return

so... as beth hinted in her comment, she's thinking of getting married. cor blimey, another year, another friend married off.

i will, of course, be returning to sunny britain for this event!

so now i have a definite end-point to my wanderings. london (or thereabouts), and october. so i'll see you all then! however, i might not necessarily stay around, i have some new thoughts on that score... but let's see first if i have any money by then.

i crossed into panama at the hilarious sixaola crossing near the Caribbean coast, where there is only recently a road. the bridge across the river which defines the border is a single-track railway bridge. they have put railway sleepers alongside each rail to allow road traffic to precariously pass over. When you get to the other side, you just leave your car on the railway line, causing chaos for people coming the other way (no, there is no signalling in place!) whilst you wait for a bloke to type out a temporary importation permit. luckily, most people don't bring vehicles over this crossing!

however, you might find that the bloke asks you what your final destination is, and you might say, "er, here!", and he might say, that'll be $1000 please. because if you are importing a vehicle then you must have to pay the import duty, naturellement!

so then, you might change your mind, and remember that after all you were planning to take it with you in your suitcase when you flew -- ah, i mean, took the non-existent car ferry -- to colombia. and you might ask the bloke, hypothetically, what would happen if the car were to, say, fall in the sea? and you would be upset to find that even in this instance, you would still have to pay the panamanian government $1000 for the pleasure.

uh-oh.

but all is not (quite) lost: i have an address of another bloke in panama city who may have a different story, or offer me some kind of loophole. a bit of a laugh though, as i'm sure you'll agree!