Still in Panama, Panama

Dec 4, 2004

We went to see the canal today. Mark and I arranged to hire a cab for two hours for ten dollars an hour. The canal was fairly impressive, and we got to film a local announcer giving a spiel about it in spanish. Then we filmed a group of four guys taking turns standing in front of the canal and photographing each other in very dramatic poses. On the way back, we asked the cabdriver to take us up the canal a little, and he started yelling that we only hired him to drive us to the canal and back. So I turned the camera on and Mark debated with him the meaning of hiring a taxi for two hours. The cab driver explained that it was his car and not ours and he would drive it where he wanted. We had only been there a half hour, so told him we would only pay him for the half hour and fifteen minutes he took us there, or 7 dollars. He went nuts again and told us he would take us to the police. Evidently the best thing to do when that happens is to tell them to. He drove us back to the hotel, and we paid him $10 for his hour. Evidently he didn't understand that two hours means two hours of going where ever we want. Mark explained to him that we could pay him to park the cab for two hours or drive it in a circle around the hotel and it was the same $20, and that the driver was stupid not to earn the other ten dollars. The driver said that no matter what, two hours didn't include going further up the canal, and Mark should respect him and not call him stupid. It was actually quite funny to watch.

I'm wondering if a show couldn't be made of just getting in cabs and infuriating the drivers.

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.

David, Panama

Nov 30, 2004

David is the second largest city in Panama. After a long day of travel and adventure, and a bit of anxiety crossing out of Costa Rica, constantly looking over our shoulders and expecting the worse at police checkpoints, we rode through David in darkness, looking for a hotel.

The Panamerican Highway from San Jose, Costa Rica was extremely poor and full of potholes that make you wonder if you broke a rim every time you hit one. The Highway went up to about 14,000 feet, through a forest that was covered in mist. It was freezing. Turns were extremely tight, and because it is the only road that traverses the country, it was full of trucks and tour buses, repairs and missing lanes. There are several very dramatic valleys with little towns nestled between the mountains. the potholes are enormous, and often full of water.

I went to buy gas and found out someone had given me a counterfeit 5000 Costa Rica shekel note. I thought about trying to exchange it with one of the backpackers on the border but decided to keep it as a souvenir instead. So I am out $11.

In Buenos Aires, Costa Rica, we stopped for lunch and my motorcycle, for no reason I can think of, picked itself straight off the kickstand and fell over to the right against a car and broke the mirror, not to mention scraping the side of the car. Of course I didn't see it happen, and have no idea how it could have. Previously, the bike has never shown an inclination to  lift itself up off the kickstand and fall in the oposite direction.

Fortunately, the owner of the car just happened to be standing beside the bike when I got there. He was very pleasant, and I offered him $40 for the damage, in order to maintain the sense of pleasantness that pervaded the scene. He suggested we go to a repair shop to see what it would cost, and so Mark and I followed him to the repair shop.

We passed five repair shops on the way to the special one, where he went inside and brought out the owner. After looking at the car, the owner of the bodyshop told me the door and fender of the car would have to be painted, because my bike had scratched a couple of places where the car had already been keyed by someone else. It was going to cost me a lot, and I could not tell if he intended to paint around or over the rust spots on the fender.

I offered the guy $50 and 5000 Costa Rica shekels. He held firm for $112, so he could get the side of his car painted, repeating over and over that it was not his fault that my bike fell against his car. I said "okay, I will go to the automatic teller," got on my bike and headed off in that direction, with Mark right behind me.

The ride to the border was fast and the falling rain made the potholes easier to see. 

I'm sure somewhere in Buenos Aires, Costa Rica a woman is telling her husband he is an idiot for not taking the $50.

On the border with Panama I had to pay $5 for a visa, because I'm from the USA, and Mark, being Dutch, didn't have to pay anything.