Chiriquí Chatter

You may have noticed that I have been away for a few days. I had to make an unexpected trip into Coast Rica driving a car and I thought I would post a little of what was required to do that. The following took place from 9:00AM until about 4:30 PM last Thursday. There was another 30 minutes in the process this afternoon.

If you live in Panama and have a car that is paid for and want to drive into Costa Rica there are a few things that you have to do.

First you should go by the insurance company that provides insurance for the car and request a permission document for you to take the car into Costa Rica. I guess you could forget this step, but you should know that your will have no insurance coverage should the car be in an accident or stolen while you are in Costa Rica. I am also not sure if you open another set of problems when Costa Rica finds that you will be driving without insurance.

The insurance step was pretty painless. The only thing is it is not instantaneous. We had to wait over an hour to get the document. There were other things to do, so the time was not wasted.

The next thing you have to do is go by the PTJP and have them inspect the car and document the chassis # of the car. This is required for other documents you will need to get at the ADUANA office. The PTJP is on the highway to Boquete on the right side of the road about a half a mile or so from the InterAmerican highway. You will see this sign.

The fellow was pretty quick but not too bright. He raised the hood to the car, put in the hood brace and then used a piece of clear tape to get an imprint of the chassis #. Now here is where his brain failed him. He went to shut the hood, but forgot to remove the hood brace. I grabbed the hood as quick as I could to prevent him from pulling with all his force, but not before he dented the hood. Oh well nothing is perfect, some things less so than others.

Now armed with the paperwork from PTJP we headed to Banco National to get stamps for my multivisa and then to the emigration office to get my multivisa renewed. That took about 30 minutes, four $1 stamps from Banco National and $100 for the two-year visa.

Now to ADUANA to get the paperwork to prove that the car has no fines or debts against it. If there are the car can’t be taken out of the country. We arrived at the ADUANA only to find out that the computers were down and to be told to come back tomorrow. I explained that we had an emergency and asked if there was anything else that could be done. After they understood the situation, they were most helpful and said that everything could be done at the Frontera and all of their computers were working.

It is now about 1:30 PM and we stopped for a quick lunch and were quickly off to the border. The first thing to do was get our passports stamped at the Panama side. Here is a photo of the windows to enter or leave Panama.

When you park your car and approach the windows, don’t be surprised to see a swarm of people wanting to separate you from your money. They will either be beggars or people that will try to take advantage or your not knowing what to do and will gladly lead you to the windows and expect you to cross their palm with silver or better yet with green backs. This part is simple and you should need no help.

Having the passports stamped we started looking for the gentleman whose name we were given in David by the ADUANA office. After several false starts, we found him. He checked all the paperwork and told us to go with his assistant. She prepared the document we needed. Now we needed several copies. There was a place to buy the copies across the street. We returned to the same office with the copies. The assistant did something and then said we needed to get a signature and pointed to another office at the other end of the building.

When we entered this office it was empty. After waiting about 10 minutes a man came in and took the paperwork and went out to verify that the car we were driving actually was the same as the one described by the paperwork. It was. Thank goodness it was still parked where we had left it and all tires were intact and the chassis # still matched. Now he directed us to go upstairs for some more documents.

Upon arriving at the office upstairs, we were told that they needed several more copies of the current documents, So back over to the copy place and make more copies. The documents you will need copies of will be the title, the document from PTJP, Passport first and last entry page, cedula and any other documents that may have been made today.

With that we had satisfied the Panama side of this task. Now to the Costa Rica side. The first thing was to have our passports stamped. Here you will also have to fill out a document that will be kept by the passport office and it states why you want to enter Costa Rica. It is a good idea to have a few ballpoint pens with you, as many times there are no pens at the passport windows. There will be a helpful man or woman there who just happens to be selling pens. Here is a photo of the Costa Rican passport windows.

Now that this was done we headed to the Costa Rican ADUANA office which was around the corner. Guess what, they wanted more of the same copies. Now they read the documents and realized that I was going to be driving and it wasn’t my car so they wanted copies of my passport and driver’s license. Back to the copy place one last time.

Now that we had all the documents one last fellow had to inspect the car to make sure that it was the car related to the documents. What luck, the car was still the same and still had all the tires and had no contraband in the back, so we were now ready to leave. The current time is now 4:45PM.

Just to finish this subject, we returned today and there was a little left in the process to be completed. When we got to the Costa Rican border offices, we had to turn in one of the documents to the Costa Rican ADUANA office. That took a little while because there was no one there when we arrived. Eventually and man came and tracked down what needed to be done, took one document and returned our part of the paperwork.

The Panama side was easy, except for avoiding the would be passport assistants. However, I am getting good at saying “No entiendo inglis” and watching the dumb look on their faces.

Well that ends the piece about taking a car into Costa Rica. I often read about people wanting to drive from the US down to Panama. After this short experience, I would never consider it. The driving might be interesting, but navigating through all of the border regulations and the open hands wanting $ to assist you in your efforts would drive me nuts.

Tags: Costa Rica