Colombia to Panama

There is no road linking Colombia and Panama. The Darien Gap is the name given to the no-mans land separating these countries, inhabited by Indians, mosquitoes, and, increasingly, Colombian guerillas. For the overland traveler, there are three transit options: cross the Darien gap on foot with the help of local guides, fly, or take a sailboat through the Caribbean Sea to from Cartagena, Colombia to to Portobelo, Panama. The overland option was out of the question to us for obvious reasons, and flying just seemed like no fun. We decided on the sailboat because we thought it would be a relatively uncomplicated, pleasant experience. If you take a sailboat, you don’t need to crate your bike, clear it through exit customs, or drain the fuel or take out the battery. You just put the bike on the boat and go.

There are several foreign yacht owners who make it their business to ferry travelers between Panama and Colombia. We chose to sail on the Melody, a yacht owned by Mark, a Californian ex-pat who has been doing the Colombia-Panama trip for almost five years. We spoke with several of his passengers who had no complaints about the trip and praised his sailing ability. When Mark came to meet us at our hotel we were pleased by his easygoing manner. The cost of a one-way fare is $250 per person, plus $250 for the bike. FYI, Mark told us that he and other yacht owners will be raising their prices soon due to fuel costs. The boat would not be leaving for a week, and in the mean time Valerie wanted to learn to SCUBA dive. We headed north to Taganga, and within four days Valerie was a certified SCUBA diver.

We arranged to meet Captain Mark and the boat at the Mobile gas station in Cartagena at 7am on the day of our departure. We had to use Mobile’s dock facilities since the yacht club forbids the loading or unloading of cargo at their dock. Taking a bike on a yacht from one country to another is technically illegal, and Mark stressed the importance of a quick load up. As mark pulled up to the dock we heard him yelling and screaming like a maniac at his passengers/crew, admonishing them for not understanding his barked orders, who were all native Spanish speakers. Somehow, they were able to secure the boat to the dock without capsizing it, and the bike loading process began.

Getting the bikes on the boat was a lot of fun. Mark used the mast, a half-inch line and a hand winch to raise the bikes into the air with a line tied between the dock and the bike to control the bikes movement towards the boat. I was a little nervous at first, but the whole process was too much like tree work for me to worry about an accident. Mark secured the bikes to the boat with short lengths of ropes, scoffing at my “puny” tie-downs. Mark was very agitated during the whole process. I thought he was stressed because his wife would not be accompanying him on this trip, and because he was paranoid about being caught smuggling our bikes. We all hoped the “careful captain” would simmer down as soon as we left the harbor.

Loaded up, we pointed the boat towards Panama and began motoring at the astonishing speed of 6 knots per hour. Mark assured us the boats speed was exceptional, even fast by yacht standards. I don’t know what I expected, but I soon appreciated the distances and speeds involved in the trip. The distance from Colombia to Panama by sea is 300 miles, meaning 50 hours of motoring at the boats top speed, or six hours if it were possible to drive the motorcycle. I began to question the wisdom of our choice and my tolerance for boredom.

Once we were underway and some distance off-shore, Mark sat us all down like a bunch of kindergarteners and explained to us the various idiosyncratic rules of the boat. For example, we were not to use the lord’s name in vain or take meat without asking. We were also not to leave cushions in undesignated areas or use fresh water for anything but drinking. Mark next explained to us that he couldn’t remember all the rules at once so he would remind us of them as the rules came to him. I thought it was a bad sign that he couldn’t remember all his rules yet he expected us to remember them. As rules came to him throughout the rest of the trip he would bark them loudly and impersonally to anyone within earshot as if he had already told them the rule a dozen times.

Between Colombia and the San Blas Islands we would have to sail for 36 hours straight, meaning a night at sea. I had no idea what a “night at sea” was until I woke up at around midnight and stumbled above deck to find Mark sleepily steering the boat. He told me it was my turn to steer. He left me half asleep at the wheel while he climbed to the front of the boat to take down the mast. During my time asleep the weather had taken a turn for the worst and the swells had gotten big. The flashes of lightning revealed a tormented sea and thunderstorms all around us. I could see the swells were coming from coming from the right side of the boat, and the wind was coming from the front. While I was trying to wake up and steer the boat at the same time I accidentally steered the boat in the wrong direction, sending mark into a rage. I knew I had steered the boat incorrectly, but I was hesitant to make any corrections while he was in the front of the boat working on the sail for fear of knocking him off the boat into the ocean. I managed to restore the boats heading to due west, and mark went below deck to sleep. It was just the open sea and me at midnight, only thunderstorms and rain for company. Swells coming from the side caused the boat to rock back and forth violently, and I had to hold on tight to keep from falling over.

Mark left without telling me what to do about the thunderstorms all around us, and my only exposure to thunderstorms thus far has been in an aviation context where they are to be avoided at all costs. At one point I was heading directly into a thunderstorm, my mind racing as the time between lightning and thunder became shorter and the thunder more powerful. I decided that the up and downdrafts so feared by airplane pilots would not be a problem for the boat, and that a lightning strike would be unlikely, so I headed right into the storm. The thunder and lightning got really intense and the rain poured down in buckets, but the boat was easy to handle and mostly unaffected by the storm.

Sailing was a completely new experience for me, especially alone at night. I managed to steer for three hours, keeping the boat on a westerly heading before I succumbed to exhaustion. I woke up the next steering victim before going below deck to try and sleep in the cramped quarters and stifling heat.

One thing that is hard to get used to about traveling on the open sea is the total lack of visual reference. You have nothing to gauge your progress by, or to steer towards. I awoke the next morning after our night at sea and everything looked the same, water everywhere. At about mid-day we spotted the Panamanian coast and South America was officially behind us. We followed the coast until dusk when we finally pulled into the southernmost islands of the San Blas Archipelago and set anchor at “the pool”, an ex-pat yachtie hangout surrounded by sandy coconut islands and coral reefs. This would be our home for the next 36 hours.

We awoke the next day and swam to the closest island with snorkel gear and snacks. It was great to be on terra firma after 48 hours on a pitching boat. Valerie and I walked around the island and swam out to the reef to snorkel. We saw lots of brain coral, barracuda, and even a nurse shark. I was really surprised to see all the marine life so close to the ex-pat community. We stayed on the island for most of the day while Mark conducted business on his boat. In addition to hauling backpackers back and forth between Panama and Colombia, he also takes food, fuel, medicine and anything else the sedentary yachtie-cruisers want for a 30% markup. The whole deck of the boat was covered with supplies destined for the yachties, making for cramped quarters for the backpackers. We met some interesting characters living in the pool. One family of four, two parents and two young girls, had lived on a small boat in the pool for the last year and a half without leaving. Another, a rich guy from New York known as “the mayor” had been in “the pool” for 10 years, only leaving every few years to go to Cartagena to have his boat bottom painted. I was stunned by their lifestyle. How could anyone live on a small boat without doing anything for years at a time? Valerie and I agreed that their lifestyle was like a self-imposed prison sentence.

The next day we weighed anchor and headed for customs, taking a nice 3-hour cruise through the archipelago. We stayed the night off another island, and then woke early to head for Portobelo, our final destination. Our last day on the water took 10 hours and was full of adventure. A few hours out of port in heavy seas, two of marks fuel jugs flew off the boat. He tried to turn around and get them, and in the process ran over the 400 pound-test fishing line trailing behind the boat, severely tangling the rudder and propeller. I ran below deck and got Mark a mask and snorkel, and in a flash he was over the side, armed with a knife to cut the fishing line loose. My job was to keep the boat steady while mark was under it. The whole process took well over an hour as I watched the jugs get pushed closer and closer to the reef. Finally, the jugs were out of sight bringing relief to all of us knowing that Mark couldn’t go after them again. Mark later told us that he didn’t tie the fuel jugs down properly; he just tossed them between the motorcycles, so when we hit heavy water they flew over the side. We ended up losing the jugs. Darn.

We pulled into Portobelo at dusk and started unloading the bikes. It was the same process as loading them, only this time we unloaded them onto a skiff. The skiff pulled up to the dock, and five or six guys muscled the bikes out. It was all remarkably easy. After all the unloading excitement was over, Valerie took off for the hotel carrying our backpacks and helmets and I was left to ride the bike back. I tried to start my Bee, but she was out of gas. I had to push Bee fully loaded a quarter mile to town in the dark with locals chasing after me trying to figure out what I was doing. I arrived at the hotel drenched in sweat and took my first shower in a week.

Early the following morning Adam set out for Colon by bus with Mauricio the moto-adventurer from Argentina. They had to do the customs work by bus as captain Mark warned them of horrible consequences if they rode their bikes without proper papers. While they were gone I rearranged our sea-scattered luggage for our journey through Panama. Five hours later they returned exasperated but successful. I had Bee gassed and re-assembled (mirrors and windshield and luggage for the trip) and we headed for Panama City within the hour. It was great to be on the road again after our crawl-pace at sea. We made more miles in one hour on Bee than we made in 24 hours at sea.

In Panama City we stayed at a highly recommended backpacker hostal. The brochure boasted air-con and TV, which was true for the living room. After Adam and I were all settled in our separate dorm rooms (No coed rooms without a reservation), we went and had a stroll through the neighborhood. That night after a few hours of stifling heat the storm of the decade began. It was the loudest thunderstorm we had ever heard. The acoustics were incredible as the thunder broke right overhead, the sound reverberating off the skyscrapers and into the hotel. I thought we were in Baghdad for a minute. The storm raged into the next day, pissing rain. There was no leaving the city on Bee in that weather so we hung out one more day. When the storm broke we set out for Bocas Del Toro where we would meet Adam’s dad for a week long Caribbean vacation. We rode over 400 miles in one day from Panama City to Bocas Del Toro, refused to stop for two police officers, and got a ticket. When we reached the continental divide at 1100 meters elevation we could see the Caribbean. We were definitely out of the Andes.

We arrived in the ultra-seedy port called Almirante at around four in the afternoon. As soon as we pulled into town locals began chasing us like a dog would chase a car. We were quickly informed that there was no way to locate lodging or parking in this eight street town without hiring a guide. We angered our first potential guide terribly by informing him that we had found our way across six countries without a guide and we intended to continue that way. He furiously informed us that we were taking his job. Oh well. We were able to find a restaurant all by ourselves, and had a great supper. The ferry we needed to transport us with Bee to the island where we would meet Adam’s dad Jim only left for Bocas at eight a.m. each morning so we had to stay the night in to catch our ferry.

We had a great time in Bocas Del Toro. I got my Advanced scuba certification, we went island hopping looking at property, we met some great people, and enjoyed hanging out with Adam’s dad and his friends. Tomorrow we head for Costa Rica.