In Panama we hit the biggest obstacle on the Pan American Highway: the Darien Gap. there is no road from Panama to Colombia. In the middle of the jungle the road abruptly ends. There isn’t a ferry either. So the only way to get from North to South America is to ship it. And that is a serious pain in the neck for all overlanders on the way to and from South America.

The final highway between Colombia and Panama has been planned since the early 20^th century but never became a reality. Everything was ready to finish the job in the 1970’s and the USA was prepared to pay for the biggest part. But then the tensions in Panama obliged the US government to focus on their efforts on guaranteeing their influence on the Panama Canal. Later efforts were thwarted by environmental and tribal protests. Today the main reasons to not build the road are preventing illegal migration and drugs trade. However in 2023 more than 400,000 migrants made the dangerous trek through the jungle and drugs are flowing through and around the gap easily also.

The ferry is another story. It was there until 8 years ago and then was stopped. Some people realized a lot more money can be made by shipping… especially if you can secure a monopoly.

So shipping is the only option and as said it is a big pain!  First, it is ridiculously expensive! We paid a lot more for this 1 day shipment than for the Europe to Canada shipping. Secondly it’s very time consuming! The actual shipping only takes a day but the whole process can easily take 2 to 3 weeks.Thirdly the administration and bureaucracy are nerve wrecking. And finally to top it all off, there is a serious risk that things are stolen from the van during the shipping process. For all these reasons (but especially the insane price), we seriously considered to cancel our South America plans and instead drive back to the USA. In the end we decided to “bite the bullet and go with our original plan.

The price of our shipment is so high because we are not able to fit in a container (30 cm too high) and can only ship RORO (roll on roll off). And since there seems to be only one party that offers RORO, they can ask whatever they want…

An additional issue with RORO shipments is that it’s very difficult to plan your travels around them. Delays are almost standard. Sometimes 2 days sometimes 3 weeks. But sometimes all of a sudden the ship comes in early and if you miss it, you might have to wait another month. So this means you need to be on ‘standby’ and not too far away at least a couple of days before. It seems that we will be lucky because our ship arrives in the last port before Panama with only two days of delay compared to the date that we booked. So with 2 days of delay, on May 8^th , our agent tells us to start the shipping process.

The first step in the process, “the police check”, is one of the most dreaded of the whole process. We drive to the police station at 5am in the dark. They process only a limited number of cars every day and some days it gets busy so you need to be in line super early. We never drive in the dark to avoid trouble. But we have no choice here. The first part of the check is in a super dodgy part of town so it is a rather stressful start of the day. The process itself is quite surreal. A bunch of grown-ups being treated like kindergarten kids by an officer that seems to take pleasure in rejecting people’s documents for the smallest detail. “The color of the vehicle is not clear in the documents, come back tomorrow!” Since several people have missed their boat in the past due to this police check’, the shipping agents now have a rule that it must be done at least 6 days before departure of the ship. Some people have had to come back 3 days in a row before their documents were approved by the police officer.

We are lucky and our documents are approved right away. However literally all the others persons that day were sent away and told to come back the next day. And that is just the first step, because after that all the documents need to be checked again at another police station in town. Almost 10 hours after we started the process, we finally get the one paper we need for the shipping. It just states that we are ‘the legal owners of the vehicle’.

We leave the police offices feeling quite relieved that all in all this first step went smooth. But the good feeling does not last long because the same evening we are notified that the ship is delayed 3 additional days and the delivery in the port of Panama is delayed also. Luckily, we have booked our flight to Colombia with a lot of margin so we should still be able to deliver it before we fly.

We head back to our camp spot just outside of town, where we sleep while we wait for the ‘port delivery’. Here we take care of step 2; preparing the van for shipping. We will need to leave the van in the harbor, where someone will drive it on (and off) to the boat. With our car key, those persons have complete access to our van. Unfortunately, theft is rather common. We install a wooden panel in the back of the van. With this panel and the extra lock that we have on the backdoors, we can secure a part of the van, where we store most of our gear. It is far from bullet proof but better than nothing.

After one more hot and humid night we really can’t stand the heat anymore. Even though the harbor delivery is delayed, we decide not to cancel the AirBNB that we had reserved. We park the van in front of the building and enjoy the incredible luxury of an airconditioned apartment. 3 days later it is time for step 3: ‘port delivery’. The port is in Colon about 90 km from Panama City where we stay. We spent about 4 hours in the harbor for all administration, custom checks and a very intense ‘narcotics inspection’ that even included partially deflating our tires. After that we lock up the ‘theft proof’ part of the van and take lots of pictures as proof for potential insurance claims. We also take off the license plates as it seems harbour staff like to collect these as souvenirs. And since not a lot of Belgians pass here, ours could be very popular for the ‘collectors’.

With the delivery of the van in the harbor, we can now also legally leave the country and two days later we board a flight to Cartagena Colombia (step 4). It feels good to finally move on from Central America to start part 3 of our travels. Unfortunately, upon arrival in Cartagena, we are notified that our ship has taken even more delays! We will have to wait at least 10 more days before we can get the van back.

On the positive side, the Airbnb’s in Cartagena are pretty nice. So we enjoy the swimming pools, aircon and binge watch some series…and we do a lot of homeschooling with the kids. After one year on the road, staying ten days in the same place now seems like and eternity! But somehow this ‘forced wait’ was a blessing in disguise. We were clearly exhausted from the last two months in hot and humid Central America. That being said, after a week of relaxing we are more than ready to start moving again… Unfortunately the van is still in Panama…but our ship is slowly approaching the harbor in Panama.

Finally with 9 days of delay, we see that ship has arrived in Panama and that our van is loaded on the ship. And the ship is actually scheduled to leave on time. When we also see the ship leave the dock in the tracking app, we go to sleep very relieved! Only to see the next morning that the ship has returned to the harbour during the night! I guess we will never know what exactly happened there but for us it means another day of delay. It now becomes very unlikely that we will be able to collect it before the weekend. Which would mean another 3 days of delay.

Another 24 hrs later than planned the ship arrives in Cartagena. The bad news is that it is Thursday and they need two working days for customs and other administration. So that means we will not get it before Monday. We decide to put a bit of pressure on our agent, but it seems futile and we accept another 2 days of waiting. And then, to our big surprise, we get a message from our agent on Friday afternoon at 4 pm, asking us to come to the customs office asap before they close for the weekend. We quickly jump in a taxi and still get all the documents signed! The agent tells us to go to the harbour on Saturday morning but he can’t guarantee yet when (and if) we will get the van back the next day…

The next morning, we get in a taxi to the harbor for step 5: pick-up of the van. Only the legal owner mentioned on the vehicle registration is allowed in the harbor itself. So while Caroline continues to the harbor, the kids and I wait at a gas station a couple of kilometers away. It is now clear that our agent has really pushed to get us in earlier, because in the harbour they are clearly not ready for the pick-up. After 3 hours of waiting, a lot of checks, administration, discussions and calls, everybody is loaded into a golf cart and driven to the parking lot. And there we find back our van just like we dropped it off in Panama: no theft and no damage.

It feels so good to drive away from the harbor and Cartagena but before we can really kick off our South America adventures there is one final step 6: prepare the van for travel! First thing to do is to get our propane tanks filled. For the shipping our gas tanks had to be empty and it is notoriously hard to find places that can fill up our US tanks in Colombia. But we found someone who drove all the way to the harbor to fill the tanks for us. After that we drive to a nearby campground where we spent a couple of hours to dismantle the ‘theft protection’, build back the bunk beds of the kids and put all our gear back in place. We are pretty surprised to see how much water has been collected in the ‘humidity regulators’ that we put all over the van to avoid mildew. In just two weeks they collected several liters of water. I guess that is what 97pct humidity looks like.

Talking about humidity, after more than two weeks in airconditioned apartments, we have one more terrible hot and humid night. The next morning we say goodbye to John and Monique and decide to drive as quickly as possible to higher elevations…