The Voyage to South America, April 29 - May 6

Here´s the scene:
Capt. Jack´s rooftop bar.  Travelers are packed around the small tables, all seemingly in a daze, plugged mindlessly into their electronic devices. No one looks happy.
One beer-stained table in the corner however, is filled with 5 smiling people and a lot of laughter. This is where our trip begins.

Cast of characters:

Capt. Dani: Originally from Spain, he has worked on a sailboat running this same trip for 6 months, but this is his first trip as captain of his own ship. Small and agile like a monkey, he has a limited grasp on English. Nonetheless, he manages to be hilarious and positive at all times, mostly with the use of the words ¨Hi!¨ ¨C´mon!¨ and ¨Achooo!¨

Engineer Jonathan:  Originally from Barranquilla, Colombia, he´s a big strong guy with a friendly and easygoing demenor.  In charge of maintaining all the boat systems during our voyage.

Huyen: Originally from Vietnam, she´s a fellow bike tourist who loves to talk and share adventures.

John: Originally from Pensylvania, he has lived in Guatemala for 3 years and explored all over Central America. With a easygoing attitude, he´s basically impossible not to get along with. (John joined us on day 2 of the voyage.)

...and us.

The Vessel:

46 ft. Arctic Front.  Originally from the US, she is now ready for the tropics with new snorkel gear, big cushions for lounging above deck, a great kitchen, and a shower.

There she is! 

Bikes on board.

When you look up...

The Adventure Begins...

After meeting Capt. Dani and Jonathan, we go out to sleep on the boat with them.  Danny and I have a private room at the back with a huge double bed complete with foam mattress pad. Sweet! We´re excited to finally be on our way to South America.
The next morning we have to go back to shore to pick up bikes and last minute groceries. It´s a relaxed day. We sail a bit in the afternoon and anchor in the port of Porvenir for some swimming and reading time.

Overnight we sail to the San Blas Islands, aka. Tropical Paradise! Water so clear you can see down 40 feet, amazing reefs filled with brightly colored corals and fish, tiny islands with only white sand and palm trees, you get the picture. 

The water is so clear!

On our first day, our crew go off to border control in a small dugout canoe paddled by one of the local indigenous people, the Kuna. This may be the most unusual border we have crossed yet.  While they´re dealing with the logistics, we go snorkeling!
It´s basically impossible not to have a good time in these islands.  During our two days there, adventures included snorkeling around three different shipwrecks, playing volleyball against the tourists on another sailboat doing the same trip, and eating seafood paella made with freshly caught fish over a fire. Our captain is a superb cook.  

Jonathan and Dani at the Paella Fiesta

Too soon, it´s time to take to the open ocean.  We leave at midnight and when we´re awake the next morning there´s no sight of land, only big waves.  And, wait, dolphins! Suddenly a HUGE pod of dolphins has surrounded our boat, jumping and playing alongside us in the waves. We all forget about being seasick as we watch them.
When the dolphins leave, we resort to simply lying in the shade above deck and trying to sleep or relax.  In the rocking waves, it´s almost impossible to be below deck or focus on anything (like a book). Somehow, Capt. Dani is not seasick at all and is able to cook amazing meals for us in the swaying kitchen below.  We do our best to eat because the food is just so delicious.
We continue all day, the next night, the next day, the next night... There are problems with the motor and battery, so we sail most of the way and it takes longer than expected. But luckily the weather is nice, we have a full moon, and everyone remains positive on board. 

John with the broken engine belt.

At approximately 3am we arrive in the Islas del Rosario off the Colombian coast, but we can´t safely make a landing due to the surrounding reefs and our unreliable motor.  Instead we drift around a bit until a new character enters our story.  Meet Manuel, aka Captain America, former captain, boss of Dani and Jonathan, and bottomless pit of drinks and funny stories.
Manuel, his voice booming at a rather uncomfortable volume in the early morning, drags us into harbor with a motor boat, and helps us get things fixed up on the boat for the final sail to Cartagena.  

Getting towed in.

For the afternoon, we all jump overboard and go snorkeling.  There are more beautiful corals and fish and perfect white sand beaches to explore!
The following day we finally reach our destination of Cartegena, but due to border politics we don´t get our passports back before it is dark. We spend our afternoon ogling at the skyline of Cartagena and watching giant cranes load goods onto huge container ships.

Downtown Cartagena 

Look at that ship! 

May 6th
We set foot officially on South America! We´re spending today doing some laundry, route planning, miscelaneous errands, and exploration of the beautiful old city.

Thanks to all our new friends for all the laughs and an unforgettable maiden voyage on the Arctic Front!

Ukuleles, Sloths, and A Big Canal, April 25-28

Our day in Panama City included some errands and a wonderful jaunt around the Metropolitan Park, a tropical forest within the city limits.  We walked a few of the trails, finding loads more than we ever expected to.  Most interesting without a doubt were the leaf-cutter ants.  We came upon one of their thoroughfares across the trail, a deep groove eroded into the leaf litter and dirt by millions of tiny steps.  

The ants without leaves were heading for the trunk of a huge tree, climbing vertically hundreds of feet to the top, finding a suitable leaf, and then descending with their package back to the ground and the nest, which we later found to be about 50 feet from the tree.  The ants don't actually eat the leaves; when they return with their onerous packages, they deposit them to the capable jaws of another caste of workers, who then feed the leaves to a fungus that they're cultivating underground for food!  There are other castes, too, not involved with food production.  We observed an immense amount of ants bringing a whitish substance out of the nest little by little and depositing it a few feet away, perhaps cleaning out the garbage?  The mound they were making was already a few feet high.  The organization and structure required to make all this happen simultaneously, with surely much more happening that I don't know about, is mind-boggling.

In addition to the ants, we saw tons of birds, of course, and two wonderfully cute sloths!  

We were even lucky enough to observe one in between its 20 hours of daily naps.  Less fun were the park's informational signs, snooze-inducing placards with technical language about mosses and other bryophytes.  We were also disappointed by the fact that we only saw a few other people on this beautiful Saturday afternoon.  Where was everybody?

The next morning we biked out to what we've heard to be Panama's main attraction (just beating out the sloths): the canal.  We marveled at the ingenuity of the system, at the fun that the engineers must have had thinking up ways to move massive ships from ocean to ocean.  A few ships passed while we were there watching, helped to get in position by two tugboats and then guided through the locks by a number of tiny train cars on the edge of the concrete dividers, their tracks inches from the dropoff to the murky water below.  

Our bikes at the canal

If you look closely at the picture above, you can see a small package attached to the side of each bike.  We bought cheap ukuleles in Panama City!  The perfect travel instrument, they take up very little room and weigh almost nothing, and we're super excited to have more music in our lives.  We've waterproofed, padded, and attached them securely; we'll see how long they last.

With the canal, the railroad, the roads, and the wildlife corridor connecting the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, a lot of things here are on the move.  Including us, though not very far today.  After watching a few gargantuan cargo ships squeeze through the Pedro Miguel locks, we biked out to Gamboa, walking across a horribly rickety, one lane bridge in the process, our sights set on Soberania National Park.  We eventually set up camp in the forest along the Pipeline Road, a world-renowned bird and wildlife watching spot.  As night fell, it seemed like all the animals were at the foot of our tent, because every few seconds there was a new hiss, chirp, grunt, moan, croak, crash, whine, or whistle, sometimes together, often very near, and always superimposed upon the constant thrum of the jungle.  The dense greenery itself seemed to be contributing to the din. It was quite an experience to be out there in the middle of all of it, sweating away.

The next day, a late morning walk on the Pipeline Road drained our energy, as extreme heat and humidity tend to do, so we spent the rest of the day at the Gamboa park making vague, music-like sounds on our brand-new ukuleles.  We were going to camp in the park but decided to ask the firemen, whose station was adjacent to the grassy space, if we could instead set up on their lawn.  They acquiesced and, even better, offered us use of their exclusive pool!  We followed one of the firemen to the pool, finding out that the word "pool" was an understatement for this aquatic complex.  A 12-foot diving well, a 25-yard competition pool, and a kiddie pool were together dwarfed by a peeling white grandstand, the only writing on which was, in large, official letters, "NO NECKING."  For the only rule, that seemed a poor choice.  

Our bikes at the fire station

Really the pool was probably built by the U.S. when they controlled the canal, and it's fallen now into the hands of the municipality, who has no idea what to do with it.  Other than using it as a large billboard to enforce prudence, of course, and giving overheated bicycle tourists an unexpected respite from the heat.

Our next morning ride was pretty uneventful, humid but shaded in the forest, and we then attempted to take the toll road north to Colon.  For the first time ever, we were stopped by a policeman and told to turn back and ride on the smaller road.  We offered to pay the toll and explained that riding on the smaller road, though it seems safer because of reduced speeds, is much more dangerous for us because there's no shoulder, no space to ride.  No luck.  He responded by saying that we were here just because it's shorter, not safer.  We declined to argue, turned around, and hopped onto the dreaded shoulderless road, which actually did have a gravely shoulder some of the way and wasn't as horrible as we had thought it might be, partly because it had mango trees!  We ate four right there, at the biggest stockpile we found, and a whole bunch more throughout the day.

The rest of the day brought us, again for the first time on this trip, to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean!  Woohoo!  We arrived in the port town of Portobelo, where, tomorrow, we are going to board a small sailboat that will bring us, over the next five days, to the San Blas Islands on Panama's northern coast and ultimately to Cartagena, Colombia.  South America, here we come!

Mega Skyline: Panama City

This morning, up bright and early, we nabbed a bus to Panama City.  There's no more construction after Santiago, but we had read that the Pan-Am, the only option, stays big and trafficked all the way.  Normally we would find different roads to take, but in Panama there just aren't other options. Knowing that the riding would be hot and stressful, we made the decision to spend our time in Panama enjoying the parks around the canal instead. 

Setting foot in Panama City was like entering another world.  Shiny, chaotic, and sweaty come to mind, only a few of the many adjectives that could be used to describe this cloud-scraping megalopolis. 

Luckily, it wasn't too hard to find our way out of the busy streets and out onto a newly constructed bike path. We spend an awesome afternoon cruising the green space along the coast and checking out the new biodiversity museum.  

Part of the impressive skyline

Quite a contrast from the rest of Central America! 

The Biodiversity Museum, building designed by Frank Gehry

Bridge of the Americas, Panama Canal

Panama!!!

"Should we go to Panama?" Tam asked me this morning as we stood facing the road, packed and ready to go.  "Yep," I replied, grinning.  We were ready to take on the next country, our last in Central America.  But it wasn't that easy.  About 30 km of shoulderless, trafficked road lay between us and the border, and while we knocked it out pretty quickly, it certainly was stressful.  Trucks and buses and whatnot.  Anyway, the border still snuck up on us and the bureaucracy wasn't too tough to negotiate, so soon we had our feet on the soil (ahem, pavement) of Panama!  The road was much wider than that on the Costa Rican side, all the trucks were forced to wait at the border, and we had a tailwind, so, despite the humidity, we enjoyed the ride.  Yet, as we approached the city of David, Panama's second-largest, our shoulder turned to gravel and the traffic increased to the point of being an almost continuous line. The last few kilometers were slow while navigating the shoulder and the trucks, and finally we made it into the city, where we're staying at a hostel.  

I didn't take any pictures today, so here's one from the archive:

End of the Dalton Highway, northern Alaska

Tonight was spent planning: there's only one road that connects here with Panama City, and it's under construction for about 200 km, so we hear, and then very busy near the city.  Not too many riding options.  As for tomorrow, we're going to head north into the mountains, to, and perhaps past, Boquete.

Quetzal! April 21-23

April 21st

There's free oatmeal and bananas for breakfast at the hostel this morning. We fuel up and then set out to begin the long climb to the mountain town of Boquete. The road we're on, strangely enough, is paved better than the Pan-am, with four lanes, a shoulder, and very minimal traffic. We see lots of other cyclists out (I imagine that this is a popular big hill climb) and some road signs that inform cars to respect cyclists. I'm happy with our choice of road. 

The climb is very gradual and the clouds have cleared enough that we have a view of the jagged volcano we're hoping to climb tomorrow. Otherwise, the scenery is unremarkable. The most exciting thing that happens on the way up is that we hit the 10,000 mile mark of our entire journey! Woohoo! 

Once in Boquete, we inquire about climbing the volcano and the other well known trail in the park, Sendero de Los Quetzales (Trail of the Quetzals.) We are told that a guide is required for both and that the cost is $65 per person. We decide to ignore this and go explore further on our own. 

Slowly we start to climb up and away from Boquete. Slowly, because the road has one incredibly steep hill after another. The pain in our legs is compensated by the beautiful scenery. We see only a few houses and cars. Mostly it's just us, the birds singing, and a clear gurgling river. 

After some tough biking we reach the turnoff to the park ranger station and soon after I see a sign for a campground. Here we stop to ask for information and find out that we are in fact on the wrong road to climb the volcano; that road started back in Boquete! Not about to turn around after we had come so far, we decide to relinquish our dreams of climbing the volcano and instead continue another couple kms to the Sendero de Los Quetzales. 

The last few kms are the steepest. We end up pushing our bikes up the last big hill as it starts to rain.

Pushing up the last bit

And then, there's the ranger station! A bright, friendly-looking, two-story cabin painted in warm yellow with green waves.

The ranger station, our tent out front

Out rushes the ranger, Carlos, to greet us as if we were old friends. Carlos has been working here for 12 years and says he can't remember anyone else biking up here; everyone else comes in car or bus. He's a fantastically nice guy. Forget the park fees, we can camp anywhere, or sleep in the bunk beds upstairs, we can heat water on the stove to make dinner, borrow his bird book, and that $65 required guide? No, we can hike wherever, whenever we want. 

What an amazing haven from the now-pouring rain! This is more than we ever could have expected. So many thanks to Carlos! We spend a wonderful evening sharing stories and watching birds. 

As we go to sleep, fireflies start to flow and dance among the dense, damp jungle foliage. 

April 22nd

We wake up early to the sound of birds singing. How wonderful it was to sleep somewhere where it actually gets cold at night! Carlos unfortunately is leaving today for his time off, but he leaves us his key so that we can store our bikes safely while we go out to hike. (Not that we're very worried about them out here.) We say goodbye, then head out. We spend the whole day hiking a little over 4 kms, because we are moving so slowly. There are just too many birds to see! Over the course of the day we see 18 new species (check out the bird list) including several three-wattled bellbirds and elusive resplendent quetzals! The trail is quite beautiful as well. At first we walk through farmland. (I know- it's odd that farmland is part of this national park but the farms were there before the park and the government couldn't kick these people out. Plus the cut in the woods makes for good birdwatching!)

Then we enter denser forest, following, and occasionally crossing clear-flowing rivers and streams. We return hungry and tired, and so happy that we made the mistake of coming here and didn't end up slogging to the top of the volcano today.

A special moment (if you like birds):

The forest is densely green on either side of us, and somewhere in the greenery a thrush is singing its ethereal song. As we squelch through the mud, we try to listen closely for the sound of the quetzal. Perhaps if we hear one we'll be able to find it. Then, suddenly we spot a large green bird soaring through the trees ahead of us. That long tail is unmistakable- it's a quetzal! It stops, I see it! It's perched on a tree right next to the trail.

iPhone + binoculars = quetzal!

We scramble to get a good look at him, but he ends up sitting there for a while and just letting us observe.  The feathers on this bird are so brilliantly colored that they shine like polished gems, stark against the duller green foliage. The long tail coverts blow gracefully in the wind and look rather like the trail to a fancy gown. He sits, slowly moving his head back and forth. Then suddenly, he's in the air again and vanishes instantly, back into the canopy of green. 

We feel lucky to have shared some time with this magnificent bird, free and wild in its natural habitat. 

April 23rd, A day conducted at high speed. 

It's raining when wake up but slowly clears as we get ready to go. Too soon, it's time to say goodbye to our mountain home; we hop on our bikes and head downhill. The way down goes considerably faster than the way up. In fact we have to stop several times to let our rims cool down! In Boquete we stop only briefly to fill up water and mail some postcards, then it's time for another 35kms or so of downhill back to David. The road is perfect- just the right grade that you don't have to hit the brakes, and you're still going exhilaratingly fast. 

Back in David we attempt to find a vegetarian restaurant recommended by our guide, but can't find it and end up settling on large plates of rice and lentils from a slightly sketchy looking cafeteria instead. Then, on to the bus station. We have decided to take a bus from David to Santiago because several other cyclists that we met on the road and recent blogs have informed us of the awful and dangerous 200km long construction zone between these two places. 

Danny loading the bikes on top of the bus. 

Driving through it, I'm certainly glad we took the bus. There is no shoulder, just loose gravel, machinery or piles of rocks. The road is in various stages of construction, ranging from new pavement to giant holes in the road. Three things I observe seem to convey the state of things. 

1) A worker, hammering in a stake with a large black mallet, stops as the head of the mallet falls off. 

2) A worker attempts to throw a can of spray paint to others on top of a very large scaffolding... And misses. 

3) A sign: "Tramo en Construction" knocked over with tire marks on it.

Of course, there clearly was a lot of good work getting done as well. The much expanded road that will be completed at some point in the future will certainly be a lot nicer than the current one, and probably even good for cycling. 

The bus ride itself isn't too uncomfortable. The driver plays music so loudly that you have the feeling of being in a dance club, and accelerates to the point at which it sounds like the vehicle is about to take off. But, there is air conditioning! And really, nothing else besides that matters. 

Arriving in Santiago goes better than I ever could have expected. The fire station is a block away from the bus station and the guys there are happy to let us camp. They show us the bathroom, shower, and give us a huge mango and giant plates of rice for dinner! The station has wifi, and also happens to be conveniently across from a large super market and hardware store. I wish every city were this easy.