travel

The plan was to go to Yaviza to buy baskets from an Embera artists' cooperative, do a story about the basket business and get a take on how those parts of the Darien that were flooded a few months back are getting on with their recovery. It was a two-person mission, me the panagringo dual citizen and a Canadian on a tourist visa, traveling by bus on Carnival Monday.

Fortified with caffeine and sugar, we set out a bit after 7 a.m., through a city largely depopulated by folks who had taken off for the Interior over the long weekend. There were no traffic jams as we made our way from the bus terminal to Tumba Muerto, then turned near Tocumen Airport onto the Pan-American Highway and headed past Felipillo towards Pacora and Chepo.

We hadn't made it out of the metro area before we hit the first police checkpoint. We all had to get off the bus and show ID.

On the holidays the police do this, having the excuse of keeping drugs and weapons out of the places where people congregate, but also figuring that on these days people who ordinarily lay low also take to the roads. Over the long Carnival weekend police say that they arrested some 31 fugitives, generally violent young men whose economic circumstances dictate that they ride the bus. (Former Banco Nacional de Panama CEO Bolívar Pariente was not among those nabbed --- he had escaped to the United States, from whence he was allowed to flee to Europe before going underground. He probably isn't riding any buses around Barcelona, either.)

But what is this? Are my traveling partner's papers in order? Was that a three-month visa or an six-month one?

It was a three-month visa that could have been extended to six, but wasn't, and the three months were up.

But they let us through that inspection, and the one near Chepo, and the one at the Bayano Bridge.

Used to be that the pavement stopped a few yards east of the bridge, but now the road is blacktopped all the way to Santa Fe, which was most of the way to where we were going. It promised to be the smoothest ride into the Darien that I had ever taken.

Ah, but there was the usual checkpoint, the one at the border between Darien and Panama provinces, at Cañazas. There was an immigration man working there, and no amount of pleading, negotiating, weeping, wailing or gnashing of teeth would persuade him to relent. My Canadian friend's visa was expired, she would not be allowed to continue and that was that. We both turned back.

Later a friend from the Smithsonian told of a group of scientists, one of them a German who neglected to carry his passport with him, being turned back from the Darien at this same spot, also by Migracion. Over the years, I have also been told of foreigners being prevented from boarding piraguas for destinations upriver at times when police are on alert for armed bands who have crossed over from Colombia.

The bottom line is that you need to have all your identification papers in order to travel into the Darien, especially if you are a foreigner.



Also in this section:
A day trip to Embera Country
Let this be a word of warning

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