IF YOU WANT ANYTHING FROM COLON’S DUTY FREE ZONE, EMAIL ME ASAP

today, i swung by the panama canal on the way to colon. unfortunately, i arrived before the main visitor center opened (9am), so i couldn’t see too much. nonetheless, the canal is incredible. not so much from what i saw (hopefully i’ll see the locks tomorrow)…..but for what it represents: the engineering feats, the global economic impact, etc. it’s definitely one of themore amazing places i’ve driven to so far.
i continued on to colon….the first part of the road is a really nice freeway (i.e.–normal freeway for america)….the latter part is a regular freeway (i.e.–country road for america). i drove around colon for a bit, talking to different shipping agencies. then, i stopped by the supermarket in ‘colon 2000’ (a mall here). while walking around i came across the colombian consulate….only i showed up 20min after they had closed (9am-1pm). talking to a security guard there….he told the janitor to take me to ????. he ended up taking me next door to the colon police tourist center. i spoke to a captain….and was afraid he wanted me to fill out paperwork (registering as a tourist), pay a small fee, etc. instead, he called a friend at a port nearby. 5 minutes later, two additional cops showed up….and sat in the backseat while i drove to the port. apparently the neighborhood around there is quite dangerous, so they were my personal bodyguards! later on, a police pickup joined us, so i had a police escort helping me to find a small boat that could take my car without a container. unfortunately, we never found one. so, i’m going to be using norton lilly and paying $1600 for everything (plus a couple hundred for a flight to ecuador….couldn’t find a company that would let me stay on the boat). it’s about $200 cheaper than leaving from costa rica, and about 5 days faster….so it was probably worth the drive down.
the scary thing re: the police escort is that those are the same places that i was driving/walking around this morning. the cops said that i shouldn’t even drive to a restaurant tonight, but should instead eat in the hotel. apparently colon is ridiculously dangerous….or the cops are paranoid. nonetheless, it’s nice to have that kind of service. i took the liberty of tipping the cops (even though it wasn’t requested….i figure it probably wouldn’t hurt to get on their good side).
i also walked around a bit in the duty free zone….which is a huge complex (a couple acres?) filled with every store you’d want to visit (from kappa to panasonic). given the crime here….i wonder how much of the merchandise is bought, stolen from the customer and then finds it’s way back onto the shelf.
pics: 1) colon seems like a rundown city…but has some very photogenic areas…this is taken from the end of the main street; 2) here’s one of the cops that took me around; 3) one of the ports we visited was next to a large dump. obviously, it smelled pretty bad….but the steam rising from the garbage and the humidity didn’t help; 4) the ‘zona libre’ is the biggest dutry free zone i’ve ever seen. many of the mannequins here also have very big breasts. (sorry for the poor quality of the last pic….without my bodyguard, i too became overly paranoid about showing my camera in public).