A Traffic Ticket

Three weeks ago, on the way to David (pronounced Dah beed, believe it or not), I was waved over by a cop.  He wrote me a ticket for passing a car, well, actually 7 or 8 cars, across a double yellow line in the village of Dolega.  I was traveling a little below the speed of sound.  It is no wonder I didn't blow him off the road. 

And he give me a ticket for passing over a double yellow line.  Boy, did he miss his chance to nail me for a high rate of speed!

As I have mentioned in past blogs, traffic moves from 5 to 100 miles per hour.  When a line of vehicles gets behind a really slow moving truck, bus or just a run-of-the-mill Panamanian, it is brutal.  And, well, I snapped and couldn't take it any longer and started to pass a line of cars...

And you know the rest.

I was so shocked that a cop, on foot, would wave me over from the side of the road, I forgot to bribe him to get out of the ticket.  Normally, you slip a $10 under your drivers license and that does it.  No more ticket.  But, alas, I forgot.  Now I have to pay the damn ticket.

So off to David to pay the ticket.  

I went to the Chirique Mall, on the Inter American Highway.  The transportation department has 2 offices in the mall.  We went to one office to get our license and now I was going to the other one to pay the ticket.

This is daunting because I don't speak Spanish.  I walked in and was confronted with at least a dozen counters, semi-counter, desks, half desks and pods of official people standing around.  You get the picture, mayhem.

There aren't really any signs but what good would they do me anyway, I can't read them.

So, being the detective sleuth that I am, I spy a local with a ticket and I followed him...into the wrong line.  He had no idea where he was going either, but he was getting instructions on where to go, so progress was being made.

We get pointed to the back of one of the rooms, through a maze of desks, some with people, some vacant.  We end up an a little, tiny, minuscule desk, about 2 feet by 2 feet with a computer on it and a lady sitting in front of it.  And, in all this hustle and bustle, this lone, isolated, hidden lady is the one we are looking for.  Could they make this any harder?!

She punches in the ticket and then directs us to the cashier.  The same cashier who earlier had shooed us away.  This time it worked.

And after they did a $75 walet-dectemy on me, I was free to go.

Not bad for an English speaking gringo.

I returned to Boquete for lunch.  I went to a little Panamanian place in the higher, cloud forest regions of town.  This is one of my favorite places.  There are normally only 2 to 4 people in the joint.  How do they survive?  

I had corvina (sea bass), rice and salad for $5.50.  It was delicious.  

I think I'll go back tomorrow!