Trip Diary - Photo Diary - Start the trip in the UK - USA - Mexico - Belize - Continue of to Colombia
After a monstrous breakfast served up by Jean-Michel Jarre in Costa Rica, we trundle down to Panama where we are welcomed by possibly the oldest, scariest, ricketiest wooden bridge in the world spanning a filthy, brown body of water, I suspect actually containing bodies. Mu somehow gets the bike across doing 2 miles an hour and trying desperately not to look down. I choose to walk across as it seems safer than riding - the sweats are starting and I think my legs are going to buckle from fear. Wonder whether the bridge is so appalling in order to keep people in Costa Rica or keep people out of Panama.
Customs de-infest the bike with basically a 3 second squirt of Fairy Liquid. Every little helps they say. The people are as welcoming and as kind to us as the friendliest El Salvadorians. Then we realise why. They’re lulling us into a false sense of security - they want us to be calm and focused for when we realise what’s to come if we thought the border bridge was bad, then wait til we get to Lord God King Bad Ass Bridge Almighty. Another wooden bridge - this one even older and scarier, 380 metres of sheer hell, no sides or railings, planks of driftwood rotted away so you donít quite know which ones are OK to put weight on and which ones aren’t. Mu’s down to 0.001 miles and hour, the sweats are to the point of Miss Wet T-Shirt competition 2006 and Jesus finally enters our lives. Fear? Bah! Jesus decides our 62 years of sin between us are nothing in the great scheme of things and gets us across the bridge, rewarding us with beautiful rolling hills, endless banana trees and dinky indigenous villages with a combined population of about 6 and a half. Roll into the city of David (Dave if you spend longer than 2 nights there, not that we do - David it is then) where people are in a “Last few days of Christmas shopping” frenzy, the tat shops doing a roaring trade in Santa Claus hats and anything under $1 made of plastic. People here don’t get the concept of queuing - itís each for their own as I’m starting to learn - it just feels so wrong pushing in, though itís quite easy cos the people in Central America are proper diddies so even I tower over them. Show me the counter! Panama City is a wonderful city, entered over the engineering marvel of the Panama Canal that technically splits North and South America in two. The Rich-Poor divide here is one of the most blatant in CA. A sweeping bay separates the “dodgy” part of town that looks like Venice and the “money” part of town that looks like New York, skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. We opt for NY, splashing out on a few days of pre-Christmas luxury - the hotel has a BATH! And a sewing kit!!! Must find something that needs mending!!! Breakfast in bed on Floor 16 overlooking the bay. Pluuuush. The laundry people charge us 10 times the normal cost for 5 pairs of pants and a couple of tops (that incidentally seem to be shrinking as time goes by) so we leave there in a huff and check into Hotel Dripping Ceilings R Us where we hook up with Brighton Mark and Norway Helge.
Thought such an international and cosmopolitan place would be able to water our pallets on Christmas Eve, but 99% of every shop, bar and restaurant was closed. With help from our Beer-Dar we found the 1%. As did the crack heads, prostitutes and mental health patients that consider it their local. A delightful evening was had by all, ducking when armed police came in to throw out Mr. Rum for starting a fight with Mr. Scar, hovering precariously over Glastonbury latrines, avoiding (unsuccessfully) “G-String Divas” on the big screen and humoring Mr. Loco with his theory that a slice of lime in your pocket keeps away evil spirits. Christmas Day 2006. A huge tropical storm appeared out of nowhere so we were destined to stay in in the afternoon. From the safety of our rooms, we could watch Panama TV reporting a Wizard Of Oz style tornado sweeping across the bay of Panama City (all well - no casualties) quite an amazing sight, maybe one never to be seen again. We manage to locate a turkey (sans sprouts and lumpy gravy) for xmas dinner! However, found the Kir Royale area of The Radisson first so the turkey was some what functional and unappreciated. Obligatory charades and bed by midnight. Rock n’ Roll kids!
Boxing Day sees us moving out of Dripping Ceilings R Us and into a hotel full of ícharactersí, including: Guru Freddie - Middle aged Canadian on the prowl for a rich Panamanian inbetween motivational speaking and buying white clothing. Liver Failure Claus - Alcoholic Dane harboring possibly the most negative attitude to the world ever. Living in Panama on a Danish Pension having never worked a day in his life. Being the kind individuals we are we invite Claus out for New Year Celebrations. What a huge mistake. Everything was wrong, he hated everything, shouted something about “Fist f***ing” and left the posh Italian restaurant at 8 minutes to midnight. Total downer. Found ourselves tucked up at 1am. NY Day was better: the man in the supermarket playing Hammond Organ cheered us up with Sinatra classics, followed by the Panama Canal where we watched a humongous cruise ship tackling the locks (for a fee of $185,000 - them, not us). Almost got annihilated by a 4x4 on the way home - Panama, as lovely as it is, is definitely saturated with arrogant people, generally those with a bit of money to splash around.
We take the bike up to the airport where itís to be Air Freighted to Colombia. All seemed a little too easy - a few bits of paper and a wad of cash are exchanged. We cross our fingers and hope that the bike will be at Bogota Airport by the time we arrive there the next day. Name: Mark Date: 5/1/7 Location: Panama
"Holy crap, that bridge was sketchy!" This was the first thought that went through my mind after crossing between Costa Rica and Panama.
I wasn't expecting much from the Northern border crossing into Panama, as it was along the less populated Caribbean coast and well away from the CA1 (Transamerican highway) crossing on the Southern end of the border. But I mean, they could have made some sort of effort. Really.
Later, when crossing the next bridge about 20km further down the road, all the woes of the last bridge crossing faded away into a pleasant, rose tinted dream. This second bridge, was just plain dangerous. At a length of 380m and a height above large river of 30m (figures courtesy of old man at side of the road scratching his chin in concern), this bridge was the mother of all bridges.
As the bridge was just another type of river crossing, I treated it like any other river crossing. I stopped the bike, we both dismounted and I started to walk the route, planning the where to put the wheels, where to use the throttle, etc etc.
I got about 10 metres and realised the rest of the bridge couldn't get any worse. With more horizontal gaps than planks, a set of train trails running down the middle of the bridge, rotting planks for cars wheels to traverse the gaps and a complete absence of safety rails, I could see the plan was just to get across in one piece.
Daisy would walk the bridge and I would take the bike and luggage across in one go, riding on the left-hand planks used by the cars left-hand wheels. This meant that I could jam my right-hand boot into the inside of the left-hand train rail and use it to steady me and the not at all overloaded Africa Twin (doesn't affect the handling at all - honest). This would also mean that the distance between where the bike wheels would travel and the edge of the bridge was about 3 foot (except of course where there were big holes). So, if the bike toppled to the right, all would kind of be OK, after picking it up. If the bike toppled to the left, all would not be OK. At all.
Thankfully, despite the initial beeping of the van behind me (strangely silenced by a torrent of abuse - he must have spoke English), we got across in one piece. After the excitement of the bridge, the rest of the day palled into insignificance, which was a shame because the road of silky smooth, running through lush forests, over high mountains and through ethereal cloudscapes. This was all spoilt by staying in a completely uninspiring town called Dave.
Hurray, Panama city! The end of the road before for Central America and a point for deciding what to do next. Do we head home? Do we fly to Ecuador? Do we fly to Columbia? Do we sail to Columbia? Do we head to OZ and NZ? Days turn into weeks. We move out of our harbour view, plush hotel and head to the "via Espana" to meet the lads, promptly moving again to escape the damp.
Christmas eve and day come and go and we are still in Panama. New Years eve comes and goes and we are still in Panama. We're waiting for shipping offices to open. Tyres to arrive. Shipping agents who are dealing with Matts bike to stop being shysters and delivery on the deal. We wait.
The Hotel Montreal turns out to be a great little Hotel to wait in however. Owned by a fellow biker, with all the amenities one could need, no damp and a constant stream of characters, weëre sorted. Amongst a few, we bump into:
The Canadian bikers we had met in Creel, just about to fly across to Columbia. A good evening is spent with them before they fly and we make plans to meet up along the way.
An ex-CIA redneck from Tennessee with a deep seated dislike of "Blacks and Islam", who was also adamant that Europe and Britain would burn without the US's help in fighting Terrorism.
Claus, the alcoholic Dane who has lived off Danish benefit for the last 25 years. Angry and miserable for most of the time and drinking almost all of the time, he has spent the last countless years bumming across the world. Every evening we would hear he swearing about the food, or the people, the wildlife or anything else he could vent his spleen against.
The Canadian Harley Parrots, who though not saying much apart from "Harleys are so cool" and "Canada is a communist country", did manage to speak very loudly and frequently.
And so, with a tear in our eyes, we finally get ourselves and our bikes to the airport and pick up flights across to Bogota.
Continue of to Colombia |
By: Daisy
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| ©2006 Mark Bell |