The dream of driving from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego has a hole at the Darian gap. The section between Panama and Columbia lacks about 500 km of road. For this reason and the fact that we did not feel that comfortable taking the family through Columbia meant that we needed to put the camper on a ship from Panama to Ecuador. We actually had contemplated shipping all the way to Santiago to be able to make it to Patagonia. But we did not manage to find a boat that would take our camper down to Chile.
So we entered Panama with the goal to find the passage to South America as quickly as possible. Not easy since we heard from many people that they spend a month before they could leave. Our first impression of Panama was quite positive: a four lane highway most of the way to Panama City. In Panama City we booked into an apparthotel - a couple of rooms with a kitchen - and parked the camper close by in a closed off parking lot. We had already worked via email on the shipping of the camper but hoped we would find a better and earler deal directly in Panama City. After a couple of days running around in the almost vertical sun we had to admit that we had only one possibility for shipping within the next weeks. On top, it was not a so called roro shipment (roll on - roll off), but our camper had to be put on a flat rack (basically a platform the size of a container) which involved extra cost and hazzle. Nevertheless, we were happy to have this one possibility - otherwise we would have had to return North or attempt a shipment to Colombia. The only drawback was the actual shipment date: it moved later every week and so it was difficult to know when we would actually be able to leave Panama.
So we entered Panama with the goal to find the passage to South America as quickly as possible. Not easy since we heard from many people that they spend a month before they could leave. Our first impression of Panama was quite positive: a four lane highway most of the way to Panama City. In Panama City we booked into an apparthotel - a couple of rooms with a kitchen - and parked the camper close by in a closed off parking lot. We had already worked via email on the shipping of the camper but hoped we would find a better and earler deal directly in Panama City. After a couple of days running around in the almost vertical sun we had to admit that we had only one possibility for shipping within the next weeks. On top, it was not a so called roro shipment (roll on - roll off), but our camper had to be put on a flat rack (basically a platform the size of a container) which involved extra cost and hazzle. Nevertheless, we were happy to have this one possibility - otherwise we would have had to return North or attempt a shipment to Colombia. The only drawback was the actual shipment date: it moved later every week and so it was difficult to know when we would actually be able to leave Panama.
In the meantime, we tried to discover Panama. It turned out to be a country that is much undervalued. It has almost everything that the better known Costa Rica can offer: beaches, mountains, rainforest, etc. But first of all we wanted to discover the Panama canal. Having decided that the full cruise on a small boat from one end to the other was too expensive for us (120 US$ per person) we started with a visit to the Miraflores locks, those are the ones located toward the Pacific side. We were able to enjoy watching the ocean giants coming through while having lunch just a few meters away from the waterway.
A few days later, we went into the rain forest for a walk to watch some of the wild life: we managed to see an anteater up in a tree, many tucans and other beautiful birds and lots of butterflies.
Finally we were lucky and could experience the Panamanian carneval. Obviously, it could not be compared to Carnval in Rio. But nevertheless, the latin blood in the people of Panama made for 4-day- nonstop dancing and water fighting in the streets.
Finally, we had to take the camper to Colon, the port on the Atlantic side of the canal and after many hours of waiting, filling in papers, last minutes scares (we transported camping gaz and the camper now needed to be declared "cargo peligroso"), I had to drive the camper over a rather precarious man made ramp consisting of metal sheets and wooden logs onto a 50cm high rack. It worked and so we said good bye. A day later we got onto our plane to Ecuador.
