Closing in on South America

Current Location: Boca del Toros, Panama
Distance cycled to date: 11,222 km
Flat tires to date: 24 (Keenan - 13, Jeff - 11)
Top speed hit to date: 78 km/h

The last week of riding has taken us from Nicaragua, through Costa Rica, and on to our last country of Central America. (That's Panama, for those of you who are still a little geographically challenged). Nicaragua continued to impress us with its flatness, though the stiff cross and headwinds took away a bit of the pleasure of riding on such a smooth surface. We stayed a night in the neat city of Masaya after making our way through the traffic of Managua, the capital. We had planned to go around it, but when we got to the intersection earlier that day we found the bypass route was in rough shape, so we figured that riding with a shoulder for 50 km would be worth the hassle of cycling through a busy Latin American capital city. We don't really know how bad that highway was, but what made our route worth it was the Pizza Hut we came across in Managua which offered something we could only dream of lately - free pop refills. Before committing to the restaurant we made sure it was in fact as many drinks as we could consume, not just a single refill. Once satisfied with their answer, we sat down and began our eat and drink-a-thon. Our family sized, stuffed crust pizza hardly filled us, but the 7 refills of Pepsi helped to give us a feeling of fullness that we usually lack. The full stomach just added to the excitement of the Managua traffic circles, where we had the chance to outrace numerous buses and taxis who seemed determined to show us that we shouldn't have entered the roundabout when we did.

We made it through the city without incident though, and the rest of Nicaragua went by quickly as we rode on a large shoulder past large lakes, large windmills, and large volcanoes. All this in such a small country. We spent our last night in Nicaragua right before the border, camped at a gas station. This was quite ordinary for us, but the gas station was far from ordinary. When we looked behind it to find a place for our tent, we found big cages with monkeys, parrots, and other exotic birds. We still have no idea why they were there. The next morning, entering Costa Rica, we were expecting to see some first world quality roads to match the developed nature of the country (and the developed nature of their prices). However, we were treated to not only the narrowest roads on the entire trip, but quite possibly the busiest as well. It was like taking I-5 traffic from southern California and sticking it on the Taimi Road outside Rocky Mountain House. For the few of you out there unfamiliar with the Taimi Road, it isn't very big. Throw in some more nasty winds, some big climbs, and it made for some generally unpleasant riding. Yes, the Costa Rican highways give you good reason to dislike the country. However, almost every single person we met there went out of their way to help us, and so as much as we'd like to hate Costa Rica we really can't stay mad at it. Just that stupid highway.

In fact, while staying in a San Jose suburb with a friend of a friend and enjoying some fantastic Costa Rican hospitality we decided to change our plans of continuing down the Panamerican highway. It was past 11 o'clock (which is waaaay past our bedtime) and while looking at a map before falling asleep we realized that we could actually head up to the Caribbean coast and make our way into Panama, avoiding what is literally called the 'Peak of Death'. It does sound pretty enticing, but when we weighed out the pros and cons of biking along a flat Caribbean coastline or doing a climb to 3200 m on a road that we were cursing daily, we finally decided on the former. And so we climbed a little, (including a terrifying tunnel, in which the deafening honking combined with the lack of lights led both of us to believe we would never make it out alive. We however, did). We then enjoyed a 1400 m descent into a flat banana and pineapple land. We flew through jungle and a national park, and the descent awarded us with a new top speed of 78 km/h, and made me feel sure that 80 km/h is easily within reach. Twice we attempted to camp a night on an agro-tour farm, first for pineapples and second for chocolate (yes, a chocolate farm!), but neither really panned out. We did get a chance to see some pineapples growing though which was quite a highlight, because who ever gets to see pineapples growing? Do you know where pineapples come from? Is it a tree, is it a shrub, is it a root? Go to Costa Rica and you can see for yourself. Just don't ask to camp there - it's not allowed.

Yesterday we entered Panama. It was a triumphant moment which dissipated quickly as we had to get our bikes across a decaying railway bridge which was only wide enough for one lane of traffic, and not made for cycling across at all. Luckily for Jeff there was a chainlink fence on the side to prevent him from tipping into the river when his bike tire got stuck between two planks. Panamanian officials at the border seemed to want us to produce some sort of ticket out of the country, which we didn't really understand. We're on bikes. Jeff wanted to just tell them we were going to bike through the Darien Gap, but we weren't sure what kind of senses of humour they had, so we told them we had a flight booked online. First she said that wasn't good enough, but somebody else behind the counter seemed to like us so he told her to let us in. Ten US dollars and two stamps later, we were officially in Panama.

The reason that we didn't originally look at this route was because on our map, the road ends in the town of Almirante. From there you can catch a boat up to Boca del Toros on an island off the coast, and from there catch another boat down to Chiriqui Grande. We got to Almirante and went to take our boat across, but we then found out that there is now in fact a highway built between the two towns. We thought since we were so close, we might as well take a day to check out a Caribbean island, because how many chances do you have to check out a Caribbean island? We also found out that the boat no longer runs from the island to Chiriqui Grande. What we also found out after we got here is that the Panamanian road engineers seem horribly sadistic. It seems that they have found the steepest hill/cliffs that they can find, and then proceed to build a road straight up it. We have seen quite a few roads in the past 6 months. In fact, over 11 thousand kms worth of roads. But we haven't yet seen roads this steep, and this long. The grade (which we would guess is well over 15%, if not much more) combined with the heat and humidity make for some brutal riding. We just have to keep remembering how we avoided the Peak of Death, and we've left the crazy traffic of Costa Rica behind.

Tomorrow we'll take the boat back to Almirante and continue along the Panamanian mainland. We have our fingers crossed that the road will flatten out a little bit, but know that this is just a dream as everybody that we've talked to has told us the opposite. So, we'll have another day of up and down, and then a day of up to the continental divide before we head back down to the Pacific coast. But from there it's got to just be smooth sailing to Panama City on a flat highway with a wide shoulder. Because if there's one thing we've learned, it's that tomorrow is always going to be easier than today. At least that's what we always tell ourselves...