A few of my girl friends decided to join me on a harebrained idea I had a few months ago to attend a surf camp in Panama! Becca Jensen, Casey May, and Ellen Yakish and I made the long journey to Panama City to spend the night before flying into Bocas Del Toro, a surfer's paradise.
Ellen was on a different flight because she bought her ticket at the last minute so Becca, Casey, and I waited at the airport for her. And we waited. And waited. We called, texted, and emailed her countless times. After hours of waiting we took a cab to the hostel hoping she was already there, but no one had heard from her. So we got dinner and kept waiting. And waiting. And waiting. By 2 a.m. I was really worried and spent a lot of the night calling the US embassy, which was closed, and COPA airlines, which confirmed that she had in fact taken the flight to Panama City before having vanished. I even texted and facebooked her boyfriend and my coworkers looking for any clues as to what could have happened.
I pictured her lying in a gutter somewhere. It was awful.
At 7 a.m. I finally received an email from Ellen. She was alive!! She had been detained in a small cement room at the airport overnight with a bunch of Columbians, and no one would speak English to her. She had no idea what was going on but wasn't allowed to eat or drink or use her phone or the internet.
I frantically called customs, the US embassy, her airlines, and the airport trying to figure out what the problem was. And my Spanish is decent for traveling, but very poor for any real communication. It turns out her Passport would be expiring 3 days short of Panama's minimum required standards for visitors. So Panama sent her back to the USA! She didn't even get to step out of the airport.
While I was so relieved that she was OK, I was also very sad that she couldn't join us! She decided to go to Maui alone rather than return home. I don't blame her, anyone would need a vacation after a nightmare like that!
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