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Archive for the Panama Category

Panama City and shipping the van

By Witt on September 13, 2014

Our van is hopefully on it’s way to Colombia now. The process of shipping out of Panama was unpleasant and expensive, and we wish they’d just build the 30 miles of road that are missing between Panama and Colombia! But it’s over, and supposedly the process on the Colombian side is easier.

The short version is that because our van is 3″ taller than the door height of a high-cube container, we had to ship roll-on roll-off, which is where you hand over your keys and they drive it onto the boat. Because of that, we had to build a wall in the van to block off the living area from the cab so that our stuff wouldn’t all get stolen.

The Great Wall of the Sparksmobile

A group of travelers waiting in a smelly police parking lot for our VIN inspections.

These folks are from Florida. They aren’t shipping, but their truck is so cool I had to take a picture of it. Yes, that is a real airplane fuselage on top!

While waiting at the port I had the opportunity to watch customs officials helping themselves to the contents of trucks. This guy is snagging a nice new shirt for his buddy.

We hired a shipping agent to help us through the process. It involved two full days, at least 2 dozen copies of a dozen different documents, and innumerable stamps, signatures, and inspections, followed by a day spent in the port of Manzanillo, a loud, dirty and thoroughly unpleasant place. I’m exaggerating, but only a little.

If you’re interested in what the process was like, I posted a detailed write-up on expeditionportal. If not, read on for photos from the rest of our time in Panama City!

While not dealing with shipping, we enjoyed some of the sights of Panama City, in particular the famous canal.

The Puente de los Americas (Bridge of the Americas) spans the canal a short distance from our hotel.

We see giant cargo ships passing behind our hotel every day.

The highlight of our time here was a visit to the Miraflores locks where we had a nice dinner and watched the locks in operation.

The locks had a great visitor center, which featured models of the trains used in the construction of the canal.

To get back to Panama City from Colon, we rode the Panama Canal Railway, which we had been promising to Quinn for months. It was a big hit!

The inside of the train was very nicely done in wood.

We visited the Casco Viejo neighborhood of the city.

It’s slowly being gentrified and features a variety of newly restored buildings, empty hulks of buildings, and ruins of churches.

We stopped at a bar for ceviche and a couple of beers.

This entry is filed under Colombia, Panama.

The Road to Panama City

By Witt on September 8, 2014

I can think of a few significant milestones we’ve reached on our trip thus far. Setting out, after so much work, saving, and planning was a huge one. Reaching Inuvik, NWT, Canada, the northernmost point of our trip, before turning around and heading south was another. Crossing into Mexico, our first non-English speaking country on this trip was also big. After five months in Mexico and only one stamp in our passport to show for it, entering Guatemala was another.

Today we crossed the Puente de los Americas, the Bridge of the Americas, across the Panama Canal. It’s not like we entered a new continent (that will happen when we fly to Columbia in a week’s time, but it marks the farthest we’ll drive before shipping the Sparksmobile across the Darien Gap.

Backing up, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share the last few days of the Myrick visit. After we left the tree house hotel we drove to Jacó, a surf town on the Pacific coast. We were only there for one night, but we enjoyed some beach time and just hanging out by the pool.

Playing in the pool at Jacó Beach

Marianne kickin’ it poolside

Looking down Jacó Beach

After one more night in Alajuela we drove Mike and Marianne to the airport for a reluctant goodbye. We’re so happy they made the trip down to join us, and we had a great time with them.

By a fortunate coincidence, our friends Will and Cate, whose house we occupied for three weeks in Panama, happened to be flying out of Costa Rica the night before our departure, and we got to enjoy an evening with them on their way through.

What’s been at the forefront of our minds lately though is shipping the van. We’d been awaiting dates from our shipping agent, and we found out last Thursday that the shipping date was to be September 12, and that the next date wouldn’t be until mid-October. So after hastily packing up the van we said goodbye to Frank and Mike, our hosts in Costa Rica, and headed out of town. We left on Saturday and had to be in Panama City to start the shipping paperwork by Tuesday morning.

Yellow Puppy getting to know his new friend, Froggy the Monkey, that we picked up in Costa Rica.

We decided to cross the border back into Panama using the only one we haven’t yet crossed, inland near the town of Rio Sereno. Although we became a little concerned when the last few km of road on the Costa Rican side were dirt (we were concerned that the road on the Panama side would also be unpaved, which may have made us late arriving in Panama City), it turned out to be the right decision, as the roller coaster road took us through some beautiful hill country. And as a bonus we stayed out of the heat for one more night!

The central highlands of Eastern Costa Rica and Western Panama are full of lush greenery and home to lots of coffee farms. A few hours after this photo was taken we were driving through a downpour!

Sunday was a long day – we finished crossing the border and eating lunch at 1pm, and drove to within 100km of Panama City arriving at a campsite on the beach after dark.

We were close enough to our destination to allow us to spend a few hours playing in the waves before our departure the next morning.

We arrived in the city and got to cross over the amazing Bridge of the Americas, watching a huge container ship cross beneath us. We splurged on a week at a nice hotel right on the water, since we intend to visit the Canal museum and do some other touristy stuff while we’re here.

Driving across the Bridge of the Americas into Panama City

Downtown Pamama City

We can watch container ships sail into and out of the canal from our room. (And the pool’s not bad either)

This entry is filed under Costa Rica, Panama. | 11 Comments

Back to Costa Rica

By Witt on July 31, 2014

With our hosts Will and Cate returning from Uruguay, we reluctantly packed up the van for the trip to the house we’ve rented in Costa Rica for August. We’re sad to leave beautiful Boquete and the wonderful house we’ve been staying in, but we’re very excited to have 3 different sets of friends and family from home visiting us in Costa Rica!

Last happy hour in Boquete

Shortly after leaving Boquete the van turned over 100,000 miles. 20,000 of those have come since we started on our trip last June. It’s weird to think that we drove all the way from Denver to extreme northern Canada, then to Panama, and only covered as many miles as some people do driving back and forth to work every day. Having been that person in the past, I’d have to say the past year’s miles have been much more fun!

We planned to drive up the Carribean coast on our way back. The drive along the narrow, winding road across the continental divide was very pretty, with cool cloud forests and lots of fog.

We left the cool of the highlands and arrived on the sweltering Carribean coast. We used a different border crossing this time, and it was probably the easiest border we’ve done in Central America. Knowing that Costa Rica is expensive, we stocked up on booze at the duty free at the border. Gotta love $4 bottles of wine.

This is serious fruit and banana country. We saw plants belonging to Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte, and even had to stop at a banana crossing.

Really, there are bananas in the blue bags. Here are banana trees with the bagged bananas.

We drove a little way into Costa Rica and found a great campground by the beach near Cahuita. The camp host was super friendly and we spent the evening lounging in the hammocks listening to the waves crash.

The beach!

We spent a couple of days in the beautiful Orosi Valley before heading to Alajuela to check into our rental house. We spent time sightseeing and enjoying the cool weather.

Looking down into the Orosi Valley

This is what’s left of the oldest church in Costa Rica.

Our campsite had a pool and a very nice setting.

These vultures arrived early in the morning to dry their wings in the sun

We were visited by a pair of raucous parrots.

We stopped by a botanic garden on our way to Alajuela. It’s famous for it’s orchids.

This entry is filed under Costa Rica, Panama. | 3 Comments

More from Boquete

By Witt on July 24, 2014

We wrapped up our last week in Boquete with more hiking and birds, then packed up the van once again to head back to Costa Rica. Some friends and family will be visiting us there, and we’re very much looking forward to that!

We went on another waterfall hike in the jungle.

More fun than the hike was this tiny little puppy that the caretaker had!

Quinn had a great time on the hike, once we convinced him to go.

Hammock time at the house

Jen went on a birding tour at one of the coffee plantations near town.

And our favorite blue birds are still hanging out around the house!

I put together a video slideshow with more photos. I couldn’t get it to play in Firefox on my mac, but it works fine in Safari, so if it doesn’t work try a different browser. It’s in HD, so be patient and run it in full screen mode!

This entry is filed under Panama. | 3 Comments

Boquete, Panama

By Witt on July 16, 2014

We are still “sitting” at a house here in Panama. It’s been very relaxing, and although the area is gringo heaven (not much need to speak Spanish), there is tons to do, the climate is perfect (we eat most meals outside on the covered patio, even if it’s raining), and it’s super-quiet. Muy tranquilo, as they say.

Photo posts seem popular, so without further ado…

Coffee is huge here. The valleys around town are covered with fincas (ranches). We toured one last week and learned a little about growing coffee.

The grounds (landscaping, not coffee grounds) were beautiful.

Apparently the equivalent of a sommelier in the coffee world is a “cupper.” We learned a little about how they rate coffee.

Smell the coffee!! Apparently one variety from this valley called “Giesha” sold for $350 per pound last year. And did you know that coffee is the world’s most heavily traded commodity after oil? It’s the other stuff that makes the world go round.

What’s gonna happen if I pull this chain?

We had a really fun couple of days with Phil, who visited us here while on a surfing tour of Central America. Phil is the brother of Jen’s grad school buddy Bill.

There’s an interesting geological feature outside of town called “Los Ladrillos.” It’s a popular rock climbing spot.

There’s a local guy who makes carvings on dead trees in various places around town.

We went for a hike to see some waterfalls. This one was right on the road though.

Hiking in the jungle

It took us about 1.5 hours to reach the falls, which weren’t as pretty as the ones by the road. But the hike itself was worthwhile.

Giant Panamanian avocados. One makes more than enough guac for happy hour.

There’s this old castle outside of town. The story goes that a guy was building it for his wife who never got a chance to come down to see it.

Will, who lives in the house we’re staying at, was generous enough to let me use his bike. There are so many beautiful rides around here I probably won’t have a chance to experience them all.