Wednesday, April 23, 2014

PDX, DEN, SJO and then finally back to Golfito Costa Rica

We made a quick trip home to tie up a few loose ends and make the tax man happy...

We have enjoyed catching up with family and friends over the past few weeks. Abby watched each bag being loaded into the car and pouted on the garage floor... She is in good hands with Monica and while Ryan and Jenny are between houses they will take good care of her.


We flew out of Portland Monday evening the 21st on Frontier Airlines and arrived into Denver after midnight. When we walked up to our gate we heard our name on the load speaker and went to the desk as they requested. We where greated with the question, how and when are you leaving Costa Rica? We responded with the answer that we had our own boat and we planned to leave Costa Rica on the 24th in route to The Panama Canal. We where informed that we needed to have a document or ticket with a date indicating when we would be leaving Costa Rica or we could not board our flight. I looked through the volumes of paperwork that I have collected while in the country of Costa Rica and proceeded to show them our Zarpe, our visa's, our Temporary Import Permit, our two year cruising permit that we paid $700.00 US for and will not be needed at this point after putting our boat in bond because the permit wasn't delivered to us when promised... I could go on and on with the documents we have had to purchase, produce and print in triplicate... Of course none of these coveted documents would satisfy them, because we didn't have our exit papers and wouldn't receive them until we returned to Costa Rica. The only thing that would satisfy Frontier Airlines was for us to purchase return tickets from them showing we would leave Costa Rica and fly back to Denver in a couple of weeks, at a price of $800.00. Thankfully they where refundable tickets, I called today to cancel them and was on hold for 25 minutes at $2.oo per minute...


The gang with our friendly immigration officer checking out of  Golfito Costa Rica

We have enjoyed Costa Rica, because of the weather and friendly people. The permits etc have been a BIG PAIN. We are so anxious to be underway! Tomorrow we will make the first 78 NM leg of our trip into Panama and anchor at Isla Parida. We will make the 339 NM trip to The Canal, arriving in Balboa on May 1st.

We are looking forward to our trip through The Panama Canal and will be sure to let everyone know our  transit date. There is a live web cam on the canal
 Multimedia - PanCanal.com - Panama Canal Authority
www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html   Cached
These live cameras show operations at the Miraflores & Gatun Locks, as well as other points of interest in the Canal.



A few friends we met on our long drive from San Jose to Golfito.










The world continues to turn wether we are at home or traveling along aboard Anna Mae. 

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