Posts From Panama

The morning dawned clear and with no sign of the rain and cloud of last night.

Again the morning was clear with no signs of last nights rain storm.

Yet again, last nights rain is gone, and we are now convinced of the Panama rainy season weather pattern. Clear in the morning and storms in the afternoon.

Today our priority was to get started on the paper work associated with shipping the vehicle to Colombia. The latest information we have is that the ship will depart from the port of Colon - on the Atlantic side of Panama on Friday 31st July and arrive in Cartagena Colombia Sunday 2nd August.

After early morning coffee at the local McDonalds we settled down to wait for news on the progress of the police inspection and other paper work.

Today was the Canal visit - I am sure everyone who comes to Panama City visits the canal and locks at some time. Today we took what is called a partial traverse. Which means we started in Gatun Lake, the highest point of the canal, and descended 31 meters through Pedro Miguel locks and then through another 27 meters in each of the two chambers of the Miraflores Locks to the Pacific Ocean level. In the process we passed under the.

We visited an indian village - Tucipono - today situated east of the canal. The people are called the Embera and migrated from the Darien region about 40 years ago and settled in the forest east of the canal where they continued their traditional life style of slash and burn farming. In the mid 1990s the Panamanian Government created a National Park encompassing this region and as a result the Embera people where prohibited from continuing clearing land to conduct their farming. Now they rely on tourism for their primary income and this allows them to continue a way of life that is close to their traditional existence.

Today was the big day on paper work, late in the day we heard from the customs agent that all was complete and Nina's passport had been stamped to indicate that she could leave the country without the Tiger. In each of the countries we have traveled through Nina - as the owner of the Tiger - got two entry stamps in her passport, one for herself and one for the vehicle. This prevents her from leaving the Tiger behind when she leaves the country. Thus to leave Panama she needed to have the vehicle stamp effectively cancelled.

We have heard a lot about Colon while we have been in Panama, almost all of it bad. We have heard that it is ugly, poor and dangerous. We had also heard that the train ride between Balboa and Colon is very interesting. Just to emphasis this we would learn later that an American family staying at the hotel visited Colon today, catching the train over and a bus back. At the Colon end the local police insisted on giving them an escort between the train and the bus, and the bus driver would not let them open the windows of the bus even just to take a photo. As we would learn first hand the ugly and poor part was evident.

It is amazing how a one hour plane ride can take up the entire day!!

We got the Tiger from the port of Manzanillo today, in what turned out to be a surprisingly easy exercise; though it was only easy because of the assistance we got from the folks at Wilhelmsen Ship Service. After a brief stop at the Wilhelmsen office in Howard Panama we went to their office at the port of Manzanillo (100kms away) were we were guided, by a Wilhelmsen employee, through a series of steps at various port and customs offices. By 15:00 we had the Tiger and were on our way back to Panama City through yet another tropical rain storm.

Last night I downloaded renditions of the song On the Road Again by - Willie Nelson, The Loving Spoonful, Canned Heat, Bob Dylan and Tom Rush. We had them playing this morning as we drove across the Bridge of the Americas and out of Panama City. It is good to be back in the Tiger and moving again. Three weeks waiting in hotels is too much.

We heard last night that there would be a young dance group performing at the RV park tonight so we decided to stay another night. To fill in the day we drove to a nearby town named El Valle situated in the cone of an extinct volcano. From the highway a minor road wound up into the hills for about 30 km climbing 2000 ft through lush green country. We spent some time walking a jungle trail to a nice waterfall and had coffee at a shop that advertised gourmet coffee - it was good.

It seems strange to me that one crosses Panama by traveling west. The US is supposed to be North!!

In addition to some chores in nearby David we spent a much of the day exploring Bouquete. This town is famous as a retirement place for all manner of foreigners. Apparently some years back a US magazine rated it the best place in the world to retire. With this reputation we were curious to see what it had to offer. The town itself is small, consisting of only two main streets and square and a bunch of not very impressive shops - oh and a number of real estate agents. We explored the roads around the town climbing up into the mountains among the coffee plantations. The country side was beautiful and the weather balmy. We made the obligatory stop at a local coffee shop before returning to our camping spot. All in all a nice place but we don't see what the big attraction is. We did not put down any deposits on retirement villas!