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December 8, 2017
Day 26 [Fri 12/08/17] - Yaviza, Panama to Torti, Panama
Update: I am alive and well and resting peacefully in the Hotel Torti Portal Avicar in Torti, Panama.
Hoy es viernes.
Starting Odometer: 10,752
Ending Odometer: 10,835
Distance Traveled Today: 83 miles
Distance Traveled This Trip: 6,232 miles [10,835 - 4,603]
My ride today looked something like this.
I wake up this morning to a pouring rain. I just roll back over and go back to sleep. I'm hoping at some point that the rain will stop. I intentionally did not come here during the rainy season. It's hard to grasp how much it rains down here, but the men coming out of the jungles with dugout canoes full of plantains should be some indication of the rainfall, I suppose.
By 9:30 a.m., it has let up. A man walks through the streets with a cooler in a wheelbarrow calling "Pay-COE,Pay-COE,Pay-COE!"
Update: My friend says he was probably selling pork?
Roosters begin to crow. Do they crow when it stops raining? Who can tell? They seem to crow all day, as best as I can tell.
Eventually, it does stop raining, pretty much any way.
I decide to make a break for it. I will get on my bike and roll out of town. But first, I will stop at one of the stores by the port and see if they have a trash bag to put my CC Filson handbag in. That's all I need to make it waterproof, I think.
I stop at the sign that says it's the end of the Pan American Highway. I try to get people to take my photo with a DSLR, but they really just don't grasp it. I think I'll just have to photoshop this picture.
The road at first is very good. Perfect even, all the way to the edge of the Darien province.
There are many border checkpoints. The first one I come to is a Senafront checkpoint at about 35 miles. Then, at about 65 miles, there's another border checkpoint. This one is at the border of the Darien Province. He points for me to pull over. She asks for my passport. I offer it to them, and tell them I came through 2 days ago. I don't think that they could ever find my name in their notebook, but that's hardly my problem, and they wave me on.
Then, some potholes as soon as I leave the Darien Provice, but the road is still pretty good.
I'm hoping to make it to Panama City today without getting wet, when I pass a little shanty on the side on the road and a sign says Pi Pi Frios. I have no idea what they're selling so I circle back to check. Turns out, it's CoCo Frios, and I have no idea why he called it PiPi frios. It's not my country. I'm just passing through. I rode my bike across a little concrete footbridge to get to the store, and managed to drop my bike for the 3rd time on this adventure. I called for "mi amigo" to come out and help me stand up the bike, and he did and I promise you I could not have stood it up on my own. I managed to get some shots of it this time before we stood it up.
So I take off again. I'm hoping to make it to Panama City without the rains, but just before I make just to the edge of Torti de Chepo when I run into just a wall of rain. Now, I can turn back, or try to make it into what looks like a small town up ahead. I decide to push for it. A service station on the left, and I'm out of the rain. At first, no one is here, then a man shows up, and his son, and then also his business partner it seems.
I talk to them for some time. Always, people are truly shocked to learn that I rode my motorcycle here, alone, over the last month, from Denver, Colorado. Like...it's just extremely rare. No one with half a brain would even try it, I think.
After about an hour or so, the rain lets up, and I decide to try riding again. But it's still raining too hard. Like...I will just be soaked if I try to make it to Panama City today. I loop through the town a few times, trying to make a decision. I see a hotel. And a restaurant. And then I see that the hotel is also a restaurant also, and this is my favorite configuration. This is ideal. This means you can check in and not get wet anymore today. And that's worth something.
He tells me a room is $38.00 USD a night and I'm about to choke. Like...how do you live with yourself? How do you sleep at night, man?
I balk at the rate, but he points to a sign on the wall that says $38.00 a night. So I decide to go for it.
He gives me the password for the Wifi, and in my room, I can't get either the MacBook Air or the iPhone 6S+ to join the network. But I turn on the A/C with the remote, and it's already set to 22C. When I go back in the restaurant, the the iphone and the MacBook Air join the WiFi network with no problem.
There is a "pero calle" here, with both left legs severely injured. I'm tossing him chicken from my plate, and the owner comes and leads him off with a dish of food. I'm not clear what the protocol is on feeding pero calles, but I don't really care either. I'm more concerned with getting caught when they don't approve is all.
Later, he says of the dog, that it was hit by a car. And he took it to the vet, but it was too expensive to fix. He wanted like $800 or something. So he couldn't afford to fix him.
And, I think that coming down this way has pushed me way far out of my normal zeitgeist, so that I'm seeing things I wouldn't normally see in Denver or San Francisco or Los Angeles.
I'm seeing trucks of cows on their way to be butchered. And I ask the guy...."es pero leche o carne asado?" And he laughs and says, "carne asado".
Like....that's not really funny to me. These cows are on their way to die. And this is really the part of it that you miss out on when you're eating out every night in California or Colorado. We're so far removed from our food supply, that you sort of lose focus on where it comes from.
Not like I'm going to turn into a vegan or anything, but it is odd, seeing the food chain with your own eyes.
The roosters seem to crow incessantly. Maybe I should get some roosters when I get home. How cool would that be?
I go down for lunch or dinner...I'm not sure which. It's about 3:00 p.m. I ask the owner where I can find some monkeys. He says he heard the howling this morning. I'm thinking...why on earth was I leaving this place?
I love the coins in Panama. They use US Dollars, but mint their own coins, which are crazy cool with colored flags on them, etc.
The owner of the restaurant said he had to put sugar water out for 8 months to get the hummingbirds to come. Also, he says, with the Howler Monkeys it is the same thing. He has to put plantains out for them, but it takes them a while to catch on.
He points to the trees where they will be in the morning. "They will wake you up," he warns.
He says that, a guy came through here, about a year ago, and went through the Darien Gap with a motorcycle. He says that the guy was alone, and wrote for a motorcycle magazine. And lived in Washington State. At first I thought he might be talking about Dylan Wickrama who used Isaac N Pizzaro as his guide, but now I think that isn't right, because he said the guy came through at the end of last year, or earlier this year. But that wouldn't have been Dylan Wickrama, as he did this in 2014. But this is just what I need....some guy telling me that there's a guide who will take you through the Darien with a motorcycle. Thanks a lot. Thanks for that.
Maybe it was Jason Motlagh?
When I go to take photos with my one still-functioning camera, I realize that both of my lens are freezing cold, and therefore the 100% humidity condenses on them, and I have to wait now at least an hour before I can take any photos. Rookie mistake. I had the same problem in Peru. I used to leave my lenses at the front desk when I checked into my room at night because the condensation is always an issue if the AC is on in the room (and you're in a 100% humidity jungle in the morning).
I take a shower and get cleaned up and then go down for coffee.
The owner speaks to me in Spanish, even though he's perfectly fluent in English, which I greatly appreciate. Like...if I wanted to speak English, I'd be in the USA. When I'm down here, I want to speak in Spanish. When people tell me to speak in English, it makes me want to lose my mind. Like...how about I'll speak in whatever language I choose?
So I'm really happy that he speaks to me in Spanish.
"Uno cafe, por favor," I say.
"Con leche?"
"Si, por favor."
"Y asucar?"
"Si, por favor."
It did quit raining, this afternoon, and I could have easily left and made it to Panama City. But it's so hard to predict these rains. And, when you're soaking wet, I could have sat there and had lunch, with all of my gear on, hoping it quit raining. But it's so much nice to check in, get cleaned up, change clothes, and then go down and eat lunch/dinner when you're dry, not even worried about the rain.
Finally, I got something clarified with my buddy here at the hotel.
I'm like....why in God's name is it raining like this? This is not the rainy season, right?
And he's like, "Right. Normally, the rainy season ends in November, so it is unusual to be getting this much rain at this time of the year. This is very late in the season for it to still be this wet,"
So, I'm not insane. This is an unseasonably wet December for Panama. Great.
Update: I wanted to point out that, so far on this trip, all of the electrical outlets have been the same. The only difference being, occasionally, I'll have a 2 prong outlet (sans ground plug), which would ordinarily prevent me from plugging in my MacBook Air power cord. However, because I have my international adapter, it basically allows me to plug my 3 prong power cord into a 2 prong outlet. So, not a huge deal, but it is somewhat interesting that all of Central America basically uses the same outlets we use, whereas in South America, that is not the case.
Also, I think it's somewhat funny, or oddly amusing that I find Panama so attractive. I haven't been to a nice, secluded white-sand beach (without shanty town shacks on it) in Panama since I got here. But I do like the country. I like that it's so far away from civilization, as it were. That you can fall asleep to the sound of parakeets, and wake up to the sound of Howler Monkeys. That they have special forces guarding the "Fronterra". It's just so far away from San Francisco or Los Angeles or Denver. It's really hard to believe that I'm still on the same planet.
Regarding the Darien Gap:
I'm not going through the Darien Gap. Why? Primarily because my bike is too heavy. I could get a guide, and I could probably make it through the Darien Gap. But I don't want to deal with getting this bike through there. If I drop it, I can't even pick it up. If I had a little Honda CR 125, then maybe I'd try it. But with this bike, I don't think so. I dropped it for the third time today, and I had a hard time picking it up with someone helping me. :P
Posted by Rob Kiser on December 8, 2017 at 12:35 PM
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