The End Of The Road
Trip Start
Jan 12, 2007
1
18
29
Trip End
Nov 19, 2007
Panama City,
Panama
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
(The real end of the road - the Darien Gap - is about 230 km east of Panama City. It is a 160 km stretch of hostile territory between Panama and Columbia where the Inter-American Highway has never been completed. According to Wikipedia, "Road building through this area is expensive, and the environmental toll is steep. Political consensus in favor for road construction has not emerged.".)
We had arrived in Panama 2 days earlier by way of the tiny Sixaola/Guabito border crossing on the Caribbean coast. It was really just a few shacks at either end of an old train bridge that had been filled in with wooden planks to allow single file vehicle traffic to pass. Not until the cars entering into Costa Rica had passed could we head south across the bridge into Panama.
A few hours after crossing the border we had climbed our way into the Chiriqui Highlands, a remote region of Panama that is full of spectacular cloud forests (rain forests at elevation) with clear rivers and small waterfalls running through them; that offers far-reaching vistas of the Caribbean waters on one side and the jungle-clad mountains on the other, and; that has an isolated and extremely poor indigenous population that mainly lives in stilt houses made of scrap wood.
01. Costa Rica-Panama Border Crossing
There arenīt too many towns in the Chiriqui Highlands and when, with night fast approaching, the cops in one town wouldnīt let us bunk down in their large, empty asphalt parking lot, our only option was to ask a family if we could camp on their front lawn. Aside from the cow and horse that slept basically under the van, it was uneventful. After bathing in the next day in the nearby river, we were on our way. The whole experience was really way too "core" for us.
We then spent the next 4 days in Panama City at a decent, centrally-located hotel doing the things that tourists do in Panama City like shopping, biking on the Amador Causeway (alongside the entrance to the Canal) shopping, walking around the historic San Felipe district, and shopping.
Our overall impression of Panama City was that it is a city full of contrasts, particularly that between the rich and poor, the modern and the decrepit. For example, the El Chorillo and Punta Patilla neighbourhoods are probably only 5 kms apart, visible to each other across the Panama Bay, but could be from different planets. El Chorillo is a dangerous and decaying urban ghetto that took the brunt of the bombing when the US illegally invaded Panama in 1989 (some 15,000 people were left homeless), while Punta Patillo is full of glass and steel skyscrapers and could easily be mistaken for our own False Creek.
From Panama City, we then followed the Canal north across the isthmus (the Canal runs for 80 kms in total) to the Atlantic.
02. Chiriqui Highlands
Along the way we spent 1 night at the Gamboa Rainforest Resort, a surprise (to Adrienne) splurge to mark the beginning of her birthday month and the fact we had reached our destination. Gamboa is a tiny town located where the "Gaillard Cut" and Gatun Lake meet (the lake, at 38 km in length, accounts for almost half the distance of the Canal) and is the headquarters of the Canalīs Dredging Division. It is also home to Pipeline Road where, during a 24-hour period in 1996, a world-record 360 different bird species were spotted. With a reputation like that we, of course, had to get up just before 6 am and walk the road: Ades caught a brief glimpse of some keel-billed toucans and we both managed to see a white-faced capuchin monkey. (We both think that the maybe the best part of bird-watching is watching the real "birders" who take it very seriously and who would provide great fodder for a SNL skit).
The next leg of our travels in Panama is dedicated to the sea turtle (singular) that we saw laying a few eggs on the beach at Isla Canas. Isla Canas is on the tip of the Azuero Peninsula, the part of Panama that juts the farthest south, and our guide book said that it was an excellent and as-yet-untouristed place to see sea turtles laying eggs. Thinking it would be us alone on a remote beach with thousands of turtles laying eggs, we took the bait.
Getting there involved driving 3 hours, each way, out of our way, the last 5 kms on a road filled with crater-sized potholes. We then had tp leave the van and wade through knee-high mud in a mangrove-lined swamp so that we could catch, at low tide, a small row-boat that would take us across a lagoon to the Isla.
03. Bunking In With A Panamanian Family
There are only about 400 people on the Isla and after securing what was probably the only "hotel" room (really someoneīs spare bedroom) we hung out until 9 pm, at which time our guide "Junior" came to collect us. With Junior (wearing an LA Kings hockey jersey) leading the way, we walked along the beach in the pitch-black night for over an hour before he pointed out "the" turtle. After watching it lay eggs for about 20 minutes (which was impressive), we began the journey back to to the hotel, finally climbing into the spare bed at around midnight, with the alarm set for 6:30 a.m. to catch the return boat the next day. (We have run out of fingers to count the number of times we have since heard from the locals, in Panama and Costa Rica, that this easily accessible beach or that easily accessible beach is great for turtle watching).
Our last stop in Panama was Boquete, a foreigner-filled, coffee-town about 100 kms from the Inter-American Highway border crossing with Costa Rica. Boquete is a very scenic spot with coffee farms clinging to the steep mountains and nice, Western-style homes and inns surrounded by colourful gardens. But without a doubt, the best part of Boquete is that, at 1000 meters elevation, it has a permanent Spring-like climate. We managed to fill 3 days there going for walks, eating homemade cinnamon buns from the market and touring coffee farms.
Highlights:
- Albrook Mall, Panama City: Shopping has not been high our list of things to do this trip but the deals in Panama City were truly out of this world.
04. Milkman, Chiriqui Highlands
And Albrook Mall, which is probably about the size of 4 Park Royalīs put together, was at the epicentre of it all. - Gatun Locks, Colon: This set of locks are on the Atlantic side of the Canal, just outside the city of Colon, and they have a great public viewing platform that puts you right in the centre of the action. We spent a morning here watching the ships pass through while a Canal guide gave a super informative play-by-play over a loudspeaker.
- Playa Santa Clara: Located about 100 kms outside of Panama City, we camped here for a night on both our way in and out of Panama City. It is the perfect antidote to the chaos of Panama City and is probably the best beach campsite we have had the entire trip, scoring perfect marks across the baord on the universal, 5-point beach campsite rating scale: 1) cost 2) view of ocean, 3) swimmability of water, 4) nightime security and 5) bathroom facilities.
-Adrienne driving on the Inter-American Highway: Before we left Adesī experience driving a stick was limited to a few sessions at the Cap College parking lot. As such, I have been the driver and she has been the navigator (a complex and multi-faceted role, she tells me) on this trip. But I am getting burned out and after we drove in the wrong direction for half an hour (which we did a lot in Panama because the road signs are so bad) I lost it and made her drive. About 5 minutes into her baptism by fire, her ability to find second gear was tested by a large herd of cattle crossing the highway (not an uncommon occurrence in Central America).
05. Morning Cheerios At 2,200 metres
Although she passed with flying colours, she was happy to return to her navigator role 47 minutes after taking over the wheel. -Police encounter No. 4: Although the cop didnīt jump into the middle of the highway and block our way, he was frantically waving his arms as we passed and I was pretty sure he wanted us to pull over. But with her jaw jutting forward, and her eyes steeled on the road, Ades growled "Drive on", and so I obediently but reluctantly kept my foot on the gas pedal. Sure enough, a few kilometres later one angry Erik Estrada wannabe came storming up beside us on his motorbike and motioned for us to pull over. It turns out that we had not committed an initial infraction and that he had just wanted to check our paperwork. But because we had failed to stop, we were now in big trouble. We didnīt like our chances of getting out of this one but nevertheless went into our now well-rehearsed sob story. 15 minutes or so later, we pulled away with only another warning.
Lowlights:
- Rain: It turns out that there is a reason why this part of the world is famous for its rain forests. Pretty much since Gamboa, we have had rain every day or night, usually coming down in buckets. Not only does it keep us off our front patio, it has also resulted in unwanted "mud-baths" of the van floor because of a previously unnoticed large hole above the back wheel well. (Fortunately, there is nothing that a wad of scrunched up plastic grocery bags canīt solve).
- Colon Free Zone: this walled city within the city of Colon is touted as the second largest duty free shopping area in the world (after Hong Kong). It turns out that it is almost entirely for business people buying wholesale, not people like us looking to buy a $10 t-shirt here or a pair of $15 shoes there.
-Failing in our mission to be "linehandlers": We had read that the best way to see the entire Canal was to volunteer to be linehandlers (weīre not sure either) on private boats that were traversing the Canal, as each boat requires 4 linehandlers. But it turns out that securing this unpaid work isnīt as easy as one may think, at least not for 2 inexperienced Canadians. We put up posters at marinas, struck up conversations with yachting-type people in bars and did other various things to "get our name out there", but all to no avail.
Comments
Nice trip in beautifull country
Isn't Panama a great place? I've made 5 visits in the last two years and plan to keep going back. Favourite places are Pearl out-islands, west coast of Azuera Peninsula and of course PC. If I may make one respectful suggestion, it is time to re-evaluate your anti-American, Marxist-oriented attitudes which you have presumably been indoctrinated with while attending a Canadian college. If you had talked to a wide variety of Panamanians regarding the 'illegal' invasion of Panama, you will find that on balance fair-minded Panamanians will agree that the removal of Noriega was a positive step in the country's development. The difference between the hopeless poverty of most of Central America and the relative and improving prosperity of Panama is almost entirely the result of the history of American presence including the construction of the canal. Anti-Americanism is the last socially acceptible form of bigotry.