Shipping day

I had a 10 am meeting with the agent at one of the container ports in Colon, about an hour north of Panama city, on the Caribbean side of the Panama canal. I had been defrosting the refrigerator and used the Airbnb towel to soak up the water and used the wet towel to wipe of the road grime from the RV. 

The RV has several stipulations to ship including 1/4 tank of gas or less, no propane, and batteries off. I have lithium batteries so these are not allowed on roll-on/roll-off (roro) ships because of EV cars catching on fire from the salt water. Our RV is too tall to fit in a container so flat rack was our only option. 

The toll roads in Panama have mostly been automated and since our RV has foreign plates and I didn't buy a Panapass, an electronic pass with an account, I just wait at a gate until the gate rises, but today on the highway to Colon there was a human at the other end she charged me a "bus" rate at $5.50. 

I was able to dump our gray water and fresh water at a gas station grate and went to the port to meet Boris.

We weighed the RV and had a brief police inspection with a sniffer dog that lasted 5 minutes then just waited for an escort so Boris could drive the RV to the loading area. That waiting took two hours and he finally called his father, the big wig, to accelerate the process and within 20 minutes out escort arrived.

He drove the RV away and took my police inspection and my passport and got the vehicle stamped out of Panama. Overland Embassy drove me back to their office in Panama city. It was a hot ride because their AC was broken. They couldn't drop me off at my Airbnb so once I arrived at overland Embassy I ordered an Uber to the Airbnb. 

Uber rides range from $2-5 and don't involve numerous missed turns. 

I met Christine and the kids downstairs and I went up to change and came back down and we took an Uber to a mall so Dd could get a Burger King happy meal with a transformers toy but those expired yesterday so no toy. Ellie wanted KFC, I believe her first time, and Dd had nuggets, and Christine had sushi with plantains. I ate Ellie's leftovers and they all had boba tea.

Dd and Ellie earned $5 for jumping off Swala into the water yesterday so we went to the Lego store and they bought their toys.

We went back to the Airbnb so they could put their toys together. Christine went grocery shopping by herself. We had leftovers for dinner.