Avoiding Prison & Other Noble Vacation Goals (27 page)

Francisco and I easily strolled past the nearly vacant border and simply hailed the first cab that came by. We were as happy as two fugitives who've successfully snuck across an international boundary—a jubilation that lasted about five minutes. What we hadn't counted on was a checkpoint several miles later.

We were driving along a rural tree-lined road in the middle of nowhere (far away from everything except Costa Rica) when the cab came to a stop and a man in a military uniform pushed his face through the open back window, gruffly requesting to see our visas (the passport kind, not the kind I had that was worth twelve cents). Mine was fine—it was obvious that I had just entered the country— but by the look on his face when he flipped through the pages of Francisco's passport, we knew there was a problem—and we were it.

Since Francisco hadn't left Panama officially, according to the stamps in his passport it looked like he had been there for ten months, which meant he had seriously overstayed his 30-day visa.

Immigration officials are not generally characterized by their compassion and understanding, and although it may be polite in these situations to apologize profusely, it doesn't do much to get you out of trouble. (I could just imagine trying this tactic with American border officials: “Whoops, just came back from Cuba. Sorry, it was just a mistake. I promise I'll never do it again.”) It was obvious there was going to be a price to pay—I was just hoping Visa would cover it.

We were immediately asked to step out of the cab while the official made a phone call to his superior about the proper way to handle the situation. After a few minutes of tense waiting, I realized we were in luck because his boss did not advocate handcuffing us to a post and beating us silly. Instead, the official kept Francisco's passport as collateral and told us that we would be dealt with the next day at the immigration office in the neighboring town of David.

In the past, authority figures had mentored me, helped me, counseled me. Now I had become the kind of person who was “dealt with.”

The room we spent the night in was modern, antiseptic white, and decorated with mirrors in place of wall art. I figured it was as good a place as any to panic in.

As Francisco and I climbed in between the sheets of our clean but spartan bed, I couldn't help but fear that this would be our last night together. We'd barely tasted freedom—I'd only had him for a week. It didn't seem fair that he could be ripped from my side so quickly.

But I had to face the truth—there was a strong possibility that the next morning Francisco would be sent back to Costa Rica. After all, any Panamanian border official could simply walk a hundred yards from the guard post over to the Costa Rican station and ask to take a look at the list of people not supposed to leave the country.

But fleeing now was not an option. Without a passport, we'd be trapped in Panama. Francisco wouldn't be allowed to buy a plane ticket or even pay for cross-country bus fare. Random identification checks were standard practice throughout Latin America, and at some point we'd surely be stopped and asked to produce our documents. Simply leaving the house without your ID card was illegal, enough to get you hauled into the police station.

What had we gotten ourselves into? I looked over at Francisco lying next to me, reminded of what had drawn me to him in the first place. The man with the stunning eyes and the interesting stories, I had thought. How right I had been. There were no signs that his life was going to get mundane any time soon, and even with the uncertain fate that awaited us, his eyes showed the same cool blue serene-ness.

“Are you okay?” he asked, noticing I was staring.

“Sure,” I said. “Let's try and get some sleep.”

He wrapped his arms around me and we closed our eyes to the long night ahead of us.

As if the night hadn't been difficult enough, the wait we endured at the immigration offices the next morning was nearly unbearable. We sat without speaking, not wanting to put our fears into words. If they sent Francisco back to Costa Rica, he would head straight to prison for having fled bail. Getting an innocent man out of prison had taxed the limits of my ingenuity. Getting a guilty one out—we wouldn't stand a chance.

“Francisco Sánchez,” the irritated woman at the counter finally called out.

Walking down the hall in the direction the woman had pointed, I couldn't help but fear that this was the end of the line for us. It was the journey across the River Styx. I fully expected to encounter Hades waiting for us, growling Cerberus at his side. But as we stepped timidly into the office where our fate was to be decided, it was not the god of the underworld sitting behind the desk—just a balding man with a mustache who looked us up and down and smiled mischievously, as if we were sharing a naughty secret. He placed his feet on his desk and leaned back in his chair, pausing to light a cigarette.

“Let me get this straight. Francisco, you've been taking a course in tourism in Panama for nine months and didn't get around to renewing your visa,” he said, making the story we had fed to the guard the previous day actually sound plausible. “And you found out your American friend was coming to visit you.”

Nodding seemed appropriate at this point so we moved our heads up and down in agreement.

“You just called her up and said, ‘Hey, I'm here in Panama illegally. Why don't you come join me?' ”

We both stifled a laugh. “Something like that,” Francisco said.

He directed his attention toward me. “And you came to visit and he went to pick you up at the border?”

“Right,” I said.

He smiled up at the ceiling, concentrating intently on a mosquito that had landed there, keeping us in suspense.

“I tell you what I'm going to do,” he finally said, removing his feet from the desk and placing them firmly on the ground. “I'm going to do you a favor.”

I did not like the sound of this. Any time a uniformed man holding my passport had addressed me in Spanish, the “good news” usually had come at the cost of quite a few pesos. Worse yet, here in Panama, the local currency was dollars. But at this point, I was prepared for practically anything—except for what it was he had to say.

He turned out to be the one thing I hadn't counted on—the man was—well, he was actually
nice.
He wasn't going to fine us, he wasn't going to punish us, he wasn't even going to give us a long lecture—he was going to give Francisco a way to change his illegal status at no cost to us.

“I'm going to let you out of the country for free even though Francisco should have to pay a twelve-hundred-dollar fine. All you have to do is go to Costa Rica, stay there for three days, and on your way back I'll give you a visa to stay in Panama at no charge.”

It was an example of unprecedented kindness of the part of an immigration official and I would have jumped at the offer, except for one small problem: Being fugitives and all, Costa Rica was pretty much off limits.

There was only one way to respond: “Thanks for the offer, but instead of getting off for free we'd really rather just pay the twelve hundred dollars.”

He was dumbfounded. He watched us for several seconds, waiting for us to tell him we were just kidding. When that didn't happen, he took a deep sigh and wrote down what we would have to do to pay the fine in Panama City. Then with one final look of great disappointment, staring at us like an Orthodox Jewish mother just come to find out that her children were taking advantage of the pepperoni special at Domino's, he shook our hands and sent us on our way.

To me there seemed to be some flaw in the immigration logic of “You can't stay in Panama for more than a month, but if you do, you can't leave until you pay.”This was not the way things worked in the United States. I could just imagine the INS picking up a group of illegal Mexicans and saying, “If you can't pay, well, you're just going to have to stick around until you can.” We took a slightly different view of aliens in my country and at least we were kind enough to give them a free trip back home. And considering the hefty fine Francisco and I faced in Panama, deportation was starting to sound like a pretty attractive option.

Our simple attempt to pay the fine thrust us into a Latin American bureaucratic nightmare, much like one of those dreams in which you have somewhere important to be, but your forward motion is impeded, your feet stuck in a vat of thick lime Jell-O. At the first building, we stood in an incredibly long line, only to learn that the services we requested were handled by a different office. We began the process all over again in what we only hoped was the appropriate place, and after hours of waiting, just as we were about to near the window, a loudspeaker informed us that the office would be closing for lunch and we would be required the vacate the premises until 2 P.M.

Two days later, we had finally arrived at the correct office at the right window at the right time with the right paperwork, the required passport-sized photo, and an official stamp. All that the woman behind the counter needed was twelve hundred dollars— unless we wanted to petition for a reduction in fine.

A reduction in fine? No one had ever mentioned the possibility of a decrease before. From the sixteen thousand dollars I had left the United States with six months ago, my funds had been depleted by more than ten thousand dollars. Our hotel in Panama City was eating away another two hundred dollars a week, plus there'd be the price of transportation out of the country. The idea of saving a grand or so sounded pretty damn attractive. Besides, it was unlikely that any Costa Rican official would have followed us across the border. In Panama City, we were relatively safe from arrest. Of course, it would entail beginning the process over from scratch again.

Now it was on to another building with new lines, new passport photos, new forms. Finally, after every document had been filled out, approved, signed, and stamped, we took our papers to the window and victoriously handed them to the man behind the counter.

“Now all you have to do is wait for the approval of your decrease,” he said, unable to find any missing stamp, faulty signature, or problem with the paperwork. “It'll be five days. We'll let you know.”

Since Francisco and I had nearly a week before his exit visa was due to come through, we had time to leisurely ponder what came next.

If there was an ideal place for major life decisions, it had to be the country where we found ourselves. It was where two continents were joined, where two great oceans connected, not so much a place in itself but more of a crossroads, the primary intersection of the Americas. Anything could occur from here, depending on what path we chose.

As Francisco and I strolled cheerfully about the Panama Canal, feeling for once like real tourists (a pleasure we figured we were entitled to now that his exit visa was nearly in our hands), it hit me that this was the zero point of the world. To my right was the Pacific Ocean, to my left the Atlantic. I had practically reached the end of the continent where I was born, straight ahead lay South America. Any direction was possible from this spot.

Francisco grabbed my hand as we watched an impressive freighter patiently wait for the canal walls to rise and fall. How easy it must be to be a ship's captain, I thought to myself. Everything was laid out for you. You not only knew where your journey began and where it ended, with a few algebraic calculations, you could even figure out when you were going to get there. But what was the fun in that?

I looked over at Francisco who had lapsed into his own reflective mood. What did we do now? I wondered out loud. We had the whole world to choose from.

I liked the idea of going to Italy, but that was just because I was fond of olives and wine and not because I had any realistic idea of what I would spend my time doing there. Francisco thought heading to Vegas would be fun, but this was just because he liked bright lights and Elvis impersonators, which I warned him would probably be too much of a shock in his fragile postprison state. Mexico was the trendy spot for fleeing fugitives, but it was in the wrong direction.

“There's an ocean to our right and another one to our left. Any suggestions?”

“I think I want to go home,” Francisco confided to me.

“Me too, Francisco.” I smiled at him and squeezed my fingers around his hand. “Will I know when I've found it?”

Five days later, we were flying—if you accept the loose definition of the word, the one about traveling through the air in a forward motion and not the one about stewardesses, movies, and free peanuts. It was, after all, a plane.

“Looks more like a cab with wings,” Francisco said, grabbing my arm.

The tiny four-passenger plane shaking its way through the sky held us, another couple, plus the two men driving (or rather, flying) the machine. There were no stewardesses, no preflight emergency safety talk, no refreshments, or overhead lighting. There was also no PA system but this was no problem—if the pilot wanted to get our attention, all he had to do was turn around and tap us.

We were headed to the border between Panama and Colombia, a trip that had finally become possible after getting Francisco's fine reduced down to two hundred dollars, though originally I hadn't counted on going by plane—I had assumed we would make the trip by land.

“Yes, but you're forgetting one small thing,” Francisco had responded to my suggestion that we go by bus.

“And that would be?”

“The Darien Jungle.”

Ah, yes, the Darien Jungle, how could I have forgotten that? According to Francisco, not only was the route completely impassable by automobile, but those insane enough to make the journey on foot still had to fight off crocodiles, wildcats, and guerrillas.

So we had chosen the safer way and supposedly this was it. The pilot turned around, tapped us, and asked if we could inform both of the other passengers that we were now approaching our final destination when suddenly the plane began approaching land at a terrifying speed. For a minute I wondered if our journey was going to come crashing to an abrupt end, but at the last moment, with our seat belts securely knotted around us, the nose of the plane tipped upward, the wheels made contact with the ground, and the brakes managed to hold out for one more flight.