Extortion on the Road

So as I said the other day, we decided to drive straight (more or less) to Panama and then work our way north for the remainder of the trip. It took us about four days to get from El Salvador to Panama. Let me make it clear that these were four LONG days...don´t forget, we crossed four boarders in three days.

We had been having relatively good luck with boarder crossings throughout the trip so we figured crossing from El Salvador to Honduras would be relatively the same. WRONG...Honduras seems to be the most corrupt country we've been through so far.

Here's a little back story...at most boarders down here there are tons of men and kids who are more than willing to take your money to "escort" you through the boarder. Basically, we need to get a permit to bring the car into every country. These people will take the paperwork and go through the whole process for you. We had been doing just fine by ourselves so we refused any help from the men on the Honduran boarder.

Long story short (and $60 U.S. later) we found out that absolutely EVERYBODY is in on the scam in Honduras. The permit official handed our paperwork to one of the "escorts" and we ended up having to pay and absurd amount of money and waiting two hours to get our car into Honduras.

About 30 minutes into the country we had our first experience with corrupt cops and extortion. We were pulled over at a police check point and the cop said he was going to have to write us a ticket that we would have to pay at the bank back at the El Salvador/Honduras boarder. Keep in mind we were trying to make it to Managua, Nicaragua before the sun went down. We were going to lose too much time if we were to head back. Guess what the ticket was for...Brandon not wearing his seatbelt. Also keep in mind, riding in the back of a truck is a major mode of transportation down here. While this cop was harassing us, trucks full of people packed into the beds were passing by the check point.

Twenty dollars later and feeling quite violated we were on our way without a ticket. Hopefully, karma will meet up with that cop one day. We crossed the boarder into Nicaragua before nightfall and made it to Leon.

We continued south through Costa Rica and into Panama without hitting anymore snags. That was until we were on the peninsula in Panama the last day of Carnival.

We decided to head to a town called Las Tablas after talking to the owner of the hotel we had stayed in the night before. The town was packed with people and no places to stay so we hit the road to another town further southeast called Pedasi. It was just our luck that enroute a transit cop pulled us over from the front...we've come to find that being pulled over from the front is always a bad sign.

He gave us a huge spiel about how we didn't have all the correct permits and he was going to have to tow our car and we wouldn't be able to pick it up until two days later because of the Ash Wednesday holiday. His story quickly changed when we started to consent to towing the car. Forty minutes and seven U.S. dollars later we were back on the road with a "warning" and instructions to get to the transit office Thursday morning for the correct permit.

On Thursday, we weren't surprised to find out this cop was full of crap. Turns out you only need the transit permit if you have your car in the country for more than 90 days...we had only been in for 3. I believe karma has another corrupt cop to take care of...

Oh well, I guess we figured shadey people would be part of our trip down here. Until Honduras and Panama, we had just been lucky. Bottom line, if the cops want money they'll find a way to get it.