To The End Of The Road (Part 1)

Days 85-88

A few months ago we arranged to meet Emily's sister Alice and her boyfriend Mark in Panama, so we were on a tighter schedule than usual travelling through Central America to make sure we got there in time. Our timetable allowed us just one full day to spend somewhere along our route in beautiful and bountiful Costa Rica, and we chose a place up in the cloud forest: Monteverde. We arrived after a long day's ride from Nicaragua, culminating in a winding mountain road that, 20km from our destination, turned into a horrendous off-road track. It's not called cloud forest for nothing, and as the drizzle and rain came in and the realisation hit that we had another hour of driving on slippery and rocky surfaces rather than our supposed quarter of an hour on tarmac, we wondered if this had been the right choice! But it was. We had a fun packed day, starting with zipping through the forest on a “canopy tour”. As well as various standard zip lines there was a big Tarzan swing (on which we both screamed like girls) and a grand finale of a 1km long zip line which you could travel on Superman stylee. In the afternoon we learned about insects and butterflies, for which Costa Rica is famous, at the local butterfly farm. And in the evening we went on a guided night walk, spotting insects we'd just learned about in their natural habitats, but more importantly tracking two-toed sloths and other rarities! As we followed our guide through the forest, torches pointing in trees, another tracker put the call through on the radio – he'd seen one! We ran to find him and to see our first sloth, just briefly (he was moving a lot faster than typical sloth-speed). As it turned out, that was just the beginning, though: before the night was through we saw a total of six sloths (including one baby), a very rare endangered kinkywatsit, a porcupine (also in the tree tops!), and a rather large red kneed tarantula which was a little scary. The only thing that attacked us, though, was a legion of army ants; thankfully we realised in time and got them all off because if 1,000 of them bite you at once it's apparently pretty painful...

The way we came into Monteverde was unfortunately also the quickest way out, so soon after day broke we started back off down the dirt. Our route took us through the capital, so Ric was delighted to be able to ask the ubiquitous question “Do you know the way to San Jose?”. It was Sunday and we saw plenty of bike clubs out for Sunday rides – some groups of BMWs that gave us enthusiastic waves, and many roaring gatherings of Harleys, presumably imported by some of the numerous American ex-pats in Costa Rica.

We had unusually been given some pessimistic travel time estimations, and we reached the Carribean coast a few hours earlier than expected, so we decided to push on into Panama a day earlier than we'd planned. That border was really cool, though – not a description that usually applies to borders! The paperwork was really straightforward (and fairly cheap), but the most unique thing is that the border crossing is an old railway bridge with planks of wood laid across to span the gaps underneath (which also makes for some very tricky riding). We made it across unscathed, though, and fortunately only learnt about the horror stories of bike falls and hospitalisation once we were safe on the other side! That night disaster struck, however. We brought one series of TV programs with us on the trip and we were down to the last episode. The town where we were staying was pretty unremarkable (except for a four hour long parade of drums, bugels and dancers led by one hundred or so school kids) so we got some take-out, went back to our room and excitedly fired up the laptop... which promptly stopped working. Actually it appeared to be deteriorating before our very eyes, and when a third attempt to start it in any mode at all resulted in random symbols across the screen we ate our take-out in saddened silence. This is also our latest excuse for not writing a blog post sooner, in case you're wondering!

One more day riding from the beautiful Caribbean coast, into the jungley Panamanian interior, over the continental divide again and out to the Pacific Coast, and we arrived in Santa Catalina in good time to find the best value beach house going and meet Alice and Mark off the bus!


Days 89-93


Santa Catalina is mainly a surfing destination but was so quiet when we were there that we didn't see much of that. We had come there primarily to do some diving in the largely untouched waters of nearby Coiba Island (as well as some good old-fashioned chilling out). There's a prison on the island which means both the land and surrounding waters have been left almost entirely untouched by humans until relatively recently, giving them a Galapagos-like attraction. We had a lovely day for our trip over there and we were lucky enough to see a hump back whale on the way and a huge manta ray whilst diving, among loads of other fish and reef sharks!

From Santa Catalina we headed to Panama City, stopping for the night in El Valle, another cloud forest destination, for a bit of cooler weather, and so that Alice and Mark could do a canopy tour while we went on ahead and got the bikes and the laptop dropped off for servicing. It turns out that you can quickly get your bike serviced in Panama City for a fraction of the cost in the states, you can get your computer fixed by very competent engineers for next-to-nothing, but you can't get any motorcycle tyres for love nor money.

Panama City is quite incredible. The modern business district is full of sky scrapers, and the semi-restored old-town is both impressive in its grandeur and charming in its decay. We said a sad farewell to Ali and Mark the night before they left, with a good bottle (or two) of wine and a delicious fish supper. We were so pleased they decided to share their holiday with us – it's lovely to see a friendly face and to share our journey with people (if anyone fancies a trip to South America in the near future, let us know!).


Days 94-95

Now to plan our escape from Panama and into South America! For those that don't know, there's no road from Panama to Colombia – just a swampy and jungley void known as the Darien Gap, populated primarily by guerillas and drug runners. Crossing it by land is impossible by car, exceedingly difficult by motorcycle, and supremely dangerous by any means. So the options to us are either flying over it or taking a boat round it. We'd talked to some people and learned that taking a plane was about the same price as a boat but quicker and a lot easier, as taking a boat involves going to one of the ports and finding someone who'd have you on board (difficult with very little Spanish) whereas there are proper agents to deal with air freight. So we decided to fly, found a relatively cheap shipper, but couldn't find out when the planes were scheduled until Monday morning.


With little else to do but wait, we spent Sunday doing a bit more sightseeing, including the Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal - quite a sight once you manage to find the place! As we were parking up back at the hostel, an American guy approached to have a chat about the bikes. It turned out that this guy was none other than “Captain Jack”, was setting sail to Colombia on Tuesday and invited us and the bikes on board! For the same price as air freighting our bikes (not including our own airfare) we're now travelling full board to Colombia on what sounds like quite a nice boat! It will probably be a four day journey and apparently we'll enjoy every minute... except if we're sea-sick, which Emily most likely will be... We'll land in Cartagena, one of Colombia's loveliest cities and ride South from there.

“But do you have time to spend all these extra days on the boat and travelling through Colombia?” we hear you cry. Probably not, but it sounds like an adventure, doesn't it?!