Dead end Panamericana?

Panama was the last Central American country on my route to South America. Together with François – a cycle traveller I had met a few days earlier in Costa Rica – we entered the country without any problems at the Paso Canoas border crossing. The new stamp in our passports authorised us to spend 90 days in the country – a period of time that we would definitely not use up for this small country.

We were travelling on the Panamericana – ‘the longest road in the world’. It starts in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and leads all the way to Ushuaia in Argentina. The Panamericana is not exactly one road everywhere; on some sections there are alternative routes that are also referred to as the Panamericana. The quality of the road varies from country to country, but it is often a motorway – exactly the kind of road that cyclists definitely don’t prefer. And in Panama it was exactly that, a motorway. So why the hell were we travelling there? Quite simply because there was usually no alternative to it in Panama. The stretched-out country does not have an extensive network of roads. Instead, there is the Panamericana, which runs like a kind of spine through the length of the country and from which individual roads branch off and then end somewhere as a dead end. But for the most part we were pretty well off, as the highway was well developed with two lanes in each direction and an additional hard shoulder (which was actually passable) and the traffic wasn’t too heavy.

A little further east, however, we were able to switch to country road 5 for two day rides – a fairly narrow road with less traffic that wound its way through the lush green landscape. And even if the Panamericana was not quite as bad to cycle on as I had been told by other cyclists, the peace and seclusion on this small country road was more what I imagine a leisurely cycle tour to be like.

But you don’t need a motorway, a country road or even high speeds to have an accident. We were cycling through a small town in search of a bakery when a taxi driver slowly passed me on the left and simply turned right at my height. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late – the taxi driver had already caught me on the front left pocket and brought me down. Miraculously, exactly nothing happened to me. The bike was lying there, I’d somehow gone down stuntman-style over the handlebars and only had a few light scratches and pain that was less intense than a bruise. The bike seemed undamaged, only the rain cover protecting the backpack had a hole in it. There were numerous people around us who had observed the accident, including François, who was right behind me. And the situation was also clear – the taxi driver was at fault, he said somewhat dejectedly ‘my passenger said he could be let out right here – so I just drove in on the right without looking’. I demanded ten dollars for the hole in the rain cover, which the taxi driver handed over to me without any discussion. We then rolled on to a bakery and I tried to calm down with a coffee and something sweet. From then on, I was even more suspicious of the yellow cars than before.

It also got unpleasant again on our last stretch of the Panamericana from La Chorrera to Panama City, the final 13 kilometres before and over the Panama Canal were actually a section straight out of hell. You can imagine it as an overly busy and, thanks to roadworks, extremely chaotic motorway junction with no hard shoulder, where every driver is taking part in a race. Fortunately, we survived without an accident, even though I probably lost a few more hairs over those 13 kilometres.

The southeast of Panama is where the Darién jungle begins, stretching into Colombia and forming the land bridge between North and South America. It is one of the most inaccessible regions in the world, with neither a road nor a bumpy track connecting the two continents – the Panamericana simply ends as a dead end in the Panamanian town of Yaviza and only begins again in the Colombian city of Turbo. The inaccessibility of the Darién jungle means that there is no one to enforce the law, but crime is extremely high due to drug smuggling. In addition, every year thousands of people, mainly from Venezuela and Haiti, try to flee northwards through the jungle towards the USA. So somehow making my way through this notorious jungle to Colombia was definitely not an option for me. From Panama City, I therefore first cycled along the Panama Canal and then followed Highway 3 to Sabanitas, from there along a small road with hardly any traffic to Portobello and finally to the small harbour of Puerto Lindo. From there I wanted to continue on to Colombia by water. The route was picturesque, there was dense greenery everywhere and the closer I got to my destination, the less traffic there was. But as beautiful as the surroundings were, my head wasn’t really letting me enjoy the whole thing. A stone’s throw away from Sabanitas was the big city of Colón – Panama’s crime hotspot. I was a little worried that the notorious criminals might take a trip into the neighbourhood. I also knew that a few years ago, a cyclist travelling between Sabanitas and Portobello was attacked and beaten up. With my heavily loaded touring bike and my gringo look, I was anything but inconspicuous on the road, and I also had several hundred dollars in cash with me, as the boat to Colombia could only be paid for in cash. But in the end, nothing happened – high above the road, monkeys were hanging around, birds were chirping and the sun alternated with short rain showers.

Bienvenido a Panamá!

As in Costa Rica, it always rained in Panama in the afternoons and often at night in tropical proportions. We therefore had to search for a sheltering roof every day to avoid going bathing with all our equipment. However, this small challenge turned out to be less difficult thanks to the great hospitality of the Panamanians. In contrast to Costa Rica, the bomberos here were once again the best friends of the cycle travellers. Whenever we turned up at a fire station, it didn’t take long before we had a place to sleep. We also had the odd nice chat with the firefighters and sometimes even an invitation for a coffee or a meal – I was always fascinated by their open-mindedness, hospitality and the trust they showed us. Only once did it not work out with the bomberos – the commander was already at home and could not be asked for permission. When we then asked the police where we could find a safe and dry place to camp, it simply continued – the magic of Panamanian hospitality: With a police escort, we cycled to a rugby stadium where we were allowed to pitch our tents. Under the spectator stands there were not only changing rooms and sanitary facilities, but also rooms converted into dormitories, which were occupied by the police at the time. Police officers were practising rugby in the stadium and other police officers were playing football in front of the stadium. I was brewing coffee when we were each served a portion of dinner; the next morning we were only allowed to leave after we had been served breakfast.

But it wasn’t just the official authorities who were well-disposed towards us. On a completely rainy day, we were already on our way to a hostel in the morning and stopped at a bakery beforehand to treat ourselves. Suddenly Guillermo turned up, completely fascinated by the packed touring bikes and asking lots of questions. It all happened super fast and I only understood half of it in the hectic rush – but François speaks fluent Spanish and so I learnt that we had been invited by Guillermo to sit out the rainy day with him and his wife Tiara. The two of them hosted us warmly, serving coffee, beer, snacks and a Sunday lunch in honour of the guests. We also learnt all sorts of things about Panama that are not necessarily in the Wikipedia article.

This may all sound crazy and surreal from the perspective of someone socialised in Germany, but that’s exactly what happened. A big thank you to Guillermo, Tiara, the bomberos and the police – thank you, Panama!

The metropolis on the Panama Canal

Once we arrived in Panama City, we headed for the Mamallena Hostel and met up with old friends: Rhian and Chris, who I had travelled with a few weeks earlier; François had also met them before. It was a nice reunion with like-minded people and lots of stories about our cycling life. In the evenings, we always joked about how we burnt our money in the streets of Panama during the day, because that’s exactly what each of us did there – as a modern city, Panama had exactly what we desperately needed after our time in Central America: All kinds of businesses to repair or replace things that had broken or to get replacements for things that had been lost. We were also all on the hunt for packing materials for our bikes, even though we were travelling to Colombia by different routes. Rhian and Chris were the first to set off to cross over to Colombia from Puerto Cartí in several small boats (known as lanchas). François followed them a few days later on a similar route. I stayed the longest and then cycled to Puerto Lindo, from where I took a sailing boat to the South American continent. Interestingly, none of us took the most affordable, fastest and most comfortable option – the plane.

But of course Panama City offered more than just shopping opportunities. The city had something – the metropolis seemed interesting, even if many corners were not exactly beautiful. But where contrasts clash, there is a lot to see. The colonial old town was architecturally striking, as was the completely contrasting modern financial district with its huge skyscrapers with glittering glass facades, as well as the countless buildings in the style of the 1970s. It was only a stone’s throw from the old town, which had been prepared for tourists, to the neighbourhoods of the poor, where the absence of money could be guessed from the facades alone. In the middle-class neighbourhoods, on the other hand, the building substance looked better, tidier, but still not like developed districts with uniform pavements or the like. Something similar could be found in the chic neighbourhoods or on the modern Pacific promenade with the park running along it. However, it is not just the neighbourhoods that are extremely diverse, but also their inhabitants. No wonder, as the capital is home to the ancestors of all kinds of immigrant groups, and due to Panama’s eventful history, there are quite a few of them.

I got a very good first overview of the country’s history at the Panama Canal Museum. In colonial times, the Spanish recognised the strategic importance of the land bridge between the continents, which in Panama is the narrowest between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. From what is now Panama City, they built the first road to Portobello in order to transport the plundered goods brought from Peru by sea to the Atlantic side via this short land route. From there, they were then shipped to Europe.

After gaining independence from Spain, Panama joined what was then Greater Colombia. In the 19th century, a French company was granted a concession by the Colombian government to build a canal, whereupon work began in 1881 under the direction of Ferdinand de Lesseps. However, the operation ended eight years later with a huge financial disaster and over 20,000 deaths. Only some of the dead were French; most of the labourers were of African-Caribbean descent and were brought to Panama from the French Antilles. Landslides, heavy rainfall and tropical diseases such as yellow fever and malaria were just some of the reasons for the failure.

The United States of America already had a project underway to build a canal through Nicaragua, but this also came to nothing; an agreement with England initially prevented them from building a canal directly in Panama. However, President Theodore Roosevelt used his influence to bring the failed French project under US control. When the Colombian government refused to play along, the USA under him supported Panama’s independence movement, which resulted in the country seceding from Greater Colombia in 1903. Under Roosevelt, the US bought the so-called Canal Zone (15 kilometres to the right and left of the canal) from the newly installed Panamanian government and resumed construction of the canal in the following years. But even under the US government, there were countless failures and problems, so that the Panama Canal was not finally completed until 1914.

This meant that a 30 kilometre wide strip of land ran through the middle of Panama under US control. After the Second World War, tensions between the USA and Panama grew, the Panamanians demanded the land and the canal for themselves, and after student protests, the USA sealed off the zone with a fence and increased military presence. The situation continued to escalate and only eased in 1977 under US President Jimmy Carter, when he signed treaties for the gradual transfer of the canal and the Canal Zone to Panama.¹Sources for this rough historical outline and highly recommended are podcast episode 196 of Geschichten aus der Geschichte ‘Wie der Panamakanal entstand’; a visit to the Panama Canal Museum and reading the Wikipedia article ‘History of the Panama Canal’. This means that the Republic of Panama has been the legal owner of the Panama Canal since January 1st 2000 and has had absolute legal control over the canal since then – a fact that really needs to be emphasised at the moment.

The Panama Canal has now been expanded in size and provides the small country with a tidy income. Even tourists who just want to take a closer look at the canal’s locks are milked for their money – as I had already ‘burned’ enough dollars anyway, I decided to do without and just cycle a few unspectacular kilometres along the waterway towards Puerto Lindo. I then made one last stop in Portobello – the place where the gold and silver exported from Peru was once loaded onto the Spanish ships. A few fortifications and the customs building where the goods were cleared remain from this period.

Travel time: June 2024