Bocas Del Toro

After leaving the AT safely parked at the Bomberos (fire station) in the scruffy port town of Almirante, we boarded a small motor boat over to the Bocas del Toro islands in the Caribbean Sea.
There we proceeded to do not a lot for 5 days and spent most of our time in the sea or drinking cold beer in happy hours!
On the Caribbean side, we were in the beginning of the dry season which meant hardly any rain, but a bit too hot, phew!!

Maps

We have now travelled nearly 30,000 km. Below are our routes through Ecuador and Colombia.

Escaping from the city

After visiting customs, the AT was booked into Panama at last! We then escaped from the city to El Valle in the hills, located in the crater of an extinct volcano, where the weather was cooler. We enjoyed a beautiful experience with some rescued Sloths that cannot not be released back into the wild.

The Panamanian Golden Frog in a rescue centre - they are unfortunately extinct in the wild.

A hike in the hills to the 'Sleeping Indian Girl' with a view over the crater.

We stayed at Santa Catalina on the Pacific coast to watch some surfing - we will have a go later in a cheaper country!

As we are now in the rainy season we have been caught in some torrential downpours!

We've arrived in Central America - Panama!

We had an easy flight into Panama City and look what we found inside a shopping mall! Looks like a lovely bike but it had an automatic transmission with a parking brake and it cost 21,000 USD! I think we will keep ours!

We visited the Panama Canal at Miraflores Locks. We saw several large ships pass through and also visited the museum. We liked the small trains, called 'mules', that are used to guide the ships through. They have built larger locks adjacent to these to take even bigger ships.

We went to Carti by 4x4 truck to meet the bike along a crazy roller coaster tarmac road. We looked forward to riding it on the way back. We spent the morning on board, had a swim and Mr R was checking out the other bikes.

The bikes were off loaded onto a small pier. The boat couldn't get too close because the water was shallow, so they were swung in a bit before being lowered and pulled in. Lots of shouting but they all made it safely!

On the way back to Panama City we rode into a big thunder storm and arrived soaked at customs. Unfortunately, it had closed early, the next day was Sunday and Monday was a government holiday! We were going to stay in the city a bit longer then! We had a new chain and sprocket set sent from the UK (great service from Lings in Harleston) so at least we could get this fitted before we left.

The Darien Gap

We have now reached the top of South America so had to decide how we cross the 'Darien Gap' to reach Central America. The Darien is an area of jungle on the border between Colombia and Panama with no road through it - see map.

The options for us were to fly or go by boat, we decided on a combination of both. The bike is travelling by sea from Cartagena in Colombia to Carti in Panama on the Stahlratte sailing Schooner.

We will fly from Cartagena via Bogota to Panama City and then collect the bike from Carti. The first job was to load the bike.

We enjoyed a mini cruise around the bay to a different area before being taken back to shore. 

We met some other bikers taking the trip. One young couple had originally paid to go on a smaller boat. Their bike was loaded on board and they were enjoying a cold beer prior to leaving port, when Colombian customs boarded the ship. The ship was searched and many bags of cocaine were found! Their bike was confiscated and they spent a couple of scary days in custody before being released. They got their bike back but lost their money for the trip!

This pic was taken when the captain was arrested with 110 x 1kg packets of cocaine on the quay in the foreground!