Pushing through Panama…

After successfully shedding my Colombian Pesos in exchange for Dollars, and taking a 10 % knock on the currency, I headed back downtown, looking for the road that would take me over the Panama Canal… I was hoping to find a spot where I could see vessels entering and exiting the giant locks…

Panama was recently ranked 40th in the world for the amount of high-rise buildings it has...

There is even one with a "twist" to it...!! And 30 more buildings are currently under construction...

Panama City is probably the most modern city in Central America and the downtown area has a surprising amount of high-rise buildings for this part of the world…

The city has become a centre for banking in the Americas… Apparently this has nothing to do with the fact that huge amounts of money earned by the Colombian drug cartels, is “washed” here…!!

My hotel was not situated anywhere near these fancy buildings, in fact it was in the rather seedy area known as Bella Vista…

The Panamanian people seemed to be surly rather than friendly, a far cry from the Colombians, who seemed to smile far more, than grimace…!!

My greetings were hardly ever returned, and I got the impression that the people around me were not too happy with life…

I found no reason to hang around and see any of the sights in the city, but did find out a little about its history…

This was the base from where the Spanish Conquistadores set off to colonize the western seaboard of South America, and conquer the Inca Empire…

The vast majority of the gold and silver plundered by the Spanish, passed through Panama on its way back to Europe…

Even Thomas has a swanky pad here....!!

The city was burned to the ground by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1671… It was rebuilt two years later, a short distance from the original city, which is still in ruins today, and is a major tourist attraction…

Taking the road that would lead to Costa Rica, 490 km away....

Panama is at the narrowest part of Central America and barely 60 km wide where the Canal joins the Pacific to the Caribbean and Atlantic… More than 50 % of the country’s GDP comes from the revenue it earns from the Canal, and the banking service industry located in Panama City…

The remainder of the country is basically undeveloped, with rain forest stretching from coast to coast… Along the Pan-American Highway, small farming communities have been established, and the flatter areas of the jungle have been cleared to plant bananas, pineapple and sugar cane….

For the most part however, people seem to survive on subsistence farming….

Panama Canal Route....

The ride through Panama went far more smoothly than I had expected… For much of the way, I found myself on a dual carriageway, which allowed for speeds higher than I was led to believe were possible… Perhaps the population had decided that they would celebrate May the 1st anyway, despite it being moved to the day before, because traffic all along the route was light…

I crossed over the massive “Bridge of the Americas”, spanning the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal… I was amazed to see the huge vessels lining up to go into the series of locks that raised the water levels, and allowed the vessels to sail “up” into Lake Gatun, and then through yet another series of locks, “down” to the Caribbean and Atlantic beyond…

This “shortcut” cost 22 000 workers their lives during the building of the canal, due mainly to mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and yellow-fever… To give you an idea of what it costs to use the canal, a fully laden container ship has to pay about $500 000.00 to travel the 71 km from the Pacific through to the Atlantic…!!

I was unable to take any photos from the bridge, due to one lane being closed for maintenance, and traffic backing up right into the city…

By the time I stopped here, I was ready to eat a horse...!! Which was probably what was being served...!!

Brunch looked like this....!!

I passed through Aguadulce, close to the Pacific Coast but always out of sight of it, and then stopped for a brunch in Santiago, and had a meal that I wolfed down…

I realised that I had not eaten a proper meal since Sunday night in Bogota…!! I had been subsisting on water and crackers for the last 40-odd hours…!!

The road side diner was being repainted by two young guys who had just as much paint on their clothes as they were putting onto the walls…!!

The strong smell of enamel based paint only dissipated somewhat, when I had my nose in my coffee cup…!!

There was very little to see along the highway, large stands of Mahogany and other hardwood trees blocking out any views of the countryside… Many of the canopies of these large tress met high above me, and contained flocks of birds whose screeching I could hear right inside my helmet…!!

Delighted to be making such good time on my first ride through Central America...!!

I stopped to refuel at De la Mesa, a small village straddling the highway, where a crowd of people came over to see the bike, while the pump was spewing petrol into a thirsty Big Fella… This was the first indication I would get that something was going haywire with his consumption… Or perhaps there was something else amiss…??

I rode on, through the large town of David, where I had actually planned to lay over in, and saw that it had just gone 2.00 pm…!!

I had covered the distance to here, far quicker than I had hoped to, and decided to make a run for the Costa Rican border, which was just 55 km away…

Getting out of Panama was a simple affair… My passport was stamped and then I handed my bike registration papers in and was told to proceed into Costa Rica…

And that was where things went a little pear-shaped…

Immigration took barely a few minutes, and then the customs folk indicated that I would need insurance before I could enter Costa Rica… Fair enough… I had gotten away without any insurance in Panama, so was one up on Central America at that point anyway…!!

The only place that sold the “Seguro” was a little grimy office across the road… I jogged across the road through a light drizzle that had settled over the border post, and found that the office was closed…!! There were a number of other people standing peering through the grubby windows, all muttering dark things in Spanish…

We waited for over an hour before one of the passengers on a bus that was also being held up, called a “politician” friend of hers on her cell phone and explained the situation…

Ten minutes later, a taxi pulled up and a rather disgruntled looking young man, wearing a vest and short, got out of the taxi, and squelched barefoot through the mud and into the office…

The Insurance cost $19.00, and the photocopy thereof another 50 cents… I dashed across the road to get to the Customs before the other drivers, and watched as my details were punched into the computer…. As usual, the fact that I was travelling on a Portuguese passport on a bike registered in South Africa, caused confusion…

I was then told to go have the bike fumigated…!! This took only a few minutes, and cost $3.00….

"Is this really necessary...??"

I rode the bike back to Customs, got the final stamp, and then they wanted to verify the chassis and engine numbers… I showed them where the chassis number was and then told them that if they could find the engine number, I would bend down, grab my ankles and let them have their way with me…!!

I have searched for the engine number on this bike for more than two years and am no closer to locating it…!!

Had it not been for the weather, I would have easily made it to San Isidro...!!

While all this was taking place, the rain had been falling steadily, washing away my hopes of making a long fast ride deeper in Costa Rica… Where to exactly, I wasn’t sure, but covering as much ground as possible before the sun set, was a priority on any given day of riding with me…!!

As I was leaving the border, the rain eased off, but the road surface was still too slick with water and tell-tale rainbow coloured oil residue, for me to give it too much gas…!!

A short while later, something hit me on my left temple, and instead of bouncing off, stuck there… I had just entered a long, looping right-handed bend, and was dodging the odd small pothole, so could not reach up to brush away whatever it was that was trying to work its way into my helmet…

Just as I got the bike straightened up, I felt the sharp prick of a sting, and knew that I had collected a wasp or a bee, and that I was in a little spot of bother… I flicked the “thing” away, but of course it was too late…!!

Just then I rode into another patch of heavy rain, and could see that it stretched far ahead of me… I did not have my rain gear on either, and as I entered the small town of Rio Claro, I made up my mind to call it quits for the day…

With light rain falling, and much more on the way, I decided that I had accomplished enough distance for the day...

Off to my right I saw a large neatly painted hotel, which looked like an oasis in a sea of drab concrete, and pulled over into the Gran Impala Hotel, a spot that was frequented by cross border truckers, judging by the many rigs parked outside and in the back courtyard area…

For $16.00, I got a room with a ceiling fan and a private bathroom, and was lucky enough to be close to the reception, where the internet signal was weak but constant…

By the time I had ridden into the rear courtyard, unloaded the bike, covered it, undressed and had a shower, the left side of my face was swelling quiet nicely…!! My left eye was beginning to close, and a decent sized headache was brewing…!!

I could not find any antihistamine in my first aid kit, so took two Voltaren, a sinus tablet and a charcoal tablet for good measure, and then went out to look for a meal…

Rio Claro at dusk... The Pan American highway runs through the centre of town, and is a good place to stop if you are planning to head into Panama the next day, or like me, planning to ride through Costa Rica and into Nicaragua...

I ate at the Chinese restaurant across the road and was surprised by the large menu, and the amount of people who were seated there when I arrived… I must have looked like I had been in a fight, because the waitress refused to look me in the eye, and even the hardened truckers seemed to give me a wide berth…!!

I sat holding a large piece of ice to the side of my face with one hand, while I ate with the other… The water dripping off my chin added to the gravy that smothered my “Chop Suey Carne”….

Although the day had ended with a spot of bother, it had nonetheless been a good ride, and I had managed to get one of the 8 border posts that I would have to cross in the next two weeks, under my belt…

©GBWT 2012