November 24 - 28, 2002: Another world! - Panama City

Odometer: 16,040

Panama flew by and then we were in Panama City

On crossing the border, which was WAY more easy than crossing into Cost Rica, we placed ourselves in the position to find a hotel. It was dark at 6pm and, well, we didn't have much choice. There are no hotels right at the border so we trucked on and into the town of David. Our first find was a dive for $45 so we went further into town and, with the help of a local who spoke broken english we found a motel right on the PanAm Highway for just $20.

The next morning we got up as early as we ever have on this trip, 6am in the morning. We had 300 miles to go to get into the city, find the airport cargo terminals and arrange to have our bikes flown to Ecuador and, find a hotel. The day was hot and long, compounded by the intricacies of another large and unfamiliar city street plan. As in the past we were relying on the Footprint book suggestion of finding our hotel. Before doing so though we decided to trek on over to the old part of town and witness for ourselves the splendor and magnificent architecture that founded old Panama. It was a dump! Not only that it was seated within the very worst part of town.

Nothing says, "kill me and rob me" louder than two fully white gringos than Hugh and I, lost, riding around in the slums and without hope of finding our way back into the more modern part of the city. I remember thinking that if one of us got a flat, niether of us had clue.

I finally turned down some ugly ally way and we were deposited into a walking district/street of commerce. I immediately knew where I was and decided to just say fuckit, and ride on into the crowds until we got onto a serviceable rode. Within 20 yards we were pulled over by the city police who wanted to know just what we thought we were doing. Thought? Ha! We're lost pal, we're not thinking! With our, "Please help me" sad faces and wild gesturing all over the place, he got the picture and instructed us to follow him. It worked! He got us back to civilization.

We waved our escort on as he pulled over (I think he wanted us to pull over for a chat), with thumbs up and High-tailed it back the way we came into that part of town.

By the time we found our hotel (2 Mares), it was dark but we were happy. We each got a room for $20 and the hotel had a nice little pool on the roof and a cheap restaraunt with good tasting food.

One remarkable thing I found out about Panama is that the water is safe to drink. Not only that, it's really good water! In fact, while sitting at the hotel bar having some lunch one of the local taxi drivers who frequented the place asked how I liked it. He seemed rather proud that you could drink from the tap in Panama.

The next day I went over to the Mirafloris Locks, the southernmost locks of the Panama Canal. I've watched discovery channel and other specials about the Panama Canal before, but it is an impressive sight to behold as a ship is tugged into a lock by these special little trains and then is lifted up to the next level of water. The whole operation for one lock took about .5 hours. For an average cost of $47,000, it takes a single ship about 8 hours to traverse the 82 kms of lake and locks. It is a very impressive system.

Of course like most of Central America, we didn't stay very long. We rode our bikes out to the cargo airport and paid $350 each to have them shipped to Quito, Ecuador. Shipping was to be direct and the bikes were to arrive by Friday morning (more on that later). So we bought passenger tickets to leave Thursday evening. I spent my 40th birthday in the Panam Intl Airport and in the air to Quito. Woo...hoo...paaartaay!

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