Around The World In 80 Waves

I went down to Chulo’s office first thing this morning with every intention of making a nuisance of myself until the car was back in my care.

However in fairness to everybody at my customs broker it really isn’t their fault. Chulo made me a cup of coffee and sat my down in his office watching the BBC news whilst he had guys all over town trying kick some butt at the various Aduana offices.

I sat there for five hours having a good chat with Chulo telling him that he must have the patience of a saint to be in his line of work because there is no way I would have any hair left if I dealt with such an inefficient service.

As we were getting into the mid afternoon and I was starting to worry that there would not be enough time left to get all over town to sort the various remaining steps of the process when we got word from Chulo’s courier at the final Aduana office that the paperwork was finished and I could pay the import tax. I shall gloss over the fact that the tax was approximately 50% of the value of the car because the sooner I forget about that the sooner I will stop seething about it! Legalised theft!

Despite a further minor delay at the national bank I managed to pay the tax and then collected the paperwork back at the office so I could get the car out of the bonded warehouse. I kid you not it is about half a ream of paper. It is no wonder the process is so slow if there is so much paperwork to be completed. I may have discovered the reason for the deforestation of the Amazon!

Raul the courier took me back to the bonded warehouse just as rush hour was starting, to collect my car but left me to it. It was a fairly straight forward process until they offered me a credit note instead of cash for the $165 rebate I was due on the time I had not used of the month’s storage which I had been forced to pay in advance. (At this stage I will explain that I was very tired by now and have been under the weather for a few days with a fever so was not feeling too good.) It was definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I lost my temper quite badly. At the top of my lungs I stated “No dinero, Yo no vo!” which may or may not have been good grammar, but the sit down protest which followed made it pretty clear that I was not leaving until I got my cash back. It was late Friday afternoon and they were trying to fob me off saying I could come back next Thursday for the cash, but I wasn’t having a bar of it and refused to budge knowing they all wanted to go home. The senior manager of the site eventually came to see what all the row was about, and had to good sense to find a way of paying me my cash, because I would still be there now had she not done so!

Even that took forever though, but I can happily report that the car is now in my posession again. I am free to sell it and have already installed the ‘for sale’ signs in the windows to self advertise the little green surf machine. I will be driving it around Panama City for the next few days trying to drum up some interest, but sadly still have not finished the importation process. I have to go to another customs office on Monday to get the vehicle stamp removed from my passport, which was the whole reason for undertaking the importation process in the first place. There simply had not been the time to complete it today.

There are loads of sloths in this area. Just like the customs people here they don’t do a great deal.

As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloth’s body-weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take a month or more to complete. The leaves they eat provide little energy, and sloths deal with this by a range of economy measures. They have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a mammal of their size), and maintain low body temperatures when active (30–34 °C or 86–93 °F), and still lower temperatures when resting.

Sloths move only when necessary and even then very slowly. They have about a quarter as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight. They can move at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator (4 m per minute), but they burn large amounts of energy doing so. Their specialised hands and feet have long, curved claws to allow them to hang upside-down from branches without effort.

While they occasionally sit on top of branches, they usually eat, sleep, and even give birth hanging from limbs. They sometimes remain hanging from the branches after death.

In a similar vein I am expecting to be found slumped over my keyboard when the notice that the customs process is finished has arrived.

They are announcing the winners of Billabong’s annual XXL competition on Friday. This picture is of the biggest wave ridden in 2006.

There are a number of categories up for grabs, biggest wave, biggest tube, etc but my personal favourite is the best wipeout. As usual there are a couple of gems this year. You watch them thinking ‘that has just got to hurt!’ These were last year’s shortlist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2J1Sj3TRHQ

I don’t think I will ever have any entries in the pot for the competition, but take my hat off to the chargers that do. Check out footage of this year’s surfers at the website: http://www.billabongxxl.com/

I haven’t so much as dipped my toes in the sea for more than two weeks and it is killing me. The massive waves of Santa Catalina seem a long time ago now.

However thinking about them reminded me of something I meant to pass on at the time. More than once at Santa Catalina I was the only person to get past a set of waves and looked back to see everybody’s boards tombstoning behind me.

Tombstoning occurs when a surfer has been pushed down so deep below the surface by the impact of the wave landing on them, that their leash becomes fully outstretched. The surfer’s weight pulling down on the leash yanks the board upright, leaving the front sticking straight up, rocking to and fro as the surfer moves about with the currents of the water underneath.

It is more likely to occur in larger waves following a cleanup set or a particularly bad wipeout, but when you see the whole line up behind you doing it, the resemblance to all the tombstones in a graveyard is clear, hence the name.

Most surfers who have been out in big surf will know about this and perverse sensation of schadenfreude you get when looking back towards the shore at it. The surfers usually resurface unaided, but some aren’t so lucky, unconscious and dangling in desperate need of a tug up. At least their boards tell you where your mates are if not how to get them out if they are in difficulty.

I am getting really annoyed by the Central American approach to getting something done. Every day I am promised that the customs process will be finished tomorrow, which means I sit around all the following day waiting for the call that never comes, with my cash at the ready to pay the importation tax.

I held back on some of the tourist things to do once in Panama City because I could see this exercise in patience coming from a mile away, but I have now exhausted even the limited options available to me here in the city, and I cant leave the city because I don’t have my car.

I am so bored just sitting around the hostel day after day adding to my insect bite collection, only to be spun another load of ‘probablies’, ‘think it will’ and ‘possiblies’ at the end of each day about what will be happening tomorrow. I didn’t come on this trip to waste my time like this. I was told the process would take less than a week, but it has now been more than two.

As a project manager the scale of the inefficiency of the process offends me.

All they have to do is put a value on my car so the import tax can be calculated and I gave them a copy of the receipt from when I bought it.

Pull your finger out you useless twats!!!!!! I have got far better things to be doing.

It would appear that great minds think alike. I have been contacted by a Canadian surfer called Gavin whose home break is near Vancouver and who is up to similar adventures to my own.

He stumbled upon the details of my trip whilst trying to shortcut to the details of his own journey.

For those of you on Facebook, you can check out what he has been up to using the following link:

www.facebook.com/aroundDaWorldIn80Waves

There is a chance our paths may cross later in the year when will both be in Asia.

I am not talking about the recent Disney movies here, more about the two British seafarers who had a significant impact on this part of the world. I have been hearing a lot about them since arriving in Panama so thought I would pass some of that on.

In particular I am talking about Sir Francis Drake and Admiral Sir Henry Morgan who caused quite a lot more havoc than I have whilst visiting the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.

On his ship The Golden Hind Sir Francis Drake was the first person from Britain to circumnavigate the globe, and I suspect that feat was a tad harder than my own trip in 2013. He was also largely responsible for the defeat of the Spanish Armada when it intened to attack England in 1588, but that is just as well because he was probably part responsible for the Armada being created in the first place due to number of attacks that privateers like him made on the Spanish settlements in this neck of the woods. Under the sponsorship of the English monarchy Drake and others like him would sail into the ports and steal all the gold and silver warehoused here ready for transport across the Atlantic, which the Spanish had in turn largely stolen from the indigenous people here.

He also died off the coast of Panama after contracting dyssentry on the last of such voyages. The lead coffin he was buried at sea in near Isla Grande on the Caribbean coast is still being looked for by treasure hunters today.

Half a century later Henry Morgan, who was originally from South Wales, was up to the same sort of mischief. He is remembered as the greatest of the privateers, amassing huge fleets and attacking prominent targets. His three most famous exploits were the 1668 sack of Portobello (which is just down the coast from Colon), the 1669 raid on Maracaibo in Venezuela and the 1671 attack on Panama City. Most of this was done with the support of King Charles II of England but the attack on Panama City with about 1,000 men in which the city was destroyed, was undertaken after a peace treaty had been signed between England and Spain, so you can imagine that the Spanish were not best pleased.

Morgan was summoned back to London because the situation was at the very least embarrassing for the English too. However not only was he never punished, but he was feted by the gentry and commoners alike upon his return who were impressed with his exploits. He was also knighted by the king and then sent back to his base in Jamaica as Lieutenant Governor of the island, where he worked on improving the defenses of the island which was Britain’s jewel in the Caribbean crown.

He was guilty of the death and torture of countless innocent Spanish civilians and spread terror far and wide on the Spanish Main, but the English loved him. So much so that the Captain Morgan dark rum that you may enjoy today over ice with coke is named after him.

All of which means I have a lot to live up to in the time I have left here! What would they call the drink they name after me?