A Huge Waste Of Time
Not that we have anyone to blame but ourselves…
When we hired our attorney and began the process of getting our Pensionado Visas, they were shocked to learn that Panama Immigration had somehow forgotten to stamp our passports on entry. (I didn’t understand why; Italy never stamped our passports, either.) They encouraged us to take care of this ASAP since routine traffic stops are legal and relatively common in Panama and, if our passports aren’t stamped, the police won’t know if we’re here legally or if we’ve overstayed our welcome. (We have, in fact, experienced this problem firsthand at this point.)
”Be careful, though,” Will advised, “there’s been protestors at the airport lately and they’ll throw a rock right through your windshield.” As you can imagine, that had a bit of a demotivating effect but eventually we got in the car and headed for the airport.
The trip took about 600 hours (we didn’t realize that, since our arrival, they had moved the airport to Tijuana) but eventually we got there and broke a few traffic laws to get into the parking lot (which only had exits).
We went into the airport, explained our situation to someone standing around who seemed to have some sort of official capacity, and he pointed to where we needed to go. Again, swimming upstream, we went into the area where arriving immigrants were exiting through multiple immigration lanes/booths. We entered through the only exit that would allow “Emergency” entrance and were beckoned over by the nearest immigration officer. In my broken Spanish, I explained the problem.
”Let me see your passports.”
We handed them over.
”You arrived on December 10th?” he asked.
”Yes,” I said, somewhat excitedly, wondering how in the world he knew that just by looking at our passports with their lack of an entrance stamp…………
He pointed…
I’ve never felt like a bigger idiot.