A Day in Tolé
A small group of us decided to venture to Tolé to visit a part of Chiriqui that we have not experienced. We traveled east on the InterAmerican Highway about 50 miles to the Tolé turn off. We went left up the well paved road to to sleepy town with little traffic, inquisitive people and many school children who had either finished their school day or were waiting for their afternoon session.
Tolé clearly does not get many visitors. We were met with inquisitive stares by nearly everyone, not in an unwelcoming way, but definitely with wonder and questions they seemed too cautious to ask. Although the town is very quiet and we found very few cars on the road, there did seem to be an expected etiquette of walking as far off the road as possible. Repeated honking and some waving gestures let us know to move farther over.
Tolé had most of the conveniences of every town and it was easy to navigate as it wasn’t so big. Not venturing out to the mountains we were able to find our way around quite easily. Lunch at El Corral was standard typical fare. Fast and friendly service with only a few selections was reported as one of the best options in town. Overall, a pleasant experience.
The most “exciting” part of the day was the immigration check point on the highway. A young officer inspected all of our identifications. One provided his cedula and a color copy of his American passport. Pretty standard one would think. He instructed us to “wait a minute” while he went back to office to check. After nearly 10 minutes, he returned saying everything was ok. We asked what the trouble was and he responded that he was not familiar with the cedula. (What!?) It was then that we realized he was a trainee. A little inconvenience in the name of training...no big deal. On the way home we were stopped again. This time we had a young lady. She only asked for ID from those she assumed were not Panamanian. When she received the id from our Panamanian traveler, she asked for an additional document. When told that all of the necessary information was
on the provided document, she seemed satisfied. She had no issue with the cedula from the other traveler, but she carefully inspected each blank page of another passport before clearing us to pass. By this time, we were sure that we traveled on a day of group training. Again, no big deal. However, it was a reminder to always travel with your identification while in Panama.
