Colon, Panama

Now for those that know, we came from the Michigan area and that I (Dennis) worked outside the Detroit area which is know far and wide as being a crime riddled and dirty city so this will be a very serious claim. Colon Panama is DIRTY. We have never seen a city in such poor shape. Our cab driver locked the doors. We had seen part of the city already traveling here by bus but now we get to see more. We first need to anchor the boat, Colon Harbor is HUGE. Must be more than 10 square miles. They leveled the Yacht club before we got here so there is "The Flats" which, without the yacht club, is in the middle of now where. The only marine is Shelter Bay Marina and is 5 miles away by the break water. We had heard that there was no anchoring allowed for yachts anywhere but the flats. Once inside we could not believe it. There was so much room. Its not so much a harbor but a bay. We tried to claim ignorance and anchored outside Shelter Bay Marina. At dusk a patrol boat comes by and in Spanish tries to tell us to move. In English i say i don't understand. He tells us in English "No parking" I ask him "Minyana" (tomorrow) and they leave. In the morning another patrol boat shows up and in English tells us to "Move NOW" . Inside the marina or over to the flats. Oh well, over to the flats we go. Serene is in the marina and we made plans to share a cab to clear out of the country. Now we have a 5 mile dinghy ride back to the marina. We help Serene get some fuel and we fill our jugs at the same time. Then the fun begins. We get a cab and lucky us this guy really helped us out, we started the Panama check out mary-go-round. Use and agent, it costs the same and its less hassle ,hindsight is great. We find the port captions office no problem, our cab driver used to work there. We go to office #1 and they ask us for copies of our paper work, we don't have copies, you think they have a copy machine there? Off we go to find a copy machine down the street. Back to the office they fill out their form for us. From here we take their form to office #2, same building right next door. First question, "DO YOU HAVE COPIES OF YOUR PAPER WORK?" If we needed 2 sets of copies don't you think we had been told by office #1? We were able to complain our way out of it explaining office #1 had copies. They fill out another form and charge us $2:50 then they send us to.............office #3. Here they do nothing more than fill out a receipt and charge us $1:50,which we need to take back to office #1 to get our exit zarpe. 1 1/2 hours down. We ask where the immigration office is to get out passports stamped and they give us directions. This used to be done at the yacht club but now that its gone? We find the office we were directed to and the lady tries to tell us we need to get a visa. We explain we are not staying we are leaving, we don't need a visa to leave. She gets crappy with us and now we don't know what to do. We find our cabbie and he goes to the office and in excellent Spanish finds out we are in the wrong office. We need to go to pier 13, something or another. This takes us through the local dump and the worst road we have ever seen. We get to the pier office to find out the officer took a nooner. We get a cell phone number and find him in town, where we just were. Now this pier is just adjoining "The Flats" so you can see there is absolutely nowhere to come ashore when you are anchored here. Now we go back to Colon, find the immigration officer, who jumps in the back seat of the cab with us and proceeds to stamp our passports on the back of drivers seat head rest. He insists on a "tip" which at this point we are just to happy to oblige. Start time 11:00am, Return time 4:30pm. Total time to check out of the country, 5 1/2 hours and a hell of a cab fee.

20 1/2 NM motored