Panama City, Panama

Dec 2, 2004

I will be here for three days, arranging the shipment of the bikes to Quito, Ecuador. We are staying at the Hotel Montreal. The ride down was eventful, as we got pulled over for crossing the double yellow line to pass several long lines of cars in a construction zone. The first officer who pulled us over wanted our licenses, then began writing in a pad of some sort. He went on for a while and then told us the fine was $40 each. We said we didn�t have that much money, so he said it could be $40 for both of us. I had just bought gas and only had $7. Mark had $3, so the fine for both of us was $10. In the next town, the officer pulled us over and told us we were committing the same offense. He found a brochure of some sort in the back of his car and pretended to be writing a ticket too.

There is no way he could have seen us, so we told him we had just paid another officer for the same offense. He wrote the information down, then got on the radio and tried to find out who had the fine in his pocket. Because it was such a small amount, I'm pretty sure none of the officers wanted to split it, so he came back to us and asked if we remembered the name of the officer who we paid. We described him, the officer gave us back our licenses, then went off
in search of his cut of the fine. Because they wear bright orange vests, the officers were pretty easy to spot hiding under trees, so I went off pretty fast while Mark rode more conservatively. I didn't get pulled over again, but he did, for exceeding the speed limit by a cop who had followed him for more than 35 minutes. He used his GPS to show the officer that he wasn�t speeding, told him he wouldn't show him the license, and wasn't going to pay, and that he had six
months to spend in Panama if the officer wanted to take him to the station. Mark said he was interested in seeing the jail. The officer told him that wasn't necessary and let him go.

If I got pulled over in the US for crossing the double yellow line to pass traffic in a construction zone at 80 MPH, I would be overjoyed to pay the officer $40 and be on my way.

The road was great once you get halfway toward the capital, two lanes in either direction, with few potholes and excellent drainage. The landscape is rolling hills, lush green plains, and waterfalls cascading down the side of distant mountains. The Bridge of the Americas is spectacular at night over the canal, and Panama City is clean, well laid out, and well constructed. The cash machines dispense dollars.

I wonder who built it all...

At the hotel, we met up with some of the guys Mark had met at the Horizons Unlimited meeting in Mexico. They were for the most part a borish lot of penny pinchers hanging around together because none of them spoke Spanish. One of them, also Mark, was writing a book about his experiences on the trip. Though unasked, he said his trip through Mexico could be described in one word, Intensity. So he is now Intensity Mark. They took us to a whorehouse where Intensity Mark impressed us both by paying a fat hooker three times the going rate for fat hookers and going off for fifteen minutes with her, then coming out of the room in the back zipping up his pants like he had accomplished something intense. Another one was BMW Bill, who is just lonely and wants a woman to ride on the back of his motorcycle with him. He used to be a drug addict and alcoholic, and now doesn't do anything except tell people how miserable his life was. Why can't he have found religion instead of motorcycle travel? Then there was the Swede, a tall, thin man in his early 20s with long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. He was in the right place to meet a woman, was what the women in this part of the world fantasize about, wanted to meet one, but couldn't. Was it because he hasn't had a shower since starting the trip, has one set of clothes that he hasn't washed except by riding in the rain, or a combination of the two? You can smell him around the corner. He used to have a coke problem, and is on his way to Colombia. Of course he has no jacket, and his plan for riding in the Andes is to buy a native poncho. This could get intense.

By far this is the easiest of all the Central American countries for an American to feel at home in.