Pan-a-ma-ha! PAN-A-MA! Pan-a-Ma-huh-oh-huh-uh-huh! Yeah, Panama is awesome. At least, what I saw of Panama is awesome. Are you ready for another mind-expanding, booty-shaking, face-melting, women’s-thong-wearing edition of the Central American photoblog? I know you are. Let’s go on an adventure together. In this edition of the photoblog, I crash my bike three times and barely make it to my destination. Ready? OK!
All images pop up in this window without leaving the page. If you don’t click them, they are going to cry, and you don’t want that to happen.
![]() I’d been travelling down the hills and had trouble with the slickness of the road when I was braking for two reasons 1) oil on the road because of the strain the hills were putting on the cars, and 2) the studded tires on my dirtbike are designed for dirt and mud and don’t touch a lot of the road like a regular motorcycle’s tires do and therefore don’t give me a whole lot of grip. So after taking all those awesome landscape shots, I am behind a slowpoke I passed in an earlier town. I am going around a corner and I decided that was the perfect time to pass the slowpoke again. In hindsight, I am going to have to admit I was wrong. I was only using the front brake and it slid out from under me. I hit the ground with both hands, my bike slid into the ditch with me following closely behind, and we ended up in the rocks in the gulch. |
![]() I mean seriously, I love him. |
![]() About twenty cars passed me struggling with the joerb of getting the bike out of the rocks. On the twenty-first car, I was frustrated and yelled for them to help me, and they stopped. I´m sure you have heard of the situations where if you are in a public place, you are less likely to be helped if you are choking or having a heart attack than if you were in a place with only one or two people, so I will refrain from making an assumption about the locals since they´ve been so nice to me the rest of the time. Still, the guy I was trying to pass and I were the only ones on the road, so I’m not letting him off. More psychology for you, a guy that worked for the airlines on his way to Jaco to drop off some misplaced luggage was driving the same type of motorcycle I was. He stopped, even though I was out of the ditch and upright already. I saw him again after I was on the road again and he on his return trip. We exchanged 100 KPH pleasantries. |
![]() Some gestures know no language barriers. |
![]() (edit: Six months later and I still have this one teeny area with a scab on both my elbow and my knee. I think that means I needed more serious medical attention) |
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![]() Damn, I just noticed the gold bracelet. |
![]() Oh, I didn´t take any more pictures, because my battery was low, but let me tell you how the rest of my night went after I got my bike “fixed”: I got to this town called Parrita just as it was getting dark to look for some clear sunglasses to use to both see at night and shield my eyes from the bugs that had been pelting me all day. One especially big one felt like a paintball and left the same kind of welt. That´s beside the point. So I get back onto my mostly fixed bike in order to drive to the next kind of resortish/backpacker town called Quepos and get about 1/4 of the way there before my headlight burns out. It is pitch black and I can´t see a damn thing as I pull over to the side of the road. I hop off the right side of the bike to avoid stepping into traffic, and if you know anything about the side of the road in these countries, you know what happens next. I fell into the ditch with my bike in tow behind my left leg. The gloves that were purchased at the town I fixed my bike at were helpful; when I finally got somewhere with lights, they were completely ripped up. I tried to get my bike started with the electric start, and that no longer worked, so I tried to kickstart it about ten or twenty times with no results. At that time, my mind begins to wander amongst the stories of gringos caught alone in the dark in Central America and which mangroves my body will be decomposing in. Looking for the solution to the problem of how I am going to get another 30 kilometers to Quepos, the blinker turns on. I give it another couple of tries with the kickstart and she starts up. So I’m trying to keep it around 70KPH as I get one second of light, one second of abject darkness for the duration of my night. About 10K into that rigamarole, some motorcyclists came up behind me, they recognized my plight and rode with me for 15K, which was a Godsend. I did almost get hit by a truck overtaking people from the other lane. When it was happening, I threw my hands in the air in the “WTF?” gesture, but then I realized that I was driving a bike in the middle of the night using my blinker as a headlight and I put myself back in place. |
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![]() ( edit: Sorry about the negativity there. I am thinking that this caption was a reflection on my sexual frustration at this point of the trip) |
Please, there is no need to adjust the sound settings on your computer. I am still going through puberty. |
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![]() I spent $70 at the border to tip my “guide” and pay off the people to look past my paperless bike. The other option was to go back to San Jose to register the bike in my name, and you know that I was definitely not doing that. I was content to get over the border for that price, considering, but I couldn’t help thinking that I had just paid Hamilton $70 to steward me through a process that I would have been able to get through myself by adding an hour. The next time I was at a computer, I read a motorcycle travel website that said never to talk to these people – so at least I’ve learned my lesson, and it didn’t kill me financially. Of course, I am assuming that these people on the motorcycle trip websites are assuming you have plates and a registration for your bike. |
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![]() As far as getting stuff across the border, it is damn easy to get yourself across each of these borders down here – you have a passport, you’re good to go. I am hoping that when I have proper documentation for my motorcycle, I will have no problem getting that across, but I am not so sure. |
So the second I got off my motorcycle, I allowed myself to take a video of the beach, just after I got my Panamanian cerveza, of course. This is Playa Lajas on the Pacific coast in Panama. I guess it costs about $400,000 an acre here on the beach, which I thought was a bit much . . . I guess they haven’t yet felt the repurcussions of the economic slowdown, here. Before I stepped out onto the beach, I had initially wanted to stay for a night and then soldier on to the next locale, but I was lovestruck and stayed for three. It was quite relaxing, save for a snag at the end. |
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![]() Playa Lajas has about five places to stay, and they are all run by foriegners. If I wanted to go to get internet, I would go to the Italiano place. I was staying at the Colombian’s place next to the German’s place. I felt like I was living this brain teaser. |
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