Prepping in Panama City

The bus ride to Panama City took nearly 24 long hours, including about 5 extra hours due to our bus breaking and requiring us to wait for a replacement. Thankfully I had made some good friends to help pass the time.

On the bus, I was feeling regretful. This was the first border that I didn’t cross on a bicycle. Even though this is my trip and my rules, I felt like I was cheating just a little too much. I kept telling myself my list of excuses to make myself feel better about it.

The main reason for taking the bus was to catch up to my buddy, Kacper. Another cyclist who I traveled a little bit with in southern Mexico. We had pretty big plans for getting to Colombia from Panama. We were going to paddle in kayaks along the Caribbean Sea.

Getting from Panama to Colombia is a logistical challenge every person traveling between the continents must complete. There is no road between the two continents, in the region known as Darien Gap.

There are many ways to cross, all with their pros and cons. The quickest, cheapest, and easiest is to fly. Also the least amount of fun and you miss out on an incredibly beautiful part of the world, San Blas Islands. I don’t like the idea of flying for forward progress on this trip and want all forward progress to be on the ground or water.

The other common way is on the ocean. There are a couple of ways to cross this way. There is a lucrative industry of charter sailboats that you can book and spend a week sailing through the San Blas islands and then to Colombia. This way can be pretty fun and can cost around $700. I don’t like the idea of being on someone else schedule and I don’t like being taken care of. There is the chance of hitching a ride on a sailboat which is an idea I like also. It’s much much cheaper and you get to be more involved in the trip instead of being a tourist. The challenge there is waiting to find a boat and someone willing to take you.

Plenty of other, non-scenic boats can get you to Colombia, also. For around $150-$200 you can find rides along the coast working your way to Colombia over a few days, but you miss out on experiencing the beautiful coastline and only get to see it from a long and bumpy ride.

There is another way to cross by ocean, on a much smaller boat, powered by yourself. A kayak. This is an idea that a few other brave cyclists have done before me. This way, you get to experience the coast to the fullest extent, albeit at a much more difficult, dangerous, and somehow more expensive pace.

This was the method Kacper and I wanted to do. It would be much smarter and safer to do it together so it had been our plan since we met in Mexico. I took the bus to save nearly two weeks of making Kacper wait in Panama for me.

Panama City

I arrived in the city late in the evening and went straight to my hostel to eat and go to sleep. I wasn’t able to see much of the city that night but I didn’t have the highest of expectations as most Central American cities haven’t been too great.

The next day I went out and explored a bit and was pretty amazed with what I had seen. It was a vast city, with skyscrapers as far as I could see. It reminded me of a city in Florida, almost like Miami. I could feel the influence of the United States a lot. Even on the bus ride in I noticed a lot of similarities along the highway.

This is all due to a long and complex history mostly revolving around the Panama Canal. I’m not going to get into the details as there is much better information online elsewhere, but there’s a lot of good and bad from the US in the construction and ownership of the canal which ultimately ended with Panama regaining ownership and the profits helping the country become the most wealthy in Central America. The city was able to boom into a mirror image of a Western city.

I found someone who helped fix my bike, also. It was a long few hours of maintenance, but he got it done. The bearing in my hub was completely disintegrated and I was lucky worse damage didn’t happen. Later that evening Kacper arrived and we had a nice reunion after nearly 8 months. We both were extremely excited to start getting ready for this trip and planned to get started the next day. Or so we thought.

A Short Detour

Along with Kacper came a friend he had made at his last stop, Valle de Antón. A beautiful town situated in the mountains inside a massive crater of a super volcano. His friend, Jerry, was an adventure guide there and a very fun and friendly guy who spoke English as well. Along with Jerry were two Panamanian girls, one of whom caught my eye immediately. She had an aurora of positivity and kindness, along with a beautiful smile.

Jerry brought us all together to help cook a nice meal together and this is when I introduced myself to Rosario, the girl who caught my eye. I was desperate to get to know more about her. The only challenge was she only spoke Spanish. Now I have been learning Spanish for a while and I know a good amount, but I still struggle in conversations after a certain point and I had never attempted to flirt with a girl in only Spanish before. Sadly my charm and wit don’t translate easily.

She, Jerry, and I went out and walked around the city. I love walking around cities at night. The roads are quiet and peaceful and you’re surrounded by massive buildings glowing with light. A grand contrast from the hectic and tense feeling of the city in the daytime. Rosario and I walked and talked and I could feel the mutual attraction developing.

Later that night, I offered to drive Rosario to her car across the city. On the ride, she surprised me and asked me out on a date in a few days. I was quite proud as this was a big step in my Spanish learning career. I was also excited to spend more time with her. On the ride back, I was in a great mood until I came across a police checkpoint. It was nearly 1 am and I was driving in another country with no idea of the legality of it and the effects of the joint earlier were still fizzling off. It turns out that I needed my passport to drive, and since I didn’t have it I would be getting a ticket. The cop was nice and let me off by paying $20 directly to him, more like a bribe than a ticket. I was just happy to drive away.

The next day, instead of getting to work preparing for our trip, Jerry invited us to go up to Valle de Anton and then go to the largest parade in Panama with Rasario and Susan (Susan was the other girl, and Kacper and her were getting along well also). Since we were not in a rush to leave, we of course went.

In Valle, we hiked with Jerry and relaxed before the long trip to the parade, Desfile de las mil Polleras (Parade of the Thousand Skirts).

The parade was incredible. The largest one I’ve been to yet. It is famous for the traditional Panamanian dresses the women wear which are fantastically colorful. Some of them can cost as much as $10,000!

After the parade, we decided to go to a beach before heading back to Valley. We arrived around 11 pm in darkness. With a nearly 4-hour drive back, we decided it was best to stay the night here and head back in the morning. Rosario and I went to walk on the beach where we talked and stared at the stars for a while. We didn’t have any place booked to sleep tonight as it was too late, so we found some couches at a resort and slept there until the sunrise woke us up. We returned to the city the next day and now we would start getting ready.

Preparing

The first thing we needed was a boat to paddle. We were discussing many options but the decision was made easy when we went to the store Decathlon. We saw these perfect inflatable kayaks there that just ticked all of our requirements. They were a great price and looked tough and durable enough to carry all of our gear. We bought the kayaks and all the other stuff we would need right then and there. We were relieved now that the hardest part of gear prep was over. Now we only needed to get a few small things and start planning.

We took the kayaks out for a test run outside the city for sunset. Even though they were inflatable, we felt very confident in them.

The next week was spent getting food and gear for the trip. We also read the blogs of other travelers who had done similar trips. We were planning a much longer version, nearly 500kms that would take us about a month. We would begin in Chagres River and go through the Panama Canal, back into Chagres River, and out into the Caribbean Sea. From there we would follow the magnificent coastal to San Blas islands, home to hundreds of islands and wonderful coral reefs.

Also in that week, I spent more and more time with Rosario. We were truly getting along well and having a great time together. She’s an absolutely lovely girl and shared a lot of Panama with me. In my travels, I have gotten used to these strong connections and then leaving, probably to never see each other again. It was a new thing for her, though. She was having a hard time accepting the reality of the ephemerality of it. It hurt me to see the pain it was causing her. I tried to tell her not to think about it, and just enjoy the short time we had together.

Was I being selfish? It was worth it to me to share such a short, beautiful time together. Was it worth it for her? I hope the good times we had together leave a stronger impression than my leaving. Our lives were on different paths, paths that thankfully crossed for a brief moment and we were able to share and learn from each other.

I could do nothing but focus on the large and crazy mission ahead. It was very ambitious and we had no idea what we were getting into. We were determined and full of excitement, ready to take on whatever challenges came our way, and spoiler alert, there would be many. The trip will wait for another blog post, and I can’t wait for that one. I’m writing this post from the island of Nargana right now, about 150km and nearly three weeks into the kayak trip. It’s been a rollercoaster, to say the least, and I can’t wait to share it.

Thank you for following along. It was a lot more writing this time as sometimes I start and it’s hard to stop writing. I’m enjoying sharing a lot more of my experience and thoughts and I hope you enjoy reading them.