YOLO last days in Panama July 2023

Last days in Panama July 2023

A beautiful scarlet mackaw up close.

A big cargo ship just exiting the Panama Canal, heading west. The ship is passing the Balboa Yacht Club, where the yachts are anchored and where we spent a night when we transited the canal eleven years ago!.  This is the view from one of our overnight parking spots.

Some new and old buildings in Panama City.

Some colorful grafitti on abandoned government buildings along the waterfront.  It's now a huge open space with great opportunities to park and enjoy the shade and old roads.

The many mango trees provided great shade, whether you parked on a road or on the grass under the trees.  We opened the back doors to get a breeze through the van during the day.  At night, we'd move to a different, lighted area where we might get a breeze through the side windows.

A large wasps nest Jason spotted on a wall.

With a few days to kill before we had to drop off the van at the port, we decided to head to the very end of the PanAmerican Highway.  It ends in the little village of Yaviza, in the province of Darien, for which the Darien Gap is named.   

Yaviza is as far as you can drive.  It ends at the river and there are no roads beyond here.  Note we are now 12,580 kilometers from Alaska!  We've been from one end of the highway to the other.  Now we must pick up the PanAmerican Hwy again in Cartagena, Colombia to continue into South America.

This guy was rolling a barrel down the road to get filled with someting.  The water plant is behind him, so it could be full of fresh water, too.

There are very few vehicles in Yaviza.  The waterway is still used for transport to points beyond, where people live without roads and use the rivers instead.  Here in town, wheelbarrows seemed to be the favored transport method, a local shopping cart.  The man in the truck was selling eggs and chickens.  Folks loaded them into their wheelbarrows and headed off.

The big blue trading boat ties up to the wharf along with the long pirogues, the dugout boats with outboards on them.  These boats are very similar to those we saw in SE Asia, San Blas, and in French Guyana/Suriname.  Yaviza is an actual port of entry as the river goes to the Pacific Ocean and people can come from other countries to enter Panama here.

A long pirogue filled with plantains to sell.

Jason walks out onto the hanging bridge that crosses the Chucunaque River as a man with a wheelbarrow makes his way across from the other side to come shopping.

Looking from the bridge back towards the wharf in town.

This beautiful scarlet mackaw was tame enough to stay put while we took photos.  Gorgeous colors!

Folks still use horses for getting around, too.  Not just cowboys, either.

Where the highway passed through Kuna territory, we saw a stretch where trash was strewn along the side of the road for about a mile.  We aren't sure if the trash has anything to do with the Kuna/Guna Yala or not, but they are the autonomous rulers of the San Blas Islands and this area is just inland from some of them. 

Part of the road was dirt and rock, with the rocks chunky and sharp.  On the way back from Yaviza, we got a flat tire.  Our spare had been patched about a month earlier, so we now have no spare until we can buy new tires.  Yikes, makes me nervous.

We sustained a huge gash in the tread of the tire, making it unrepairable.

Back in Panama City, I watched some canal traffic exit under the Bridge of the Americas.  Lots of containers, but they were probably empty as the ship was still sitting well above its waterline.

Big ship coming out meets little cargo ship heading in.  Here they meet nose to nose in front of the Balboa Yacht Club.  It's amazing to watch the big ships moving around here.  

Most of the mangoes dropping from the trees along the waterfront have been bruised or busted open in their fall.  I gathered these unbroken ones one morning, hoping to salvage them to eat.  Lots of stringy ones, but a few were perfect for eating!  The rest I ended up juicing by hand to mix with my powdered fruit drink mix.

This giant overlander vehicle is parked in the campground area maintained by The Overland Embassy for folks shipping their vehicles with their service.  This truck, called Fat Baastard, is huge!

YOLO parked in the campground in downtown Panama City.  The white building on the right has toilets, showers, a kitchen, fans, and a washing machine.  We used them all, and could plug into electricity, too.  We got two free nights here because we used The Overland Embassy for our shipping.  We cleaned everything while we were here.

The 'campground' is just a crushed rock lot with a fence and gate where we can spend the nights safely.  We met several other vanlifers here, traveling the same direction we are.  We hope to meet up with some of them again in Colombia or beyond.

We took everything out of the cab and stashed it in the back for shipping.  We've read/heard horror stories about stuff getting stolen during the roll on/roll (RORO) off shipping, as you must leave the keys with the RORO crew to move the vehicle on and off the ship at both ends.  While othere van owners build walls between the cab and the back of the van, we can simply lock our pass-through door.  So we put everything from the front into the back to be locked up for shipment after Customs clears the vehicle for shipping.

The entry to the port where we dropped off YOLO at the Manzanillo terminal, just across from Colon on the east/north coast of Panama.  There were thousands of cars moving through here and stacks and stacks of containers.  The amount of goods passing through this port is staggering!

Being homeless now in Panama City until we fly to Cartagena, we stayed at a hostel/B&B right near the Bridge of the Americas.  The orange sky of sunset here was very pretty.

It's off season, so the restaurant at the B&B isn't open except for breakfast, so we had to find meals on our own. Here Jason waits for our fish dinners at the Balboa Grill.  We're in a part of town that has very few eateries, so we ended up walking about a mile each day to get lunch and/or dinner.

Jason at the hotel breakfast table waiting for the morning elixir of life, our coffee and milk.  The place had two old cats, one with two different colored eyes--one blue, one green--who was very friendly and wanted to be petted.  The other cat seems to be blind now as it has started to walk into walls and doors and furniture, and it didn't really want human attention.

This place used to be a hostel and the owner is converting it to a regular B&B hotel.  Years ago, people wrote messages on the walls and they are still there!  Most date from 2007, but some are as recent as 2017.  A construction crew from China building the overhead train got caught here during COVID and had to stay for months.  They couldn't pay and the owner is still struggling to recover as he tries to remodel and remake the business into viable accommodations.

The ironwork seen between the palm fronds is part of the Bridge of the Americas, not far from our room.

Looking down into the lounge area that leads out to the pool. 

The decorations in this hotel are quite eclectic and collected from different cultures around the world:  African masks, Dutch porcelain, bird nests, Asian printed screens, Mexican wind chimes, etc.  This unusual glass window was above the foyer and stairway.

We'll leave here with an Uber to the airport to fly to Cartagena.  I've been virtually forced to download the Uber app to use here.  We've heard that Ubers are tricky/illegal from the airports in Colombia, so we'll have to use yet another app or method to arrange transport to our room in Cartagena.  Living out of a backpack for a week is not nearly as comfortable as living in YOLO and we'll be glad to get our home on wheels back under us!

YOLO in Panama July 2023

Our first destination after the border was Boquete, a pretty, quaint town I'd wanted to visit for years.  I'd heard it was pretty and there was a good-sized waterfall, San Ramon, nearby.  The road was good all the way up the hill.

One of the many eateries in Boquete.  Just the one main drag, so traffic was slow and parking was nearly impossible.  We kept going.

This church had some pretty stained glass in it.

This geological formation, called Los Ladrillos, was on the road out of town. We had no idea it was there until we saw there were rock climbers trying to make their way up the face of it.

The columnar basalt has been turned on its side and the ends create hand and foot holds for climbers.  A smaller version of the Devil's Tower or Devil's Staircase, the slow-cooling lava formed into hexagonal columns.

You can see the swoop of the bent rock here.  Pretty cool, I think.

Jason, cool-headed with his recent haircut, at San Ramon Waterfall.  

San Ramon Waterfall

YOLO coming across one of the little bridges we had to cross on this road.  Much of the road was only this wide, so we prayed there wasn't oncoming traffic.

Los Ladrillos is just to the left of this bridge, and you can't see if there is oncoming traffic until you are on the bridge.  First come, first served is the rule, I guess.

We are nowhere near enough to the ocean to make this lighthouse useful.  We are nearly up to Boquete, over 2600 feet in elevation.

A road to nowhere....

In Panama City, we stopped into the office of Overland Embassy, the company we're using to help us with the shipping of the vehicle to Colombia.  Alejandro and Darwin here were extremely helpful and soothed any worries.

We added our sticker to their wall of fame.  These guys have a great reputation for helping travelers crossing the Darien Gap.  Well deserved.

We drop off the vehicle four days before the ship is supposed to leave at the end of the month.  We'll be living in hotels/hostels for a few days at each end of the shipping.  See you in Colombia!

YOLO beyond San Jose Costa Rica July 2023

 With our new brakes, we felt we could go anywhere now.  That chore out of the way, we looked into shipping our vehicle across the Darien Gap, the 100 miles or so between Panama and Colombia without roads.  You must ship your vehicle and fly or sail to Colombia to pick up the vehicle again.  Such a pain!   And very, very expensive!  We wanted to see if there were alternatives going from Costa Rica to Colombia or Equador.  We'd already spent time in Colombia when we'd come to meet and sail with Steve on that fateful journey back in 2018, so we weren't thrilled that Cartagena seemed to be the only destination available.  But such is life.

We headed to the Pacific coast tport town of Caldera to see if we could find someone to answer some of our questions.  We parked on the public beach access to the beach camping area, this black sand beach.

YOLO parked at the beach in Caldera.

We didn't get any answers on the shipping alternatives we wanted so we headed off.  Apparently ships full of cars from Asia come into this port, but none go out; the ships just go back for more.  The helpful shipping agent we talked with called around and found a lady who'd at least try to get us a quote to ship from the Caribbean coast of Limon.  We contacted her with our vehicle info and she said she'd try to get us a quote, but it wouldn't be that day. So we headed towards the Osa Peninsula to visit our friends' home.  We stopped at Jaco Beach for lunch.

Looks like the tide was out when we stopped, leaving a wide open beach to enjoy.

Karen selfie at Jaco beach.

A view from the mirador/overlook onto Jaco Beach.

This end of the bay had some big rocky outcrops with breaking waves.

Waves crashing over the rocks from the mirador.  The safety chain was down or gone from much of the cliff.

We ended up at Matapalo Beach for the night.  Just park anywhere between the palms and hope the coconuts don't let loose.

Cute sign on a driveway here.

Our view from the van.  Dangerous rip currents kept swimers close to shore.  A lone brave surfer dared to enter the waves.  He could only get 5-15 seconds of a ride from the waves, then would spend that many minutes paddling back out getting pounded by the curling waves breaking on him.

Jason enjoying some down time on the beach at Matapalo.

Lots of little crabs digging in the sand make some funky designs.

This huge tree stump was standing up when we arrived.  High tide waves actually pushed it over.  Quite the piece of wood.  Full tree trunks were being moved around on the beach by the high waves.

Some white ibis poking their long curved beaks into the mud puddles after the rains.

YOLO and a pretty palm next to it.

Clouds hovering over the Corcovado Peninsula highlands.

Unusual clouds formed above us.

This time of year, it's a pretty good bet they're going to bring rain.

An octopus carved into a pillar on the balcony of Mike and Sue's house.

We missed seeing our friends by about a week, but they very graciously offered us the use of their house for a respite from van life.

The view from the balcony looking NE.  Ahead is Puerto Jiminez and the gulf; behind us is the Corcovado National Park.

Jason relaxing in front of the fan.  It's hot and humid here and rains every afternoon or evening.

A troop of golden monkeys, probably spider monkeys, went jumping and dancing through the trees to the rambutan trees, where thery ate and knocked down a lot of the fruits.

The starfruit were dropping and rotting in the driveway.  Here Jason tries to coax a monkey with one.

Big beautiful scarlet mackaws fly around here all day!  You know they're around from the raucous squawking they make.  They will perch in the treetops and preen before taking to the skies, always in pairs.  Too bad the camera in the phone can't capture their majestic flight and colors.

Fruits from around the yard include this velvet apple.  It's got a dark orange velvety peel.

The inside is a creamy pale yellow with a consitstncy sort of like a banana.  A barely sweet taste, I wouldn't buy them.  Animals and birds don't seem to like them either as they were all just laying on the ground under the tree.

Starfruit here isn't eaten by locals as they say it's too acidic.  They are another pretty fruit, but I just don't like their flavor.

There were a couple of rambutan trees on the property.  I love rambutans, but so do the squirrel monkeys.  A whole troop of them cleaned off hundreds of them and just bit  them and dropped them, leaving the sweet insides to rot.  Really ripe ones are usually darker red but the season just started here.  These were delicious.

I think Jason's has has seen better days.  He'll need a new one soon.

The doors inside the home were made of stunningly beautiful woods.

The starfruit tree with all the fruit just dropping and rotting alongside the driveway.

Mangosteens are purple on the outside and have 5-6 sweet globs of goodness inside.  Very tasty!  I ate about a dozen of them so they wouldn't go rotten. The property caretaker brought me some and told me where the tree was, so I gathered some more.

This scarlett-rumped tanager on the window sill outsde kept trying to fly through the glass.  Or maybe he was just pecking bugs off the outside?  Pretty.

Some heavy weather moving in as we left.  The front hit us a bit later with driving rain and winds.

We're off to Panama!