Day 97 - Panama City

On Friday we rode into Panama in the drizzling rain, trying to beat the clock to reach Tocumen Aeropeurto. We had received a phone call from Kyöstis, the Dane telling us about a great deal he had just negotiated to send their two bikes via air cargo to Colombia. The only hitch was we needed to reach the cargo terminal that same afternoon. It was only an 80 km drive, so possibly doable in the 75 minutes we had available.

Since we knew that to fly the bikes out we would have to empty their gas tanks of fuel, we were trying to arrive at the airport with the fuel gauges on 'E'.

Among the four of us, Troy was best at this as his he had to switch to his reserve tank just as we were coming into Panama City across into  the big bridge over the Panama Canal. Between the gas issues, the rain and the early rush hour traffic of a Friday before a long-weekend, we paid barely any attention to the Canal as we rode on past.

Once we got to the Girag Cargo offices at the cargo terminal, we found the Danes had packed their bikes and were strapping them to a cargo pallet. No tanks needed to be drained, the batteries remain connected and all the panniers and wheels remained in place. Only windshields and side mirrors were removed.

So all that running-on-fumes drama was for nothing.

The Girag folks were extremely helpful in the process of getting the bikes ready for export, and I would highly recommend their services. We paid $751.38 per bike to be shipped from Panama City to Bogota, Colombia.

We'll report on Tuesday if the bikes made the trip safely.





The sad part of the day came as we said our goodbyes to Cory Hanson. He's decided to turn around and head back up to Canada instead of continuing down to Argentina with Tim and Troy.

Saying goodbye at the cargo terminal

Since we are four tough, hardcore motorcycle-riding, world-traveling adventure type dudes, no tears were shed during our brief, but manly goodbye hugs..

As part of the deal, they agreed to let us stay for FREE for one night at a new Eco Lodge the company is building. They plan to offer it to the many bikers they see coming through the area.

The Girag Cargo Riverside Eco Lodge

While the site is gorgeous, and the river it runs beside seems clean and clear, the place is very far away. It was about an hour's drive East of the airport. The building looks very well designed and constructed, but right now it's still unfinished. It's got lots of potential, but I'm not sure I'd stay there again before it's actually completed.

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Troy finally found a way to stay warm

It's very weird the go to sleep without knowing 'becca is close by...

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Normally the bikes would arrive and be cleared through Customs the very next day, but on this weekend, Sunday is Martyr's Day, a National Holiday in both Panama and Colombia. And the government agencies are closed on Monday to commemorate it.

Martyr's Day on Jan 9 commemorates the day in 1964 when 22 students were killed by while attempting to assert/reclaim their country's sovereignty by flying the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone. The Zone was wholly under the control of the Americans at that point. Here's one account of the tragedy



Day 98

Hello again!

We head downtown and ask the taxi driver to take us to one of the hostels. There are 22 in the city, and we had done no research on them at all, and so had no opinion on which would be best.
The taxi drivers decided to drop us at Luna's Castle.
As we walk in, we see a very familiar BMW F800GS parked in the lobby.

Cory is here! Now how cool is that?!

The rest of the the day was mostly concerned with futile attempts to find rear tires for mine and Troy's KLRs.






Day 99
We finally got to take a proper tour of the Panama Canal! Very spectacular!
They advertise that the big ships only pass through the Canal between 9 and 11 AM, and 3 - 5 PM

Rebecca, Tim, M, Sharon, Nicole and Troy (doing his patented 3/4 turn) at the Miraflores Locks

We arrived at 4 PM, then watched a short film on the building of the Canal. There's a disconnect in some of the info given in the documentary and printed on the displays in the on-site museum. Both sources agree that as many as 20,000 of the 75,000 workers who built the Canal were Black men from the Caribbean. The discrepancy is whether they came from Jamaica or Barbados.

Perhaps one of my readers knows definitively...