Day 212 - 225: Panama
Aha, fuck. I am so far behind on this again. Feels like it’s the end of semester, I haven’t studied, and am now trying to figure out what happened all year before some deadline, which I’m putting as tonight. Tho in my defense my external folding Bluetooth keyboard that I connect to my phone stopped working and there was no way I was going to write these entries without a keyboard.
So I need to look back on a shitty patchwork of random notes, some photos, my Strava history, and my saved locations on Google Maps to figure out what happened 3+ weeks ago from the beginning of Panama… Give me 10 mins…
Ok, I’m back. A couple of hours later and a new coffee shop, but I’m back. This will be a quick entry it seems, as I’ve forgotten much. Serves me right for falling so far behind.
The first day in Panama, I cycled 70ish kms to a town called David. I had made good time over the last few weeks and was in plenty of time to meet a friend in Colombia on April 2, so I decided to take a rest day here. I went to the local bike shop during the rest day to see if they had tires, but 27.5’s smaller than 1.9 inch are hard to come by here. However, I did end up buying clip-on aero bars just to have more hand position options. I then spent the rest of my rest day rearranging all the shit on my handlebar to fit on these aero bars.
The next day was an easy 92 kms that I don’t really remember. I found a campsite on the iOverlander app that was just a large grassy spot at the back of a man’s house. It was pretty nice, overlooking a lake. I asked if it was possible to swim in the lake. “Sure,” he said, “just watch out for the crocodiles”… I didn’t go swimming in the lake…
The next day was 100 kms with 1500 meters of elevation to a town called Santiago. This was a day of absolute puncture hell. While bombing it down a hill, I got a massive rear tire blowout. All I remember is suddenly fighting for control of the bike while trying to use my one working brake to stop.
There wasn’t a drop of air left in the tire. The puncture was massive. There was no hope of sealant fixing that. So with the sun beating down, I switched the rear tire to tubes. However, I remember thinking that this probably wouldn’t work due to the size of the puncture. Anything on the road would likely go through the tire hole and puncture the tube. But it was worth a try, I thought.
I got maybe 10 more kms and was flat again. I was right, the tire wasn’t providing enough protection to the tube due to the size of the puncture. I decided that I would just repair the tube and try to get to the next town. A few minutes later, I was in the same position again.
Fuck, I thought. It’s getting dark. I did have a solution, though I had been avoiding it out of laziness. I did have a spare new tire, but it would only fit the front wheel. So I removed the front tubeless tire, converted it to tubed, and put it on the rear. Then I put the new tire on the front. Now I was running fully tubed, which feels vulnerable. By the time I had finished this exercise, it was maybe 20 minutes to sunset and I still had 20+ kms to the next town. I dislike cycling in the dark, but it couldn’t be helped. Had no more problems and arrived in the dark to a hostel.
I took the next day off. I did go to bike shops, but they were all closed. I only later realized it was because it was Good Friday. On Saturday I returned to the bike shop and while they were nice, they didn’t have the needed tire sizes and said they couldn’t do anything about my broken brake. I resigned myself to cycling on tubes until Colombia and bought some puncture repair kits. The guy was amazed about my trip and took some photos and gifted me some electrolytes. Thank you!
The first day at that hostel, I met one older German guy and a young backpacker obsessed with bird watching. The next day, Mary, another bike traveler, arrived at the hostel. She was also going through puncture hell, though hers was worse due to her pump not working. The seal was broken on the thingy you push down, meaning no pressure in the chamber, meaning it couldn’t push air. We tried elastic bands and sellotape and all sorts in replace of the missing seal. Eventually, we found that one of my tubeless repair kits had a small seal on the threads of its container that fit the pump and allowed it to build pressure.
I always find the resourcefulness of bike travelers to be amazing. I’m fairly sure if you give them a couple of elastic bands and a thumbtack and ask them to build a laser-guided missile system, they’d make a fair go at it. While I still feel a little bit of imposter syndrome, I guess over the last 7 months, at least some of this resourcefulness must be rubbing off on me.
During this pump debugging session, I thought it would be a good idea to check my first aid kit to see if there would be anything that could help. Only problem being that I couldn’t find it. I then realized that I hadn’t used it since helping someone with a cut about a month previously. I guess I must have left it behind then. I’ve had no reason to use it, so didn’t miss it. Oops…
The next day, Mary and I decided to cycle together. This was a good decision as she had one puncture and so she didn’t have to rely on our DIY pump solution and could just use mine.
While stopped for a snack break outside a shop, a guy comes up to us and tells us his life story. He has more than 20 kids and more than 40 grandkids. He then gives us $5 to buy lunch. We gladly buy a whole cooked chicken in the next town with it. Thank you stranger!
That evening, we camped at the back of a gas station. Safe, free, showers, toilet access, food, and a good story. Camping at gas stations and fire stations and the like isn’t something I’ve really done until now. This was a good experience so I guess these will become more of a staple from now on.
The next day, Mary was very worried about her tires and had decided that she didn’t want to cycle into Panama City due to rumors of the roads being quite dangerous, so she took the bus and I continued cycling 111 kms, putting me just 40 kms from Panama City the next day. I found some place called something like “Traveler’s Motel” or something like that on Google Maps, so decided to aim for that. I arrived soaked through and realized that it was mostly a “pay by the hour” type place. I was too tired and soaked to care, so she gave me a reasonable nightly rate and a place to lock my bike and I just didn’t think much more about where I was sleeping.
The next day was a short cycle into Panama City. Though any bikers here thinking about this, I would urge you to consider just getting the bus for the last 50 kms. It’s not interesting and the roads are pretty dangerous. Crossing the bridge into the city was an interesting experience. There was a narrow pedestrian walkway (kind of), or the option to brave the road. I thought I was being smart and safe by using the “walkway”. This was a mistake. The bike barely fit, my trousers got cut to pieces, electrical boxes placed in the stupidest places meant I had to lift my bike, and the walkway kept getting narrower. At some point, the bike just wouldn’t fit anymore so I had to take off the panniers, lift the bike a few meters, go back to get my panniers, put my bike back together while playing dodgeball (if the cars were the ball), and then ended up on the road anyway.
Checked into a cheap but nice hostel in Panama City and chilled around the city for a few days. I got my bike box from a bike shop who also managed to repair my broken break. I had resigned myself to having to replace this so this was great. Feels like a luxury have 2 working breaks now!
I then booked my flight to Medellín because fuck crossing the Darién Gap. I booked my flight for 5 days time but through some third-party website (Kiwi). This was a terrible idea. Firstly, they got my date of birth wrong. It is correct on their system, but when they booked my flight with the airline, it was incorrect by one day. They of course couldn’t fix this and I needed to fix it with the airline. They failed to realize the only reason I went with them was so I could communicate in English.
I then added the “sports equipment” and paid 3x the price of my flight for this. This sports equipment then spent the next 5 days in the “processing” queue. I had daily messages with them asking for an update, but they said they were processing it. The copy-paste answers I was getting contained factual errors and showed they didn’t read or understand anything I had said.
With 1 day to go, they said that though I paid and ordered in plenty of time, they couldn’t guarantee my sports equipment would be processed before my flight. In hindsight, I should have just done it directly on the airline website myself. So I arrived at the airport and had to repay the sports equipment fee. I was also over weight so had to unpack the bike and rearrange it. The bike box also had holes which he wouldn’t accept so had to cover it in plastic. Tho the airline agents were very helpful with all of this.
I was hit with a stone wall of factually incorrect copy-paste responses from Kiwi over the next days when asking for a refund for services paid for but not provided. The agent couldn’t grasp that I was asking for a refund from Kiwi and not the airline. Eventually, I think I annoyed my assigned agent enough that they forwarded me to the claims department. I got silence here for about a week, almost forgot about it, messaged for an update, and within an hour, they said they would refund.
Sorry, that was some rant. Kiwi is one of the worst services I’ve ever experienced with totally incompetent support. I can only recommend avoiding them.
And with that I am in Medellin, Colombia. Finishing north America feels like a big milestone. So took the next couple of weeks off here.
P.S: I know some day numbers are wrong before this but is too much effort to figure out. So day enteries are correct for this one. Ignore the overlap with previous entry… IDK. Maths is hard
