Leaving Paradise

26th July

It would have been very easy to stay in Morillo but the road was calling and there were new adventures to be had.

Despite Santa Catalina being the most famous surf break in Panama I decided against another North/South zigzag in favour of a refreshing and hopefully scenic couple of days in the mountains on route to the Caribbean surf haven of Bocas Del Toro.

I elected to ride to a mountain town called Boquete, famed for it's perfect climate, abundant wildlife, trekking, coffee plantations, Quetzals (2nd rarest bird in the world & national treasure), adventure tours and a large Expat community of old retired buggers! The ride would take 5-6hrs in theory.

When I woke in the morning I had a savage shooting pain through my right shoulder blade and neck... I could hardly turn my head. Just what you need for a long bike ride! Like a true hero... ha! I carried on, loaded up the bike and rode off up the track sadly leaving paradise in my wake. It was super weird getting back on the bike after four days off the grid... It took some re-adjusting seeing cars and other people and I'm not sure I liked it.

The ride back up to the InterAmericana was uneventful but pretty, the most memorable part was stopping for breakfast and eating something other than porridge again!

When back on the main road I had a long drive West to Chiriqui before heading up into the mountains. The main highway through Panama (The InterAmericana) is not in good shape. 90% of the 3hr ride was through major roadworks where the government is undertaking a massive two lane extension to huge sections of the route which is currently cracking up and addled with potholes. Drainage is clearly a problem and at every river there were excavators putting in concrete drainage tunnels under the road. Drivers are constantly swerving from one side of the road to the other to avoid catastrophic drops, which good rip a wheel off a car. Traffic crawled along at 20-40mph, backing up behind huge lorries and contruction traffic, even on the bike it was hard to make good time and required a lot of concentration. Having said that I would take the bike over a bus or car along there any day!

As I got to Chiriqui it started to rain, not too bad but I got wet. The lower mountain roads were still relatively dry but you could see big, dark, menacing clouds draped over the mountains ahead, I knew what was coming! At this point my mobile data lost signal and my GPS app stopped cooperating, I would have to navigate the rest by feel!

Sure enough the rain came and came hard... I could barely see 5m in front of me but there was no where to shelter and I knew I was within half an hour of Boquete, I had to keep going. Water poured into my boots, down my back and soaked through my trousers, I was really, really wet!

Eventually I joined the main road into Boquete as the rain started to ease off. To my amazement I was passed by another guy on bike who shot me an amused grin as we dripped our way up the hill!

After a couple of laps of town I found a hostel called the Refugio Rio which looked real nice and was highly recommended. Unfortunately they were full but the lady kindly called around and got me a hostel across town with a private room for $20 and a place to park the bike. After 3 weeks away I finally had a hot shower and boy was it good!