Ever booked a 40' Shipping Container, arranged it's passage on a merchant ship, organised Anti-narcotics Police to search your vehicle for export from the world's leading Cocaine producing country (Colombia), loaded the Container and had it cleared by Customs for shipping? No - me neither! Until this week!! Luckily our new best friends Santiago and Belen speak Espanol and are very well organised. They have never done this before either, but together we have what it takes!!!
Between South and Central America lies the Darien Gap. Dense Rainforest between Colombia and Panama - with no roads - not even dirt tracks - and no bridges across its many waterways. An inhospitable 100 Km stretch of land which cannot be crossed by vehicle - not even the toughest 4x4 !! It's the Missing Link of the Pan American Highway - and there's only one way for Vehicles and Drivers to mind the gap! Vehicles travel by Container Ship - Drivers Fly!!
An e-mail to Seaboard Marine in Cartagena matches us up with Santiago and Belen who are also travelling by road to Alaska - in their Peugeot 207 - and looking for a Container share from Cartagena (Colombia) to Colon (Panama). Santiago and I spend two gruelling days at Cartagena Docks completing the seemingly endless paperwork and smiling through Anti-narcotics and Aduana searches and forms before finally driving our vehicles into the 40' Container we have booked and watching whilst armed Police and Customs Officers seal the doors and certify the steel box ready to ship! Our work is done - for now!
At 17:10 on New Year's Eve we board our flight with Wingo.com from Cartagena to Panama City and say "Adios" to South America - it's been four months since we arrived in Chile!
Arriving in Panama just one hour later it's dark - and raining - after an ultra quick supermarket sweep in Panama Pacifico central (leave your guns at the door) we are whisked away to Residencia Woodlands and a fab apartment David found on Airbnb to feast on a Ready Cooked Chook and celebrate NYE with Argentine Chandon Champagne!
FELIZ ANO NUEVO!!
