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!