So Pam, an almost lifelong friend from school, and her daughter Bethany came down to Panama for a weeklong church project that was going on up in Veraguas in mid-August. The idea was to do the week there, and then come down to Andiamo for a few days, then do a few days in the city before heading back for Florida. The timing was good, because I had space on an upcoming trip for them, and I could use some good company going through my post-Karen blues. So there was going to be fun times in store, and maybe an adventure or two.
Pam and Bethany made it to Andiamo ok, after their weeklong project. Only barely because I had to track HER down since she lost my phone number that I had given her before she left. She was supposed to call me after getting back from the project trip so we can coordinate getting her over to San Blas. It was a cool mix of people, and Pam and Bethany made themselves at home aboard. The trip was great with the exception of some weather issues we had towards the end of the trip, and that the kuna were trying to overcharge big time for lobster.
The plan was to head out to Panama City after the trip, and hangout there for four days while Pam and Bethany see the sights and of course get some partying in. We went out pretty much every night, which included everything from crazy dancing at a local joint, drunk karaoke (watching Bethany sing Beyonce’ was a hoot), then dancing like maniacs to retro-80’s til 4:30 AM, to slamming rum drinks like they were going out of style. Good to know that Bethany proudly continues the McMenamy (Pam’s family name) tradition with great aplomb. The days were mostly spent with Pam and Bethany shopping, venturing out to the canal, and seeing some places. We also walked the new Cinta Costera, and checked out the new flick “Public Enemies” with some PC friends of mine. In general, all had a great and diverse time in the city.
On the day before they were to leave, Pam and Bethany came up with the idea to go to Panama Viejo, a set of ruins of the old city just to the east of modern Panama City. This was the original Panama City until it was sacked in the 1600’s by Henry Morgan, who anchored his ships on the Caribbean side, crossed over the isthmus with his men on foot and horseback. All that to get to the one colonial city that Spain considered to be safe from pirates. Morgan went to the first Spanish colonial city on the pacific just to sack and loot it, and prove everybody wrong. Interesting place.
I had been to Panama Viejo a few times now, and thanks to the previous night’s consumption (of which detail I will not go into) I just wasn’t up to walking around for a couple hours. This and the fact that there was a MAJOR online poker jackpot I was trying to get a piece of. So Pam and Bethany went on their own. I got them into a cab, told the driver where they were going, primed them on how much to pay to get there and back, and sent them off.
A few hours go by, and it’s past lunchtime, the plan was that Pam and Bethany were supposed to be back in the early afternoon, and we were going to get lunch on the causeway or Casco Viejo. A couple more hours go by, and my imagination takes over. I start getting detailed thought clouds of Pam and Bethany reaching for the sky while some cabron points a rusty military-issue pistol at them taking their possessions. I also get this visualization of Pam and Bethany involved in a bar fight, each of them kicking ass, broken bottles in hand, but that had to be from another situation and another time. I start to get a little nervous, wondering why they have not yet called.
About an hour after that little imagination session, my cel phone finally rings. It’s Pam. She’s at the police station. Apparently Bethany’s purse got lifted, and her passport was in it, along with her slick new Ipod Itouch (which seem to be a crime magnet in my experience) and a few measly dollars. Damn. They alerted the tourist police who in turn brought them to a police station, where they are making a report to get Bethany’s passport replaced so they can go home the next day. I asked Pam to put me over to someone who can tell me where they were so I can go meet them. I talk to a cop, who in his very muddled Panamanian spanish tells me where to go. I write it down.
Minutes later, I’m in a taxi, and it takes me to a police station based on the directions given. It happens to be in the WORST part of Panama City, called Zona Roja (Red Zone). I’m a bit perplexed, this is where they take tourist crime victims??? Is it possible? The taxi driver tells me that this is the only station in the area. Ok, this can’t be right. After talking to a couple of officers, including one who jumped in my cab to share a ride, we end up driving through Casco Viejo while trying to reach someone at the tourist police station there. Turns out the girls aren’t there either. So now nobody knows where they are. This is getting frustrating.
I eventually tell the driver just to take me back to the hotel in case they show up there or she calls me again. I’m now starving, and have to eat something anyway. I jump out of the cab, and hit the restaurant across the street from the hotel.
While there, my phone rings, it’s Pam. She’s wondering where I am. I find out later that she was in a courthouse type office just across the street from the police station I went to. Geez. I tell her the story, and how I ended up back at the hotel. She tells me that’s ok, because they were done, and someone was going to drive them back to the hotel shortly anyway. I told her I’d just wait for them there.
I finish my lunch, and head back across the street to the hotel. As I’m going in, the girl working at the front desk calls out to me asking me where my “amigas” are. She said she got a phone call from someone who found her passport in the back of a cab. I say, “WHAT?” So I ask her to give me the message and I’d call him. She offers to call him for me and puts me on the phone. The guy explains that two girls who got in and out of his cab because they didn’t like the fare he was charging left a purse in the backseat. “The whole purse? You have the whole purse??” I asked. “Si, tengo la bolsa con el pasaporte”. He found their hotel room key also, and looked up the hotel from that. I’m both happy and shocked at the same time. What dumb luck.
The driver also went on about how he needs to get some money to bring the passport back, because there is no money in the purse. I tell him not to worry about that, finding it odd that he was telling me that he would have taken the money from the purse before bringing it back. I can understand if someone (particularly in latin america) does that, but geez, don’t tell the receiving party about it. I tell him not to worry, that he will be taken care of, but they really need the passport because they leave tomorrow. He says he’ll be there at 7pm, which is about two hours away. I tell him we’ll wait for him.
Pam and Bethany show up minutes after I finish the call, and I tell them all about it. Bethany does an “Oh-gee-wawa” forehead slap, and realizes now that she left the purse in the back of a taxi that they were only in for about a minute, because the driver was asking too much for the trip back to the hotel. A few minutes after, Bethany notices that the bag is missing, but thinks that someone swiped it from them when they were sitting somewhere by the road waiting for another taxi.
Ok, the important thing is that she’s getting her bag back, presumably with everything in it. So it’s a while before he gets there, and all we can do is wait. We head up to my room and wait there, since the girls don’t have a key, and the hotel doesn’t seem to have a second key for that room (no kidding).
About 6:15, a good 45 minutes before the time he said he’d be there. I get a call from the front desk saying that the driver is here. We hurry downstairs. I’m perplexed because the guy is so damn early. That never happens in Latin America, especially Panama. We get to the lobby, and she says he’s outside.
We go outside, and there is no one apparently there. I’m looking along the street for a taxi, nothing. This is a bit strange. A few seconds later a tall, oafish, overweight guy comes out from the hotel’s garage entrance. He points at us and asks us if we’re the people for the passport. I paused at that, because I would think that the driver would have recognized them from being in his cab, particularly since they didn’t agree on the fare. He pulls out the hotel room key, and we all nod in relief. I then ask him where the rest of the purse is. He then tells me that he only found the key and the passport, on the street.
I look at him, straight in the eyes, and tell him that whoever I talked to on the phone (I now know it wasn’t him) told me that he had the whole purse, and that he found it in his backseat. Pam and Bethany know that they were in a taxi, so it makes complete and total sense. The guy kept saying he knew nothing about that, shaking his head. He was lying so badly, that his eyes were twitching. So I moved on to the subject of the passport. Where is it? He asks me about the money. He needs the money before he can give me the passport. He’s trying to jockey into a position of control so he can control the negotiation. I tell him that there is no way he’s getting anything until we have the passport in our sight, and preferably in our hands.
I’m looking straight at him, telling him not to play around with us. He needs to give us the whole bag and the passport. He kept saying “plata, plata primero” (money first). I kept telling him no, he needed to show us the passport first. He then tells me that the passport was back at his house in Tocumen (about 30 minutes away), and he would need to go get it. I then tell him we have a big problem and we’re going to need to get the police involved. He’s clearly getting nervous. He says ok then, he’s going because we must not want the passport. I look to Pam and Bethany and tell them to go inside and tell the desk girl to call the police.
He’s walking away from me pretty quickly, I’m in front of him with my finger in his face telling him he needs to stop. He’s trying to call someone on his cel phone while walking. At that point, I start shouting for police, “Policia! Policia!” at the top of my lungs. Luck would have it right then, a police truck was driving by the intersection we were at. I scream at them three more times, and they slow down and turn back around. The guy just shakes his head and looks down. This was not part of his plan.
The police show up, and I tell them the story. Pam and Bethany are back outside, and they have a copy of the police report. She whips it out and gives it to the cops while I give them the rundown. After hearing me out, one policeman asks the guy where the passport is. Without delay, he takes it out of his back pocket. He had it all along, which I suspected. The police then tell him he has a big problem.
A few minutes later, there are two more squad cars on the scene, both from the tourist police. They take notes, get everybody’s story, and ultimately make the determination that the guy is full of shit. And yes, he probably does have the whole bag, which they didn’t want to give up because they found Bethany’s ipod. They could probably get some good cash for it. That, along with whatever cash they extorted for the passport, would make for a pretty good payday.
The police then come up with the INSANE idea that Pam should just pay the guy for bringing her the passport and let it go. Pam says to me, “they want us to pay the guy for trying to extort us, and for stealing the rest of Bethany’s bag??”. My answer is… “Welcome to Central America”. After a huge, fat NO from both of us to that proposition, the police say that we’ll then have to go down to the station house to get this sorted out. The whole time, Bethany is saying that she doesn’t want the guy to to jail. I ask her if she wants the rest of her stuff back, and she says, of course. I then tell her that we’re going to have to go through this process at least somewhat to try to get the other stuff back.
About the same time, I first ask an officer to give Bethany back her passport so she has it back in her possession. The cop says not to worry, she’ll get it back. But they need to hang on to it right now for the “investigation”. I asked why, if we all know that this guy had the passport, why should they have to hold it? They kept saying not to worry, she’ll get it back.
Minutes later, we’re at the tourist police station in Casco Viejo. Pam, Bethany, and I are sitting in the front lobby, and oafish-taxi-driver-extortionist-guy is brought to the back. The police tell us right upfront that we’re going to be there for at least two hours while they wait for some lieutenant to show up who will handle the case. Great, so much for our last night out…
We are all getting hungry again, and we get the idea to go walk around for a restaurant. The desk cop says no problem and even shows us where there are some good restaurants. We settle on a small pizzeria run by an Italian guy. We do dinner there, while the waiter is blatantly schmoozing Pam and Bethany in his broken english the whole time. They are just eating it up, not realizing that it was more for him to get a bigger tip than anything else. Gringas, will they ever learn? 😛
After the dinner, we walk back to the police station, and the desk cop tells us that they are still waiting for the “jefe”. The passport is sitting on his desk and I again ask him to give it to Bethany. The desk cop shakes his head saying it’s “evidencia”, and they need it until they decide what to do with the moron extortionist. I tell them that they can make a copy, take a photo, have Bethany sign a receipt for it, whatever. But they can give it back. I’m being a bit more persistent at this point, because I really don’t think they should be holding the passport like this.
The lieutenant shows up, and starts asking me questions, and for my side of the story. I’m telling him the story. Literally midway through it, he turns and walks away from me without any cue to stop, over to where the suspect is. I figured I was done telling him the story. He spends a good ten minutes with him. I hear him tell the guy that he KNOWS that he has the whole bag, and he has no problem holding him until he comes up with the rest of the stuff.
He then comes back out tells us he’s done with us for the night, and that a policeman will take us back to the hotel. I again ask for the passport. To which he says he’ll make sure that it’s ready for pickup at 8AM the next morning. I again say that I really think they should give Bethany her passport now. Again, we’re stubbornly told that they “need it” for their investigation. So regrettably, we head back to the hotel sans Bethany’s passport.
Without a doubt, this would lead to a chain of incredibly insane events the next day. To be continued…
CRAZY! Can’t wait to read the rest…