Seven Years Down
It is now April 2024 and it has been 7 years since I left the UK to commence what I thought would be an around the world trip on my bike and my goodness how the world has changed!
At the beginning of 2020 the world descended in to insanity and madness and, to me at least, it seems that no meaningful recovery to sanity has yet been achieved.
My tardiness at starting my trip caused me to get caught in Europe when the insanity started and thereafter as a result of many geopolitical changes and armed conflicts in many of the countries which I planned to travel to and through, any plans that I may have had to travel East from Europe vanished.
I am now in Panama in Central America and here I am experiencing other forms of insanity, that of pedantic and parochial bureaucracy. As I have previously written about, having purchased a bike in Panama with the intention of travelling to other countries in the Americas, and at the end I set out to go to Costa Rica only to be turned back at the border due to not having the correct documentation.
A month on from being turned back at the border I now believe that I have obtained all of the necessary documentation however, it has been a long bureaucratic process which was full of visits to lots of different Government offices and with me having to make lots of different payments to obtain the necessary documentation.
I had to obtain and pay fees for 2 documents, one each from the Municipal Government and the National Transport Authority proving that I had no outstanding unpaid fines due to either of them. I had to obtain and pay for 2 documents from the Municipal Government which showed that I had paid fees to receive permission from them to leave the country with my own bike. I had to obtain and pay for 1 document from the National Customs Service to show proof that I had paid a fee to obtain permission from them to take my bike out of the country. I had to obtain 1 document from the Police Stolen Vehicle Section to say that they had examined my 4 month old bike to certify that it was not a stolen bike, this time the examination and the document were provided free of charge, however the examination took 2 hours and then I had to wait 6 hours for the document to be prepared.
To summarise, it is my understanding that the need for all of these documents is solely so that I can purchase permission from these different National and local Government bodies to take my own bike out of the country. I can see no other reason to have these documents.
To compound matters these particular documents all have to be obtained in a specific order. For example the National Customs Service would not issue me with the necessary document without me first having obtained the 2 documents from the Municipal Government. The police would not undertake the examination of the bike without having first obtained the 2 documents from the Municipal Government AND the document from the National Custom Service. In my opinion all very convoluted and all very unnecessary.
Anyway the result of all of this is that I am hopefully in possession of all that I need to head for the Costa Rican border and hopefully continue on my journey. Who knows where I shall be and what I shall be doing in April of next year.