Back to the Capital, but first to the Caribbean to see the Gatun Locks

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Street view Yaviza

Street view Yaviza

    Left to go back and soon after passing the same military posts and checked us out we reached the outskirts of the airport where we made a right turn to see the Gatun locks, where the ships entered the Panama canal from the Atlantic side. During our trip towards Colon, I lost Scotty in traffic and for the first time I realized, we did not had a back up plan in the event, this would happen to us and because we were talking earlier about the Gatun locks, I continued by my self, hoping I would catch up with him. I decided to take the toll road to see how it felt to go full out and close to Colon it started to rain and I took refugee under an overpass and surprisingly an half an hour later Scotty passed full speed not even noticing me and had to jump quick and chase him to catch up

 The locks were nice and we were lucky to see the last ship for the week pass through and were the only visitors. They were going to close for a week to do maintenance and were making new locks for bigger ships to get through. After our visit Scotty wanted to go to Portobello on the coast, which is an harbor north of Colon and an hour later reached there, looked around drank a beer and saw all the sailboats anchored in the harbor, most of them ready to go to Colombia and this would be one of our options to get the bikes to South America next year. Stopped at the old fort, took a picture and headed back to our guest house in Panama City, where we reached after dark, went to the same restaurant again , watch some soccer, Honduras was playing and went back to the house

Yaviza, back to Panama is a straight new road for the first 60 miles

Darien Cap, Yaviza, end of the road, watch out, we are coming today!

Tuesday 21 June 2011

    We left most of our equipment behind in the guesthouse and left very light to go to our final destination YAVIZA

     After hitting rush hour in Panama city and looking at sky risers, we were impressed with the development of the city compared to other Central American cities, we passed the airport and soon saw the road sign to the Darien Cap. this is the last district with still no roads connecting it with Colombia and even on foot, boat or horse it takes days to cross the last 50 miles plus all the FARC, banditos and outlaws, makes the territory infamous and dangerously, so that is one of the reasons , I wanted to see it for myself. The paved road was in bad condition, full of potholes for the 50 miles and we took a breakfast break Scotty style to get some courage to continue. Once on the road again, the road became so good and new, that we could go full out and soon hit the first Military stop and received a 3rd degree drill, what is the reason, we wanted to continue and how long and told us to check every night with them, where ever we were.

We had several stops like this and soon in the afternoon, we reached Yaviza.

It looked like a poor settlement on a river, with a few streets, but was busy with all class of people, doing business, before they return to the jungle. We drove around for 5 minutes and were picked up by a local military patrouille and had to follow them and at their barracks had to register again and asked us a few questions

Checked in a local hotel, there was only one and went downstairs in the cantina to drink our 
$ 0.50 US cold beers to celebrate our goal reached and stayed a few hours longer and got into conversation with the locals

The place reminds me a little bit as Guanaja or Utila Cays 30 years ago, with the same style of houses on stilts, same type of bars & Churches. After the bar ran out of beer, we went back upstairs in the hotel and of course the lights went off and felt like I was home again 30 years ago!

Yaviza

Panama City and a milestone almost reached

Monday 20 June 2011

    Next morning, we left early and wanted to reach the capitol and was mile wise to longest distance to cover and thought to get from the Caribbean to the Pacific side was hard to do, but the road was paved all the way and had to cross a mountain range, what was very pleasant and cool trip to do. On the top of the mountain we had a very thorough police check and continued our way towards the Pan American highway, from there it was 6 hours to Panama City which we reached by passing over the impressive bridge called " Bridge de Americas" and soon after that, we reached a guesthouse called "Panama Passage" run by Shaun another Motor fanatic, who was catering to Motorcycle travelers and overnight fourwheelers. Most of them were waiting or arranging to get across to Colombia or just came from there. checked in the room with fans, took a shower, got some advice where to go eat and walked to the restaurant, what was pretty good and was used by lot of locals and tourists

Bridge de Americas

Cold beer $ 0.50 US

Entering Panama on the Caribbean side

Sunday  19 June 2011

    Left Sunday morning around 7 am after having a good breakfast next to the hotel and decided to go to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side, close to the Panama border to check out the beach scene. Following road 4 towards the main intersection San Jose - Limon took about 3 hours. Took a rest stop and a half hour later continued. I lost my rain protectors from my saddle bags and turned back to find it and was lucky. Then I tried to catch up with Scotty and after I while, I saw him stopped on the side of the road, talking to a moter police guy and slowed down and parked behind Scotty and this guy was coming towards me with his Speed Gun , trying to show me 124 km and thought Scotty was in deep shit, but then he said , I was making this speed and said he was crazy and that the hour didn't match up the time of the day. Then he start threatening with $ 600.00 fines and have to see the judge tomorrow and kept my license and start taken off my license plate.

I told him , I will prove the judge tomorrow my speed with all my gadgets, I have on my KLR such as Spot Locator, GPS and a passive tracking device, called Itrail, that he was trying to rip me off and will lodge a complaint with the Ministery of Tourism and started taken pictures of him and his license plate.

To make the story short, we went on our way 5 minutes later after giving him money to buy a coke ( A small one), soon we reached Limon and made a right towards Panama and 2 hours later we reached Puerto Viejo and drove along the beach which was loaded with hippy's and a bunch of German tourists, parked the bikes and sat on a terrace to get something to eat and discuss what to do next. All these Germans was not my style to be around and suggested to see if we could cross into Panama before dark on a Sunday and so we went.

We arrived around 4 pm the border Sixaola and were checked out of Costa-Rica in 5 minutes, then had to cross the famous train bridge with the loose and missing planks, what wasn't actually a big deal.

The Panamanian side, Gaubito, was open till 5 pm so we had to hurry to get passed and all was working out fine and an hour later we were on our way to the next town Chinguinola, which we reached before dark, checked in a reasonable good hotel for $20.00, which had a restaurant next door with gold Atlas beer for $ 0.50 US, Had a couple, with a good meal

Hanging Bridges and Volcano Arenal

Saturday 18 June 2011

We had the moto's parked in front of the motel and start doing some maintenance and looked for loose bolts, sofar no problems with both engines, so we must be doing something good!

Went to visit the Hanging Bridges nearby, what simulated you was walking in a rainforest, but then in the canopy instead of walking on the floor, was nice put together for tourists and it was not crowded and was a pleasant 2 hour walk

Some of the bridges were over 300ft long

Nice views  around during the walk

In the afternoon, we went close towards the volcano Arenal/ but decided not to climb it and just looked from the visitors area with a beer in our hand, they had sky trams half way up, but passed!

Had a lazy afternoon and went for dinner later and called it the day.