April Cycles Central America: David to Panama City

We did this ride in 5 straight days. This is the most consecutive days we have done the entire trip and also the longest in terms of consecutive kilometers. Surprisingly we didn´t get as exhausted as I expected we would. Part of that had to do with the weather. It is beginning to be the rainy season, so we had clouds all day every day and rain every afternoon, so as a result it was much cooler. When we have had long distances to cover in the past we have tried to break it into shorter distances or at least find some place to stop along the way. We couldn´t do this with Panama though, cause there is really nothing to see between David and Panama City and we were under a deadline to get here because of our flights. I had been really looking forward to biking in Panama since I was an exchange student here. When I lived here, I didn´t get the opportunity to travel as much as I would have liked. Sadly, what we saw was disappointing. :( The scenery in Panama is by far the most boring of all the countries we´ve cycled in, and I can even go as far as saying it´s even ugly in places. We rode the Pan-American Highway the whole way, which in many parts is like a standard US freeway with multiple lanes across, which isn´t the most lovely thing to do a cycle tour on. There was lots of traffic and all the forest that I imagine was once along the highway has been clear cut to make room for towns, homes and farms. Most of the farms seemed to be vacant, we occasionally saw livestock and crops, but not a whole lot of it. I had ridden the bus between David and Panama City so many times, and I was certain that Panama was completely flat! I could not have been more wrong! This was pretty difficult biking, especially since it was so many days in a row. :(

Day 1: David to Tole (106 km / 67 miles) Tuesday April 3rd

The first day was really exhausting because we had not been expecting hills, and there were hills the whole way! The first 25 km leaving David we didn´t have a shoulder, then the road suddenly improved and we had a 10 ft wide smooth shoulder. The hills seemed to get a little easier after this. And they weren´t real difficult hills, but they were just one after another and it got tiring. Also we had no idea where we were, we had no map, no kilometer posts of road signs to give us any idea of our progress, so that made it a little hard too. It is nice being able to mark progress, it helps keep me motivated. The sun stayed hidden away behind the clouds almost the whole day, only peeking out around noon when we were taking a break anyway, so it didn´t matter. By 4 pm, we had one last big hill to go up to get to Tole, the town we were staying the night in, and it started raining pretty good. I didn´t mind though, all my bags are water proof and I was already wet with sweat. I have sweat more on the ride through Panama than I have the whole trip, probably due to the humidity. It was rather gross. It will be interesting to go home and not feel humidity and to actually feel what it´s like to be cold again! Tole was about 2km off the highway, up another giant hill. It is annoying to have to venture off the highway, especially up a hill, but we were in the middle of nowhere and we had no other options! We stayed at a convenience store that also rents out rooms. It was cheap and nice, only $10. I was so tired I went to bed before 7!

Some interesting things about the day. Tons and tons of cashew trees along the highway, and no one picks the fruit or collects the nuts! Seems like an incredible waste to me. The fruits I don´t think are actually edible, but you can make juice with them, really good juice. We saw tons of wasted fruit the whole way to Panama City.

Also we see lots of dead things on the side of the highway, usually dogs, sometimes cats, cows, snakes, iguanas and frogs. But today we saw a dead alligator, with no visible water nearby! It was quite strange, but also kind of exciting, we have no idea where it came from. :) It was a pretty small alligator, about 3 feet.

Got my first flat tire of the trip, a little piece of metal, no bigger than a staple got in my back tire causing a slow leak. Of course it had to be the back tire, making it more difficult to change!

Day 2: Tole to Santiago ( 95km / 59 miles) Wednesday April 4th

We´d expected climbs today, cause another cyclist had left an overview of the ride at our hostel in David. It was awful though, several long hills, multiple kilometers long. This mountainous area lasted for 30 long kilometers. We at least started seeing more kilometer posts, so we had some idea where we were. We were in the middle of nowhere all day though, no towns or places to refill water, at once place we stopped, they told us the water was not potable. It once again stayed cloudy and cool and was even foggy and quite pretty in the morning. But all the humidity in the air had me soaking with sweat all day again. I was exhausted all day, wanted to drop dead on several occasions. I burned a ton of calories and was constantly hungry, so ate a ton. After the 30 km of mountains ended, we had a huge down hill of about 10 km, then continued to have less difficult hills for about 30 more km. Once we got close to Santiago, we started to have a little more flat between hills and the hills got smaller. My legs we like jelly at this point. The sky was turning dark as we rode in to Santiago, there was wind thunder and lightning. It looked like we were riding into the eye of a hurricane, we of course got rained on again! We stopped at the first hotel we saw in Santiago, a cheap Chinese run place. It was conveniently located across the street from a restaurant I liked that the bus used to stop at half way though the ride for people to eat at. So we loaded up on Panamanian food there, then went a block away to get ice cream at McDonalds, then went another block down to the grocery store and had even more ice cream and a half gallon of milk. By this time I was feeling a little bit revived. :) Went to bed real early again.

Got a second flat tire, cause I didn´t remove all the metal bits from the tire the first time!

Also doesn´t seem to be much availability of fresh fruits or vegetables in Panama, so naturally I have been craving what I can´t have. We haven´t seen fruit stands like in other countries. We did find a watermelon stand on the way into Santiago and I was so excited, but our watermelon was rotten! So I´ve started eating canned fruit from the grocery store!

Day 3: Santiago to Anton ( 115 km / 71 miles ) Thursday April 5th

Finally some flat! It was easy going all day!! There were some hills but they didn´t even feel like hills, it was wonderous! It was cloudy again and we even had a light breeze. Lots of street signs and kilometer posts today, and we were able to keep up a pretty quick speed. The sun came out for 2 hours at the most and we were mostly in the shade at that time! We made it the 95 km to Penonome (our original planned stopping point) easy. We ate at the McDonalds there. I´d have been happy eating tuna or beans, the stuff we´d already bought from the grocery store, but Craig couldn´t resist McDonald´s. It was very popular with locals, there was a huge line! It took 35 minutes from the time we got in line to the time we got our food. They have strawberry soda in the fountain there! It rained while we were eating, so we thought we were safe. We decided to keep going to the next town, Anton, 20 km away since we were still feeling so good. It again was easy riding, but we got absolutely poured on! There was water sloshing in my shoes, it was quite fun! :) We hauled ass to limit our time in the rain, cause Craig doesn´t like being wet, and we managed to do the 20 km in just over an hour. That´s probably a record for us. There was only one cheap hotel in town and it wasn´t really cheap, they´d jacked up the price for Semana Santa (All Saints Week). So it was $28! The power went out shortly after we arrived and we again went to bed early. We actually still felt good and probably could have gone to the next town to look for a cheaper hotel.

Day 4: Anton to La Chorrera ( 96 km / 60 miles) Friday April 6th

The first 12 km of the day to the next town were easy riding, but after that, the easy riding came to sad end! We had lots of large hills to go over, one after another for about 25 km. We then got a short break from the hills before we had a final 4 bad hills to go over. The last one was a small mountain pass, and at this time I got another flat tire! Craig of course was way ahead of me, as he almost always is. I have asked him many times not to do this. He rides ahead and waits for me, says it´s hard for him to keep pace with me. He has all the tire changing equipment in his bike bags, and I had to walk my bike up this mountain pass and just hope he had stopped somewhere along the way and not gone the whole way up! Luckily he wasn´t too far, but I was still really mad! I fixed the tire and we got over the hill. The last 30 some kilometers were more rolling hills, but easier. It was a very exhausting day and for some reason I was getting side aches and stomach cramping, which made it even harder. To find a hotel in La Chorrera we had to get off the freeway. There were actually exit ramps here, instead of cross streets, and none of the exits were marked, so we just chose one at random. We must have looked lost, cause a family stopped in their car and helped us find a hotel. It was close by and only $12 for 12 hours, haha! :) We weren´t near food, but took a taxi into town. It was Good Friday and the town was shut down, very little was open. Craig found a Dairy Queen to eat at and I got yogurt and beans and chips and an avocado from the grocery store. We walked around town after eating looking for an internet place so we could look at a map of Panama City and find out where our hostel was located. I was surprised by how dead it was, we almost gave up looking then found a little place on the second floor of a building, almost didn´t see it. Felt very lucky to find it. We wrote down directions and headed back to our hotel to go to bed early yet again. We had some trouble getting back to the hotel, the taxi driver didn´t know where it was, and neither did we! He drove us around until eventually we passed it, that was luck!

Day 5: La Chorrera to Panama City ( 57 km / 35 miles ) Saturday April 7th

We left a little later than we have been the rest of the days, 6 am, slightly over staying our 12 hour limit. :) It was no problem though. We had some rolling hills to get to Arraijan, the next town on the highway, but really nothing bad. Then a series of long lovely down hills to the Bridge of the Americas, that crosses over the canal. This part of the highway was really pretty, it was foggy and we were surrounded by green rainforest and no development! It reminded me of the 163 into downtown San Diego. We continued to have our giant 10 ft wide shoulder, which we´ve had almost the whole way, but it went away right before getting on the bridge, when it disappeared completely. There was no shoulder at all on the bridge, luckily there were 2 lanes in each direction, so cars could go around us. It was hard to enjoy the views though because of this! I was focused on getting off the bridge! Signage coming off the bridge was confusing and we ended up out on the Amador Causeway. It was built with the stuff that was dug up in the construction of the canal. It is a lovely palm lined boardwalk out into the water, and was a lovely place to get lost. We had views of downtown and of the bridge from there. We only had a little trouble navigating the rest of the way through town. The original route we planned didn´t allow bikes, luckily my Lonely Planet map was detailed enough that we were able to choose another way. It was nice riding through town, it was much more developed than I remember it being. It is by far the most developed city in Central America, tons of money here, lots of sky scrapers. Lots of stuff that wasn´t here last time I was, and it looks like there is on going construction. It was a very pretty sky line and we encountered nice bike paths. There was very little traffic because of Easter, lots of people have vacated the city. We got very close to our hostel and called the place cause we didn´t know the rest of the way. The owner came out and met us and walked us the rest of the way.

What a relief to be done!

Yesterday and today have been relaxation days. Nothing is open today anyway. Not much to do. Just reading. Tomorrow we will visit Parque Metropoletana, the Canal and Casco Viejo and of course look for snow cones! We also have to find a suitcase for my bike and a box for Craigs and pack up. Tuesday afternoon I fly home.