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One and a half years, 20,000 miles and 10 countries later and we’re wrapping up North America. We hit the end of the road in Panama, Central America, and now we’re gearing up for our South America adventure!
This travel blog recounts our motorcycle adventure through Panama as part of our round the world trip. To read more stories from our travels check out Our Adventures
Panama Motorcycle Travel Blog
By Andy Davidson
Mad or Nomad: Round the World Motorcycle Traveller
End of the road
Panama marks the end of the road for the North American continent – literally. Separating Panama (North America) and its neighbour, Colombia (South America), lies the infamous Darien Gap jungle.
There are no roads through this jungle and it’s a hotbed for drug and human trafficking and criminals. So, to get from Panama to Colombia, we need to reach Panama City and fly our bikes over the Gap.
A few brave adventurers have crossed the Darien in the past, but it’s eye-wateringly expensive and takes weeks of heaving your bike (not riding it) through thick jungles with a troop of locals helping. We’ll just fly them instead…
READ MORE: Welcome to the Jungle and Mind the Gap
North and Central America
We had a blast riding through North America. We started our journey in Vancouver, Canada, rode north to Salmon Glacier and toured the Ice Fields before riding south to the USA and through the mountain states. After came Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica – and it’s been one wild ride taking us nearly a year and a half and over 20,000 miles.
If you haven’t already, check out our travel blogs on the above countries. And if you fancy riding in any of them yourself you’ll find detailed guides in the North America Destinations section.
READ MORE:
Into Panama
Crossing into Panama was a breath of fresh air compared to the bureaucracy of Nicaragua and the long lines in Costa Rica. We stamped in at immigration, bought insurance, got our temporary import permits, paid for fumigation (a quick spray of our tyres) and we were in!
It was late in the season when we crossed the border and the skies threatened rain every evening. But we were lucky with blue skies during the day and the biblical rains only came at night.
Unfortunately, we were running out of time, as we needed to reach the capital, store our bikes and fly home for a week. We stuck to the main road and worked off the 500km from the border to Panama City in a couple of days.
The Panama Canal
But we couldn’t just drop the bikes and go. We visited the Panama Canal first as it’s a mad feat of human engineering and we wanted to see it up close. There’s a tourist centre where you can pay a load of money to watch a video and stand behind a crowd of people as a boat passes by. We skipped that, having your own transport means you can ride off and find your own quiet spots. Here’s what we know about the canal…
+ The canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and revolutionised global trade by massively cutting travel time for ships.
+ It’s an engineering marvel, it works by using an 82-kilometre waterway with a system of locks to get through the different elevations of the canal.
+ By connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the canal reduces the travel distance for ships by about 8,000 nautical miles. It also means these huge monster boats can avoid the long and dangerous journey around the southern tip of South America.
+ Transiting the Panama Canal typically takes about 8 to 10 hours, depending on the size of the vessel. And it costs up to 300,000USD to send a cargo ship through.
+ The construction of the canal involved over 75,000 workers and took ten years to complete, from 1904 to 1914. It was one of the largest and most challenging engineering projects of its time.
+ The canal is crucial for international maritime trade. Over 14,000 ships pass through it annually, which means Panama makes a pretty penny or two!
+ But it wasn’t always Panama’s. The US primarily built the canal and then owned and operated it from its completion in 1914 until 1999. They had exclusive rights to it until control was transferred to Panama on ’99.
Indigenous people of Panama
We also wanted to visit an indigenous tribe while in Panama. There are seven tribes in the country, making up 12% of the population. They primarily inhabit the Darien region in Eastern Panama and being so close, we couldn’t not go. So, we visited an Embera tribe along the Chagres River. To get to the village we needed a guide who could speak Embera. A tribesman met us by the water and took us up the river in his wooden longboat to his village.
We walked around and spoke to as many people as we could. We chatted with the chief’s wife who spoke some Spanish and our tour guide translated everything else for us.
We asked all the questions we wanted to and the chief’s wife gave us a speech about her people. All the while, a traditional lunch was being cooked up of fresh fish and fritters with fruit. Have a read of our detailed guide on visiting the Embera people and you’ll find a list of interesting questions we asked in that article.
READ MORE: How to Visit an Indigenous Tribe in Panama
Storage and flights
Once we’d got our fix, we headed for E-Cargo based inside Panama City’s airport to drop off our bikes. We removed all aerosol cans and food, left a little petrol in the tank and gave Mr Teo (the owner of E-Cargo) our keys. He then handled our paperwork and drove us two minutes to the customs building and cancelled our Temporary Import Permits before putting us in a cab back to our hotel. With these cancelled, we were now free to leave the country without our bikes.
The plan is to fly home for two weeks and then fly to Colombia. Once we’re there we’ll message Mr Teo to say we’re ready. He’ll then DHL our bikes and they’ll fly the next day.
This marks the end of our ride through North and Central America. When we get the bikes back in Colombia it’ll be the start of our journey through South America – and we can’t wait…
Read more on motorcycle travel in Panama
Thanks for checking out our Motorcycle Travel Blog Panama. We hope you enjoyed it! Here’s a few more related articles on adventure riding in Panama and North America that we recommend you read next.
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