the revisado is an annual vehicle safety inspection that is done on vehicles licensed in panama in order to get a new annual license.

my revisado was due in july and i normally don’t wait til the last minute on things like this but i was waiting for an essential ignition car part from the states and didn’t wanna drive without installing it first. after a long delay clearing customs i received the part on saturday and got it installed on monday morning. so monday, the last day of the month, i went into town to get a revisado at the only authorized shop in town.

the cops have been doing lotsa checkpoints on the boqueron road lately and they’ve gotten to recognize me and wave me thru tho i’ve been on the motorcycle. on my way into town in the van, they were set up again and i was stopped and was reminded that my sticker was gonna expire the following day. si… yo voy bugaga para la inspecion ahora. (i’m going to bugaba now for the inspection).

i got to bugaba about 10:30 and found out that the shop was booked up for the day so i had no choice but to return the next day or drive to david. i decided to go home and hoped i wouldn’t get stopped and have to explain the situation so i put a $5 in my pocket in case a bribe was necessary to possibly avoid a ticket. luckily… i made it home with no problems and decided to leave for town before daylite the next morning, hoping to avoid a checkpoint.

so the next morning i got to the shop at 7am and waited for them to open at 8. the guy took my papers and about 8:30, i was ”inspected”. the van has a cracked windshield from a flying rock in mexico and for the initial importation inspection a year ago, the vehicle was turned down becuz of it so a friend suggested another shop in a different town and i got ok’d there. they never looked at the van cept to get the mileage ($20 pof favor…) and made several errors on the vehicle description that caused me grief later on but i was just happy i passed. and many vehicles here have their windows, including the windshield, tinted so dark that you can’t see the driver so a cracked windshield with no tinting shouldn’t be an issue as far as safety goes.

anyway, i was slightly worried about being turned down again but nothing was said. this is a saftey inspection right? turn signals, brake lites, horn, etc… but the inspection consisted of two photos of the van, one from the front and a side shot and $15. they didn’t give me the new stickers so i asked and was informed that i had to go to the court house for those. guess i shoulda known that but i’m still learning the system.

when i handed my papers thu the little hole in the glass partition with iron security bars to guy at the courthouse he started telling me something thru an even smaller hole. i could barely hear him in all the noise or even begin to understand him so after several attempts he motions that he’ll be right back. a few minutes later he walks up to me with another guy that introduces himself in perfect english and offers to help with translating. what a relief… i can understand a lot of spanish depending on the person i’m speaking to and looking up a few key words in a dictionary but it’s always nicer when i can just talk. the translator, btw, is a computer programmer and learned spanish completely on his own and his pronunciation was perfect which considering the english rules of translation is pretty amazing.

ok… so thru the translator i learned that since my vehicle was initially registered in panama city (pc), a hot 7 hour drive from here, that i hafta get my stickers there. i told them i heard this changed and i could get my stickers anywhere in panama. they said yes, but you hafta get permission from pc to change your registration district and you hafta go to pc to do that. i asked, can i authorize someone to do it for me? yes, write two letters in spanish, one saying that you want to change your registration district and the other that you authorize so and so to do this for you and get both letters notarized. ok… i know a guy in pc that helped me with my immigration papers so i thot i’d contact him.

concerned about getting stopped again, i had my inspection papers and depending on the cop, explaining the situation might be hard but i decided to chance it and go to david, the ”big” city about 20 minutes away, where i ran into michael, a bi-lingual gringo friend, that’s lived here several years and he said he heard of a shop in david that might be able to help me with the plates so we go to the shop to inquire about it and yes, they just did it for a gringa and would do it for me.

alright… i gave them my papers, the license fees and $10 for their services. what a relief and then i did a little shopping. later in the day when i was approaching boqueron on my way home, i realized that i gave the shop all my vehicle papers and i didn’t have a copy of my papers, only receipts, and again i was concerned about getting stopped. i’ve been driving thru boqueron for the last six months and never saw a check point til a week ago and they’ve been set up everyday since. sure enuf, the cops were doing a check point in boqueron again. i start sweating and pull up to the checkpoint, there’s a cop on either side of me. shit… how am i gonna be to explain this in spanish? they motion for me to stop and the cop on the passenger side, who has checked me before on the moto, smiles and reaches in my window and shakes my hand. the cop on the driver’s side pretends he’s driving a motorcycle, looks over at me, smiles and then he waves me on.

norm : ))~

~~~ interesting place, this panama ~~~