panama city and you can't get on a boat to colombia well let's see let's see if he even cares again like i had been in costa rica 10 years ago but i have never been here and it feels so good it's 12:05 that means we did make it by noon like i was hoping and the total time was 8:30 8:30 we started yeah so then that's three and a half hours not great not bad not bad not too bad there's there have been easier borders but we had to make sure everything was gonna be perfect so and we've already seen a couple gas stations the gas price here looks like 88 cents a liter or regular whereas in costa rica it was more than a dollar a liter so it's going to be kind of nice first stop in panama is to do some van maintenance this oil is not common um this far south but it was only 48 dollars for six quarts of synthetic but here he said the oil change would just be 20 because we're coming in with that stuff it seems okay to me yeah yeah this oil change is not going well never had a mechanic need help to remove the oil filter we got out of there after you know helping the mechanic youtube i youtubed it figure out now you don't have to take apart the engine to do an oil change so anyway we've got the oil change hopefully now we can do a little relaxing but when it comes to choosing mechanics that's always really hard we found this one for my overlander you go to all these countries thinking they'll be different then you see the same chain wait that's not mcdonald's every time we cross the border we try to use up all our fruits and veggies so we really don't have any food that's true so we're gonna hit that groce looks like the big four here are you turning left are riba smith ray super 99 and price mart so let's check out our first grocery store in panama what are these ton of them this is their tortillas that's something different every country has his own kind of tortillas but these are like the weirdest ones yet okay finally to the good stuff the produce section dang it's looking nice what do you think you're gonna have to become a meat eater no definitely not ah they got all the goods here i haven't seen a produce section this complete in a while honestly do you think this is a pomegranate and it looks like a little bit different right it is a little bit different yeah it doesn't have the top and it's a little bit heavier and it doesn't feel as thin i think we gotta try one just for your sister and mom see what the heck's inside there okay well that didn't mean these tortillas are weird they're just different the most different but some of them come with stuff inside they're calling those the last country that had really thick tortillas we remember him was uh guatemala no el salvador and we're kind of more fans of the thinning ones but you know we're gonna try these see what it's all about probably not from the grocery store though the balboa i guess that's also the currency which is technically just a dollar but sometimes they call it the ball and the beer the changes seems easy to remember oh atlas and then i like how they have ceviche here too yeah i thought it was design it was good i found the first vegan ramen in years so what did you think of the vegan selection in rey oh i loved it yeah there's such there's pretty good stuff there yeah we got some chicken nuggets we got some soy milk they have some soy milk brands we haven't seen ramen or i can use the flavor packet yeah and we even got some vegan cheese thanks so much for watching our panama border crossing today is our three-year van adversary we've lived in this thing for three years and we're so excited to bring you guys on the journey with us it's been epic traveling the world for three years now and we're really glad to have you all along with us on the journey all right we'll see you guys next time see ya
2021-08-08 21:30