Racing the Rain to Panama City

Day 33 Pines 2 Patagonia log

Penonomé, Panamá

To

Panama City, Panama

Our new friend and riding buddy Robert arrived at our place and the 4 of us hit the road headed to Panama City.

To road was beautiful. The mountains towered in the distance and rich farmland stretched all the way across the valley.

We made good time until out of nowhere a tropical rainstorm began to saturate every inch of us. The highway we were on began to flood immediately and a river 3” deep was rushing down the road.

Robert dove off first and the P2P crew went a little further up the road looking for cover. Matt spotted a taco shop that was closed so we exited the highway and crammed all 3 bikes under a tiny roof. Being from Oregon we understand rain but this was different. It was incredible and did not let up for over a half hour.

Once it stopped we mounted our ponies and headed to the Overland Embassy. They are the folks who will ship our bikes via airfreight from Panama City to Bogota Colombia. There is no road that connects North and South America. It is a wild land called the Darrian Gap that is virtually impossible to cross. Lots of people have tried, few have emerged. So we shipped.

Overland took great care of us. They gave us a place to wash the bikes, handled all of the required paperwork and even brought us each a cold beer. Top notch crew.

After getting them checked in we headed to our first hostel of the trip. It was downtown in the finance district, secure and semi clean. We dropped off our stuff and headed out to explore Panama City.

We all agreed the part of the city we were in was cleaner than expected. After a while Robert came and picked us up in his hot-rod rental Hyundai and we headed to dinner. We found a very nice Italian restaurant where we all ate way too much and enjoyed some gourmet cocktails and wine.

After dinner Robert dropped the P2P crew back at the hostel but we didn’t make it inside. We did find a makeshift karaoke bar where we enjoyed watching some locals attempt to sing. It was not good.

After a nightcap we headed to the crack shack and called it a night.

It was really weird not having our bikes or 95% of our stuff with us for the first time in over a month.