Dispelling the Myth of Panama’s “Pancake” in the Mountains to Santiago

As the pale rays of early dawn cascaded in through the screen of my tent, I found myself listening to the gurgling river nearby while laying languorously within and watching sunlit particles drift dreamily through the still air above the tall-grass outside.  Sometimes on mornings like this one, the physical desire had not quite provoked me to rise and prepare for the day’s journey, but the wisdom of many other such mornings reminded me that there would be no going back to sleep now and that within less than an hour the stifling heat would swell to an overwhelming level and envelope my small encampment in a blaze of humid jungle calefaction.  I was also set to meet my new friend Fatima in the town of Penonome the following day and was therefore determined to reach the halfway point today, a large town called Santiago in the Southern bend of the narrow country, and knew that I had many miles ahead of me if I was still to follow through on this goal.  What I didn’t know at the time was that Panama was not in fact “flat as a pancake,” as one gentleman had tried to inform me whilst in Costa Rica, but that I was on the brink of embarking on one of the most egregiously planned legs of my journey, traveling almost seventy-five miles through relentless tropical mountains of the sweltering Panamanian interior – and all in just one day.

Nonetheless, I had no idea what was in store for me as I began packing my bags and preparing to say bon voyage to my steamy riverside campground.  Despite the nagging soreness throughout my legs, I whistled a little tune, pushed my bike out towards the main road, waved goodbye to the friendly staff of the restaurant as I passed, and began making my way  Eastward.  Fortunately that first stretch of road was well sheltered beneath the leafy canopy of the leafy foliage high above, and I found myself quite pleased to be making my steady progress through such lush surroundings.  I had been at it long before, no more than an hour, when I encountered a military checkpoint, and although they normally found no reason to hassle me, I knew that it was really all just a question of luck.  A few moments later, there I was unpacking half of the contents of my bag alongside the Panamericana.  Yet the check proved uneventful, and I could see that the inspection officer was in fact just lonely and bored and more than happy to interrogate me with a series of questions unrelated to national security, but more so to break up the monotony of the torrid morning heat.

After finally shaking free from the clutches of my entertainment custody, I pedaled onward, however the landscape took a very sudden turn.  As the dense jungle fronds began to gave way to vibrant lime green fields and pasturelands, I realized that my pace had slowed significantly and that I was now on a steady ascent out of the jungle and into a set of rolling hills.  As was the case with that one first day after crossing the Costa Rican border into Panama, I felt an insipid weakness tugging at me and my leaden legs seemed to refuse to propel me higher at any rate faster than a crawl.  As I had not had breakfast that morning, and had only had a light meal in the late afternoon of the day before, I rationalized that it must be fuel related and told myself that I would stop for breakfast at the next roadside comedor (usually a small, shack-like restaurant) that I passed.  About fifteen minutes later, at the turn-off for a tiny indigenous village called Tole, I spotted the only building which I had seen in miles – and thankfully, it just happened to serve food.

As luck would have it though, things weren’t going in my favor, and as I sat at the counter, completely drenched and dripping from sweat, mentally pleading for a tall, cold beverage, the insolent young lady who was working that day took great pleasure in instead ignoring my requests and thus tormenting me.  Literally fifteen minutes passed by in this manner, and finally, when I could take no more and was fuming now both on the inside as well as the outside, I decided that no matter how wretched I felt I was still a gentleman of principles and refused to patronize such an establishment.  So I took my tired ass back on the road and prayed that I would indeed find something else soon, preferably before I collapsed from heatstroke and undernourishment beneath the tormenting sun which grew ever higher into the sky.

My prayers were jubilantly answered when I spotted a truck stop not more than twenty minutes up the road and pulled in with the expectations of a big healthy plate of grub.  Ok, so honestly, the food was real crap, but at least after putting something into my system and replenishing my stock of water, I was ready to make progress again, and hopefully this time to pick up the pace.  About an hour later you could say I was in full swing again, however the only irony was that I was plugging away on steep uphills and consistently averaging less than ten miles per hour.  Yet to make matters somewhat tolerable, each uphill segment would only last anywhere from fifteen minutes to forty minutes and was always met with a soaring downhill reprieve.  Then again, I should also mention that this continued onwards for the next four hours or so, and I remember at one point looking out across the horizon from the crest of one such mountaintop and thinking to myself that there was indeed no end in sight.

So you’d think that I’d be used to this type of situation, this kind of intimidating feeling by now, right?  Well, tell that to my poor, aching legs, because they still don’t seem to understand.  Its also somewhat funny the way that the human mind works in that, before the crest of every hill, as I sit there plodding away and pushing with all my might, I’m always dreaming that there’s the town just over yonder, that I’ll reach the peak and look down upon my day’s destination just waiting for me with open shower and a loving meal – often even when I know I’m not yet halfway there.  But that doesn’t mean that I enjoy it any less!  No matter how difficult the journey, living symbiotically beside the pain and torture and anguish is hope and desperation… oh and the miraculous places to where I travel and people with whom I meet.  Perhaps even more precious to my memory as well are the unforgettable events that come to pass with almost every day on the road.

Well, after several hours of trudging up hills and flying back down, I felt that I was reaching my limit (both in terms of nourishment and stamina) and decided to stop for a quick bite to eat, to let my muscles relax, and to see if I couldn’t wrangle some information on the remaining distance out of the shop-keep.  I sat in the only chair in the little open sided tienda, watching the hundreds of flies swarm lazily around a heap of old bananas and talking to the candid woman who owned the store about the social and political crises of the nation and life in the countryside.  Aside from chatting about the fact that Panama was still a U.S. colony (yeah, welcome to the club Panama), she also told me about the recent skyrocket in food prices, the severe unemployment levels (who publishes those national statistics, anyway…?), disparagingly high poverty levels, and the governments lack of support or interest in rural Panama (meanwhile investing in multimillion dollar ocean-front parks and roadways along the wealthy coastal strip of Panama City).  It was quite a sobering discussion, and, helped me to remember that were it not for cycling, I would never be given these windows into the non-urban and non-touristic perspectives that form the true opinions of exploited and manipulated nations the world over, and which most others never know exist and often never care to see.

After half an hour of insight into the politics of which most television news never sheds its light, I thanked the woman and left in a somber yet pensive mood.  This, however, was not only due to the conversation that we had had, but also to the knowledge that I had just gained of the massive mesa climb which was to greet me less than a kilometer up the road.  I felt that my endurance was completely depleted, but I also had no other choice but to put myself through the brutal torture of heading onward, as I had made a commitment to Fatima to arrive the next day and my midpoint of Santiago was only another fifteen miles away.  After my break my knees felt like rusty hinges and thighs seared in pain, but I pointed my bicycle towards the base of the mesa, which was now growing nearer in the distance, and just reminded myself that there would be a cold shower and a warm bed waiting for me when I arrived.

Finally, I had covered the half mile to the beginning of the ascent.  I took a deep breath, prayed (whimpered pitifully) for the strength to carry on, and next thing I knew was on my way up.  It was a dreadfully slow, almost motionless climb, but as I heard the hazy yellow horizon shatter with the sound of thunder I turned to look behind me and saw the inky clouds closing in on me.  This was the last straw, I had been through enough today and I refused to let this storm beat me.  As the blinding flashes of lightning blasted through the sky and bleached out all color for an ephemeral moment, it was as though the starting gunshot of a race had been fired and my heart leapt into throbbing action.  The burst of adrenaline pulsed through my body, breathing my limps to life, and my energy instantly returned.  I put all of my weight down into the resistant uphill inhibited pedals and quickly doubled my speed.  Within fifteen minutes I realized that I was nearing the plateau of the mesa and I inhaled sharply in exhilaration.

But the race was not over.  I swung my head around with a fire in my eyes, looking to the storm like a winged Dracula blotting out the sky and chasing after my chariot in the fading twilight, and I knew that it was time for action.  From some unknown reserve I had pulled the fullest force of my body to the forefront and my beast leapt forward along the road, the sighing brush and feigning grass whizzing by at my sides.  I could feel the roaring thunder licking at the back of my neck as I flew along the flat mesa-top, squinting my eyes against the strobing lightning flashes.  I was going to beat this – and I was going to make it to Santiago faster than I could have ever gone before.

The first sporadic drops of rainfall pattered menacingly upon the bare skin of my arms and face, but only thrust me forward with yet more vigor.  Onward and onward, seconds turned into minutes, and minutes into a fleeting eternity.  I know not for how long this carried on, but after what must have been almost an hour of this frenzied drive through the low scrubby mesa lands, I ventured to look behind me yet again and realized that the storm had disappeared far behind me in the somber late afternoon sky.  A wry grin crept across my lips as I turned my vision back towards the road ahead, a feeling of triumph and satisfaction coursing through my veins.  Then, as if to reward me, the signs of civilization began to appear – there I was, Santiago.

I pedaled forward along the sides of the now somewhat busier streets, not sure of exactly where I would be spending the night, but nevertheless prudent as to searching for the most economic option, regardless of the creeping exhaustion that had begun to sink back into my limbs.  Although it did take me a few turns and several street-side consultations, I soon found the nondescript pensión along the main street leading into town.  It was a low, one story structure, looking like an old office building, and amazingly even more nondescript within.  However, it had exactly what I needed: running water and a mattress, and so I settled my things down on the floor and sat down for a moment.  Twenty minutes later the force of gravity had molded my body firmly into the mattress and although I could barely think or move, I did know that I could not let myself go to sleep just quite yet.  I was still covered in a sticky slime of sweat from the fantastic voyage of the day and I also couldn’t let myself slippity slide into slumber without eating something to replenish my now completely depleted body (did I mention that the only real meal of the day was the late truck-stop breakfast?).

I mustered up the remainder of my long waned strength, stumbled to my feet, and made my way to the showers before heading out on the town.  When I had repaired the aesthetic damage and rinsed away the olfactory reminders of the day’s ride, I decided to step out and see what I could see.  Aside from the instant realization that the town was the filthiest which I had ever encountered, trash almost completely carpeting every side street (which I later found out was because there had been the largest festival in Panama there two days prior), I also managed to duck into an internet kiosk to check my e’s as well as find one of the only nearby budget restaurants… which sadly, was a Pio Pio, specializing in old fashioned, deep fried chicken.  Oh well, it was low quality, but it was sustenance, and fortunately they also had a grill.  Now washed, fed, and reconnected with the outside world, I slowly made my way back towards the pensión for the final key to fulfilling my immediate satisfaction – sleep.

As I hobbled slowly, very slowly, back, I thought of how nice it would be to arrive in Penonome the following day, into the welcoming arms (ok, perhaps a bit dramatic, since I’d never met her before) of Fatima, and end my week and a half long hiatus from all familiar social interaction.  I had spent my time in Boquete so lost in my thoughts and reflection that it wasn’t until I was back on my bicycle again that I realized that a one sided existence such as that was one which I could only bear for so long before searching for social stimulus and the opportunity to laugh with others.  However, my body felt severely depleted, and even after my meal I still wondered whether my night of sleep would be enough to replenish me, but also longed that perhaps tomorrow fate would go easy on me and that what little energy I had left within me would be enough to carry me through.

A Sultry Search for Shelter from the Panamanian Monsoon

 

My week of serene bohemian silence had nearly come to a close as I unpinned my drying laundry from the clothesline and took one last look at the scarlet outlined mountains of the Chiriqui Highands.  It was dusk and I could feel the arrival of the winds of change rustling through the leaves and petals of the otherwise silent garden.  The following morning I would begin my journey Eastward across Panama, and as I stared pensively into the enveloping vastness of the cobalt sky, I sensed my destiny growing ever nearer to the final page of North America and felt the exotic allure of the Southern end of the New World driving me forward.

Although I had known next to nothing of Boquete before arriving the previous week, I quickly realized that perhaps I didn’t need to.  It was a quaint and simple town nestled within a tiny valley of the Chiriqui highlands, and as I pulled my bicycle to a halt outside of the small guesthouse of Pensión Marilon in the light afternoon drizzle, I seemed to feel the trickling of time fading away behind me.  Over the following week, the Pensión quickly began to feel like home, and it didn’t take long before I felt myself falling into the languid pace of the locals.  As I sat amidst the cool mountain mists with the green valley walls rising before me and the taste of aromatic Boquete coffee lingering on my tongue, I found myself immersed in the lucidity of my thoughts and the intrigue of my writing.

However, its astonishing how quickly the days rolled by in this timeless state of existence, and after several rejuvenating days of jogging through the fresh coffee groves of the green mountainsides around Boquete, poring over long neglected novels from the depths of my panniers, and reflecting on the journey gone by, it was once again time to ride.  I found myself pushing my overburdened bicycle out through the double doors of Pension Marilon in the crisp air of early dawn and then made my way to the main road out of town.  As I approached the outskirts of town the short but steep ascent out of the valley began and I pushed on with rekindled  vigor, knowing that beyond this point would be a lovely downhill slalom almost all the way to the city of David.  Indeed, that first hour and a half rolling down the gently sloping road to the lowlands proved to be a delicious start to the day’s journey, and aside from almost running over a tarantula as he made his way across the thoroughfare, passed by pleasantly uneventfully.

As I neared the edge of David and rejoined the Panamericana heading towards the interior, it was a humid but blue skied, sunshiny day.  For a time the road passed through some outer suburbs of David, but shortly thereafter emerged into pleasant meadows followed by steamy jungle.  The path before me undulated gently, small hills rising above the surrounding greenery before plunging back into the dense foliage and fording myriad creeks that meandered through the trees.  As mid-afternoon approached my mind turned towards seeking lodging for the evening, and I wondered just where exactly it was that I was now pedaling.  Ironically, as I was passing through a sparse village dotted along the side of the deserted two-lane highway, a flat tire forced me to pull over at a desolate petrol station and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to consult my map.  However, after a greasy, sweaty session of tire-patching, the long, rolling rumble of thunder erupted from the sky nearby, and upon looking up from my work I saw that the horizon had indeed filled with ominously low low hanging blackened clouds.  Only a moment later the first fat drops of rain began to splatter down on me and the pavement around me and I knew that it was time to seek shelter.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot out there, aside from the a nearby freshly tilled field and a few low buildings towards the edge of the pavement.  I headed for the overhang around what appeared to be the petrol station’s bathrooms and huddled under, leaning backwards against the wall to avoid the ricocheting raindrops that hammered down on the grass and concrete nearby.  The downpour rapidly escalated into a tropical monsoon and I realized that this would not be over any time soon.  And so, after half an hour of uncomfortably ducking under the small awning, I decided to make a run for another small covered patio about twenty yards away, which I had noticed was a small restaurant, and a significantly more comfortable option for weathering the storm.  Even with such a short distance to cover, as I sprinted from my shelter to the patio, I was almost instantly soaked by the pummeling rains.  Nevertheless, I had reached cover and decided that this was as good a time as any to satisfy my hunger.

Nevertheless, upon slowly working away at my soup and plate of white rice with beans and a chicken drumstick, the rain continued to throw down, however with somewhat less violence.  I had looked at my map and seen that I was not far las Lajas, a coastal town near which Frank, the eccentric owner of Pensión Marilon in Boquete, had suggested that I might find boarding with two friends of his who had recently opened up a restaurant along the highway there.  As the late afternoon was already beginning to loom gloomily through the grayness of the sky, I knew that I had best be on my way again if I was to have any hope of reaching the restaurant before nightfall.  So out into the rain-showers I went, quickly feeling the droplets saturating my cycling jersey and seeing the moisture glistening on my wrists before me.  I rode onward with a passion, thinking only of reaching shelter all the more quickly, and ignoring the stinging in my eyes.  Yet, just to spite me, fate decided to send me yet another blow to the tire, and less than an hour after leaving the station I yet again found myself pulling over along a long, narrow stretch of road in a thicket of high, dense reeds.  Fortunately, by this point the rains had petered off and I was able to change my tire without that inconvenience, yet the massive eighteen wheel trucks that roared by within inches of me seemed to take its place to rattle my nerves.

But at that exact moment, something that had almost never happened during my trip came to pass, and the heavens sent me an angel.  As I cowered at the edge of the roadway struggling with the changing of the tire’s tube (as the previous one had apparently seen five too many patches), an SUV that had passed only a few seconds prior slowed almost to a stop and then made a U-turn, pulling up a few meters down the way.  An American gentleman stepped from the vehicle and made his way towards me and within an instant, Bob had become my new best friend.  After helping me with the tire change, recounting his exciting recent trip to the Darien Gap to visit remote indigenous tribes, and restocking my supplies with granola bars, and two cans of beer (yep, someone up there was keeping an eye on me), I thanked Bob profusely for everything, we exchanged contact information, and were soon saying our goodbyes.

After the flat tire and the bestowal of my new gifts, I was impatient to reach shelter for the evening, shuck my sticky, saturated clothing, rest, and enjoy the new treats which were stuffed into the side of my panniers.  I rode onwards.  I soon reached the turn-off for las Lajas and began to inquire about the restaurant at a small convenience store, but the locals seemed to be unsure of what I was talking about and suggested that it was probably only twenty minutes or so down the highway (by car, sadly).  Ugh, well, there was nothing to be done but to continue onwards, and as is typical on days such as these, during which I find myself constantly hoping that the end of my day’s ride is around the corner, but then dragging myself further and further, I found my energy soon fading and my pace slowing to a crawl.  Oh woe is me, where was this fabled roadside reprieve!

But alas, an hour later and after a few stops at wrong restaurants during my search, I finally saw the neon sign of the promised land.  I pedaled up the embankment in the lengthening shadows of the sultry early evening humidity, sidled off of my mount and sauntered into the covered veranda that was the restaurant.  After a somewhat hesitant welcome, one of the owners recognized Frank’s name (after entreating him for shelter) and then informed me that they did indeed have rooms available… for rent.  Oh well, that was alright, at this point I felt like I deserved it.  But as he led me to the house where the small “bungalow” style rooms were located and told me the price my jaw almost dropped.  For these tiny and not-so-impressive accommodations along the highway, the prices began at forty dollars a night and up.  Well, it looked like this certainly wasn’t the place for me – but at this point I was pigeon-holed.  It was late, I was exhausted, and there was no option of going on.  However, the price was also not an option, and so I began to explore what else remained.

Sadly, in my miserable and bedraggled physical state, I finally reached the conclusion that I had pedaled all this way just to pitch a tent.  So I asked for such permission, was met with an affirmative response, and headed out into the grounds of the spacious property.  It was in fact somewhat of a “resort,” with fields and paths and a chocolaty brown river, however the one thing that the owners seemed to have missed is that the majority of the world’s affluent population doesn’t go seeking humid, sticky, mosquito infested jungles along the highway for a pleasant getaway from the city.  Nevertheless, there I was and it was time to make the best of it.  So I hurriedly pushed my bicycle and equipment along the grassy paths back towards the river and away from the roadside, finding a small pagoda (for what, I’m not sure) that had been erected upon a shallow hill, and decided that it should serve as a perfect shelter from the remorseless torrents of the Central American rainy season.

Once I had pitched my tent and wandered over to the bathroom alongside the restaurant for a quick shower, despite the day’s trials and felt a gentle relief spread through by body and relax me.  So I had been through the ringer over the past few hours, but hey, what else what else was new?  After retiring back to my little synthetic home by the riverside and sipping blissfully at my now warm beers, I thoughts began to sink into a slumber and I was soon unzipping my front door and climbing into my by shelter.  Alright, so I still didn’t feel like I was quite at the cusp of the New World just quite yet, but at least I was one day closer, I was freshly washed, and I had the sweet serenade of an infinitum of the jungle’s symphony to lull me to sleep and to carry my dreams ever nearer to my approaching trans-Caribbean voyage.