From Barcelona I took one of my favourite train trips up the coast to the French border at Port Bou-Cerbere. From there I slowly made my way to the village of Lafage, near Toulouse, to see Mariette, who I hadn’t seen for 10 years. I only just made the first train in France. There was a long line at the ticket office in Cerbere, so I asked the conductor if I could pay on board. He said that I could, & although he passed me 3 times, he never asked me for the fare. At Narbonne station, I told the ticket seller but she just gave me one of those Gallic waves — it was his fault, not mine. I had three great days in the French countryside at one of those farmhouses so beloved of the English, drinking wine & having barbecues.

I was hoping my plane back to London took off on time as I’d sent off 4 applications for jobs in Cairo, Addis Ababa, Abu Dhabi & the Cayman Islands while I was in Barcelona. I’d arranged an interview for the Cairo job for 10pm on the night I arrived back in London. I should be comfortably back by 9pm, all being well. Interviews for the jobs in Addis & Abu Dhabi had been arranged for the following 2 days. The Cayman Islands, surprisingly, bothered to inform me that they would not be calling me for interview. Headteachers either love or hate my CV. Too much time out for 1-year cycling trips are viewed enthusiastically, at one end of the spectrum, or thrown onto the ‘waster’ pile, at the other.

Everything went smoothly & I spent 45 minutes on the phone to Brisbane, Australia, with the Head of the Cairo English School in Egypt. Within 4 hours of landing at Gatwick Airport, I’d been offered a 2-year contract at the school starting in August. I was offered a position in Addis the next day, so I withdrew from the Abu Dhabi interview. I was amazed to have been offered 3 interviews within 5 days of sending off my applications. I thought there would few jobs left by this time of the academic year. Being upfront about my wanderlust has always attracted the type of people that I like working with, & that was how I felt when I accepted the French & Spanish teaching job in Cairo.

Cats & Dogs Just Doesn’t Describe This Amount Of Rain

Notorious for its bad traffic, Bogota jams have become much worse in the last 10 months due to the flooding that has engulfed the whole country. More than 1 million hectares of land is underwater because of the six times more than normal rainfall that has fallen on the country. Around 450 people died & 3 million have been affected in some way; 12,000 homes have been destroyed & 350,000 destroyed. The figures would have been much higher if the disaster prevention system hadn’t worked. I would be spending my time in Bogota with one of those at the centre of the relief effort, David Huey, Oxfam’s director for Colombia. We’d studied together at the University of London. Then, I’d gone off to Mozambique, David went to Colombia & this would be our first meeting in 7 years.

It took 2.5 hours to get through the Bogota traffic & then another 30 minutes of taxi-swimming through the flooded streets to get to David’s flat in the Centre. The Centre, incidentally, is the financial district on the western edge of the city. Arriving after 8pm meant quickly dropping off my bags & heading for the newly-opened Irish pub around the corner. It was time for me to turn my attention towards home with a warm beer & a steak-&-ale pie for dinner.

The view of the financial district from David’s apartment wasn’t quite so appealing during the day. The almost permanently-grey sky had something to do with that. During my 5-day stay the sun barely popped its head out from behind the clouds. On most days the mornings were cloudy & the rain came down from about 2pm onwards. I had a leisurely morning on my first day in the city, went out about 12.30pm & got caught in the most tropical of downpours. I learned my lesson after that & would try & do something each morning, before retiring to shelter in the early afternoon.

Montserrate, Holy Mountain

Early the next morning I took another cable car ride to the top of the mountain. David said that if I walked up I’d get robbed. In spite of the country’s reputation for crime, one of my abiding memories would be its cable cars, not least because I went on as many here as I had in my previous adult life. From Montserrate’s peak, I scanned the city below to see where I was staying. It was that time of the trip — I was no longer so interested in why the mountain was holy, although I’d have had to have walked around with my eyes shut not to realise wise. There was a church & several statues on the summit of Jesus’ journey from his meeting with Pontius Pilate to when he rose up to Heaven. The city stretched as far as the eye could see, but what interested me more was imagining the FARC running down from the surrounding hills to hold up a bank before disappearing back up into the dense foliage to count their loot. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence not to long ago. That was that day’s sightseeing over as the rain started to come down in the early afternoon.

Bogota’s Old Town

On a day free of rain, I retraced my steps towards Montserrate & then continued below its summit to reach the old town’s main square, Plaza Bolivar. Some buildings date back 400 years, while on one side of the square the Palace of Justice is little more than 20 years old. In 1985, when the government’s grip on power was at its most tenuous, the M-19 guerrilla group seized the building & took its 25 Supreme Court judges hostage. The incident lasted only a few hours. As the military attacked, the guerrillas burned down the building. From the ashes only 14 of the judges emerged; all of the M-19 assailants died.

The area, though small, had some interesting churches, narrow cobblestoned streets & quaint details. Less quaint was the heavy army presence. The area is much safer than it was a few years ago, & everybody seems to agree that it is thanks to this presence. Much more enjoyable to observe were Jorge Olave’s rooftop statues. With eyes aimed upwards, I spotted 3 examples of his mid-1990s works. Some were almost at eye-level; others involved me straining my neck almost horizontally. Olave has applied for new funding to either re-work some of the more damaged statues or make others. When you all come flocking to Colombia, you can tell me about Olave’s new statues.

Bogota & Out

That was the last photo I took on the trip. I thought I’d lost my camera, but it had just slipped down the side of one of the chair’s in David’s apartment. I’ll finish with a few pictureless words about our Sunday bike ride to the northern district of Usuquen & a night out at a live-music venue in the vicinity of what will soon be Latin America’s tallest building.

Just as in Mexico City, some of Bogota’s main streets are closed off to traffic until 2pm on Sundays. We joined the throngs of locals heading into Bogota’s exclusive northern districts & ended up drinking some more warm beer at the Bogota Beer Company. That night, we went to see a local band play. They set up, did their mic checks & off they went … for 1 song before they quit due to technical difficulties. This didn’t seem to bother anyone, though; the audience just carried on having a good time.

Colombia — A Great Time To Visit

It took me a few days to get used to not being on the bike. Once I’d got into the rhythm of being on public transport & whizzing through huge swathes of the countryside to get from Cartagena to Medellin to Manizales, & finally, to Bogota, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. In spite of the problems that have racked Colombia for decades, Colombians seem intent on having a good time. It was a fitting way to finish my 11-month journey from sea level on the Arctic Ocean to the lower Andes, & Bogota, at an altitude of 2600m. It was a journey where I had had a ‘damn good time’. As on all trips, it was the people who made it. I started receiving the most amazing hospitality from Ron & Barb in Anchorage & ended with a similar welcome from David in Bogota. In between, I have been treated with so much kindness by so many people that I will need to keep referring back to this blog to refresh my memory as time begins to blur these memories. I wrote the blog precisely for that reason — to never forget.

A straightforward 4-hour bus ride from Medellin left me with the choice of taking a city bus or another cable car from the station to my accommodation. I went for the latter option. Could this finally be me getting over my fear of heights? I had the car to myself as I rose over the buildings in that town of 400,000 towards the cannily-named Cable district. I was even standing up to get a better look through the descending clouds as we drifted through the air. Once at the top, the views of the surrounding hills were magnificent.

Not long after I got to the hostel, however, the Heavens opened. I woke up the next morning & they opened even more. By lunchtime, it was bucketing down & the clouds had come in so much that, if I hadn’t had a good look around me the day before, I wouldn’t have known where I was. The forecast was the same for the next few days, so with only a week left I made the decision to head for my last stop, Bogota, the next morning.

I wasn’t going to get to see the coffee region, but I would, regardless of the weather, walk just down the hill to the local football stadium. I had never heard of Manizales FC. There’s a simple reason for that — the local team is called Once Caldas. As one who likes to think he knows a bit about the beautiful game, I’d never heard of Colombia’s only winner of the ‘Copa de Libertadores’, South America’s equivalent of the Champions League. They won it in 2004, five years after their first appearance in the competition.

The game I went to see was the quarter final first-leg of this year’s competition against Santos of Brazil, Pele’s old club. Of the 8 remaining teams, 7 were from different countries, a much more healthy scenario than what we sometimes see in its European counterpart, where we’re used to seeing 3 or 4 English teams or the same amount from Spain.  Once Caldas aside, there was a representative from each of the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, & Uruguay. To those of us with little knowledge of Latin American football, it was even more surprising to see where the 2 remaining clubs came from — Paraguay.

As an introduction to Latin American football it was terrible, & I’m being polite. Heavy rain, little atmosphere & a poor match were what I took away with me as I trundled back up the hill to a late bath. Even more dejected were the home supporters who saw their team lose 1-o. A week later in Brazil a much improved performance still only gave them a 2–1 aggregate defeat. There would be no repeat of the 2004 triumph. With one of the Paraguayan sides falling at the quarter-final stage four nations were still in with a chance of seeing the cup return to their soil.

Medellin — not a pretty city, but rather a bustling, workman-like one — has few tourist sites, so when I spent a few hours around the Berrio Park in the centre of the city with its heavy police presence, I was looking more at life on a daily basis. One of the ways the previous President Uribe (2002–2010) went about tackling Colombia’s long history of violence & upheaval was to create a heavy & visible police presence in the cities. The police are everywhere , sometimes in small groups, wearing their fluorescent green jackets instead of the pretty uniforms you see elsewhere in the world. In spite of Colombia’s reputation as a violent place, I never once felt unsafe. Business seemed to be booming, & one of the ways people were going about this involved mobile phone use. I hadn’t seen this to the extent I saw it in Colombia, but almost on every street corner there were people with mobile phones for use for a small fee. A lot more people seemed to have phones in other countries, which made such a service less visible or necessary. Or maybe, rates are higher in Colombia, which would price many out of the market?

Medellin is in a pretty location, in a bowl surrounded by mountains, like several other high-altitude Latin American cities, such as Quito & La Paz. Just like in those places, there are sprawling poor districts climbing up the sides of the mountains, where the majority of the population lives. In the Berrio Park, in the centre of town, I met a group of young rappers who live up on the mountain side. Through their music, they are trying to encourage other young people to keep away from the violence that blights such neighbourhoods. I asked them if I could come to see where they lived. Being told I wouldn’t last 5 minutes there, I took the metro to get a closer but safe look at one of the districts from the ‘metrocable’ cable car system. Each car holds up to eight people & rises up from the valley via a series of police-monitored stations to a national park at the top of one of the mountains. With my fear of heights, I didn’t get right to the top but survived until the 3rd station before making the return journey back to valley level. It was a unique way of getting a glimpse of life in such districts. What I noticed was housing considerably better than I’d seen in many richer countries, with a number of amenities for the population, although, with housing so tightly-packed together, I imagine that the needs did not meet the demand.

This was where the rappers I met called home. In spite of their efforts, they told me that one of their friends had been inexpicably shot dead the previous week while walking home from school. Although saddened by this, they shrugged their shoulders, as I probed further. He was just one of 2000 young people, between the ages 10 & 25, who had been murdered there in the last 2 years. All of them said that they could be the next victim. Why could such a peaceful project as theirs be seen as so threatening? A variety of factors has contributed to a feeling of mistrust among people there. A lot of projects in such areas were funded by drug money from the cartel once run by Pablo Escobar. Once Uribe came to power he sent the army in to dispense with the drugs problem. Human rights abuses were carried out with impunity & the presence remains to this day. In middle of this situation stand these rappers, trying to fight fire with lyrics. With little hope of finding employment, many other young people eek out an existence from involvement in the drugs trade. It pays more than rapping does.

Within 15 minutes of touching down I was into the mad Cartagena traffic. My taxi driver cursed his way through it. At one point, he told me the driving was so bad because the people had no culture. Then, he zipped across 2 lanes to turn left from the wrong lane. No culture, indeed. After checking into the Hotel Holiday, I found a chemist, managed to get a repeat prescription of what I´d taken in Costa Rica & headed back to my room to allow it to start taking effect.

Feeling much better the next day, I decided to spend the morning at the San Felipe de Barajas Fort, about 1km away from where I was staying. After that, I’d see how I felt. Built over a 120-year period, between 1536 & 1657, its strategic location saved the city from several English attacks, the most significant of which came in 1741 — 2 years after the sacking of Portobelo in Panama. An English fleet of 186 ships & 27,000 men was defeated by a defending Spanish garrison of 3500 men & only 6 ships in what was to be the world´s biggest naval show of strength until the D-day landings over 2 centuries later.

As you walk up the fort´s enormous  entrance ramp, you are left in no doubt as to who runs the fort today. The most interesting part for me was descending into the extensive tunnels constructed to further aid the city´s defence. Although I kept bumping into large groups of ageing cruise ship passengers down there, I eventually found a bit of solace to enjoy the underground experience. From the emptiness of the far end of the fort, I was able to appreciate its size & main lookout point as well. From that lookout, you can appreciate the expanding new city &, what you come to Cartagena for, to visit arguably the most beautiful colonial town in The Americas.

That would have to wait until tomorrow as my morning´s excursion had left me feeling a bit weak & tired, so I spent the rest of the day reading & sleeping. I set off on the 15-minute walk to the old city with the same idea as yesterday in mind — to do something in the morning & rest through the afternoon. I entered the old town through the Watchtower Gate into a world so different from the one on its outside. Beyond the statue of the city’s founder, Pedro de Heredia, is a world that  you can imagine on a period drama-set: squares & buildings that remained little, if at all changed, since the city’s heyday under the Spanish.

There were so many different types of buildings that I stopped taking photos after a while. Those I took were of tall buildings & wide ones; some of which had impressive interiors. Smaller but no less impressive buildings, in my view, were more the norm. There were more colours here than in any of the other colonial towns I’d visited since Mexico. Mixed with the colours were balconies of several different styles, often decorated with bougainvillea. Wandering through the narrow streets under the balconies sometimes brought me views of the old town’s churches dominating the skyline or out into one of its numerous squares, some of which offered the tired & still-recovering sightseer the opportunity of a break. In one of them were some statues of life in the old city: people working as barbers or coffee-sellers, for instance, or enjoying their freetime.

The old town is not a musuem; it is a working city. As well as the usual array of artists selling their work to tourists, there are many more people looking to make a living from whoever is passing by. After several short pit-stops to buy fruit or a drink or one of the wonderful pastries available in every street, I headed to the edge of the old town. I wandered along the city walls which surround the whole of the old town.

Over the next few days, I walked around for longer & longer, as I regained my strength, continually unearthing something new, whether it was a door dating back a few centuries or the wooden bars that covered so many windows. The last time I walked out of the old town through the ‘Watchtower Gate’, I stumbled across some dancers who had attracted quite a crowd. After several attempts at trying to film them, I came out with a short video before the space closed up again with people rushing by on their way home from work.

I was only ill for 1 full day &, then had to take it easy for a couple more. I really don’t know, but I think the difference between this bout & the previous one was the fact that I wasn’t cycling in such hot temperatures. I’d become so dehydrated in Costa Rica that it was only when a saline drip was put into my arm that I started to improve. No longer cycling meant that I didn’t have to overcome any real dehydration this time & so recovered much more quickly to continue on my way.

On the other side of Portobelo’s bay lay the third fort, San Fernando, which lay on three levels. From the middle level of the fort, with its toilet still in tact, you could see how the Spanish protected the bay with forts on either side. Walking up from the middle to the top level showed how apt Colombus’ description of the place had been. There was little to the top part of the fort. It was used purely for sentry duty with little room for much more than supplies & a well. At least the views would have made up for the lonely existence up there.

History aside, Portobelo was a strange place. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the locals were unfriendly, but they carried a suspicious air of foreigners. The town has one hostel — Captain Jack’s — which Steve, the manager, described as a ‘bar with beds’. Great, I thought, as I checked in. It was a typical expat outpost with characters like spiritual Deidra, who was sleeping in the forest after her relationship broke down. If you are on a sailing boat & things go wrong between the 2 of you, somebody has to get off. She was the one who ended up looking for another passage with somewhere. From talking to her, I’d say, at any cost. Each evening at 5.59pm the yachties would roll in for 6pm happy hour. Some went an hour later, while others stayed on into the night, but my fears of a ‘bar with beds’ didn’t materialise. By 9pm, only Steve & I remained in the bar area.

It wasn’t my kind of place but I stayed on for an extra day to get a boat over to investigate the San Fernando Fort & to find out about the speedboats that plied the coast. To get to Colombia, I’d have to take a bus to Miramar; a boat to El Porvenir where Panamian exit procedures are carried out & another one to Puerto Obaldia on the Colombian border. From there it was 3 more boats to Turbo & the next ATM machine. However, I never made it.

I got sick again the next day & spent most of the day horizontal. I’d come down with exactly the same as I’d got in Costa Rica — diarrhoea, but this time I vomited it all up, as well. The next day I was okay to sit on the bus, but not to rock up & down on the waves of the open sea for 3 days. The prices had also gone up, so I wasn’t sure if I had enough money. I went back to Sabanitas, an hour away by car, but the ATM wouldn’t give me any money. Back at Captain Jack’s, I Skyped my bank. Having had to make 5 phone calls like this during the trip, they told me for the first time that my card is automatically stopped every 3 months if I’m abroad. They weren’t even sure if it would work immediately. Stuck where I was was not the best place to be in such a situation. The incident & my illness had made up my mind for me — I’d head back to Panama City & fly to Cartagena. If I hadn’t been running out of time, I’d have seen out the illness & still headed down the coast. Under the current circumstances, I could fly into Cartagena that day, instead of arriving 500km further north 3–7 days later, depending on how long it took me to recover.

For the remainder of the colonial period, Spain was content to ship goods from the Pacific to the Caribbean overland via the Royal Road. A survey of the viability of a Canal was carried out as early as 1534, but it wasn’t until 1880, under French leadership, that the first attempt to construct a canal began. It was never completed, being abandoned 13 years later, due largely to the deaths of over 20,000 workers from landslides & disease. Other contributing factors were political corruption & financial management. The United States was much more successful in its attempt to open a way between the two oceans. Although a further 5,500 people died during its construction, the Panama Canal opened in 1914. It remained under US control for the next 63 years in spite of a number of protests from Panamanians over the sovereignty of its territory. The 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties resulted in joint administration until New Year’s Eve 1999, when the running of the Canal was passed over to a Panamanian government agency, the Panama Canal Authority.

The next day was Good Friday &, so, with almost everything closed until Monday or Tuesday, it gave me the excuse to rest up for a few days. I was going to be in Panama City at least until the following Wednesday, as I wouldn’t be able to get a bike box from one of the shops until they reopened on Tuesday. I spent that long weekend just hanging around the hostel, the old town & going on various walks in the opposite direction from Chorrillo — often no further than Panama’s oldest cafe, the Coca Cola. There, I enjoyed some great local company, all of whom warned me that if I went into Chorrillo I was sure to be robbed. Even if we were talking about something completely different, Chorrillo would end up in the conversation. At the hostel, I met the oldest independent traveller I’d ever come across. 76-year-old Liz was still hitchhiking around the world over 50 years after she travelled all over colonial & post-colonial Africa.

As I was staying in the old town, I went for a different short walk around the area. Each morning I’d open the shutters to my room & have a look into St Joseph’s church. I’d sometimes be woken up by the early-morning singing drifting across the narrow street. Being Easter weekend, there were various services taking place throughout the day. Once outside, I’d wander the narrow streets, which led me to several small squares. Some were dominated by churches & statues, others by buildings now used by the government.

The old town was all that there was of Panama City between 1671 & 1903. The original Spanish town, old Panama, is 8km southeast. It lasted less than 50 years before it was destroyed by Welsh pirate, Henry Morgan in 1671. The old town was easier to defend & so for for almost a quarter of a millenium, it was where the affairs of state were conducted. When construction of the Panama Canal began, the elite moved out & it degenerated into an urban slum. That is part of its appeal today. The government has begun a regeneration project to return it to its former glories. Some of its properties have been gentrified, while others remain abandoned. For every quaint traditional wooden structure, there is a crumbling one that is home to a very poor family. The plan is to temporarily re-house such people, regenerate the building & move them back in again afterwards. For the time being, the heavy police presence in the area keeps things safe during the day. At night, it’s a different story. Three people at the hostel were robbed after dark while I was there. What each was doing walking the streets after 11pm, in spite of repeated warnings, only they can answer.

Across the Bay of Panama you can make out the new city from several places in the old town. An unobstructed view leaves you in no doubt that this is, by far, Central America’s wealthiest city. A closer look makes it obvious that many of the skyscrapers are a work in progress, & that some of the world’s more renowned architects have been called upon to use their imaginations to produce a skyline worth taking notice of. This was particularly the case with the ‘Twisted’ building. Still under construction, I decided to wander into the buildings to get a closer look. However, I got lost it in the maze of streets. Then, it would reappear, disappear, reappear &, finally, I gave up & carried on walking. Many people describe the city as ‘soulless’. I have to disagree. The old town fascinated me; the new city was a city were you could live & go out after dark without any real problem. If you put the two together, you have a city of extreme contrasts — interesting for the visitor but an unenviable task for future governments.

A few kilometres along the coast is the original site of ‘Old Panama’, built in 1519, the same year Cortes set foot in Mexico. Most of what remains is in ruins, but ruins where you can watch games of football. There was also a nice representation of a church. However, the most impressive structure was a reproduction of the cathedral’s tower. A 4-storey climb gives you views of the city to the north, new construction to the south & Panama’s lush interior to the east. You didn’t have to look too far to the east to see a looming threat, though — the teeming slum of Old Panama. While I was in the museum, a couple of tourists had one of their bags snatched. They held onto the other long enough for a car to send the thieves back in the direction they’d come.

I’ve regularly heard stories of the extreme wealth gaps in Brazil, South Africa & the USA, but nothing about Panama City. A short trip to the Causeway is another example of this. A 5km-long road, within sight of the Bridge of the Americas, joins the mainland to islands just off the coast. They are a rich person’s playground, containing upmarket hotels & cafes, a swimming pool & bikes for hire. If getting fit by ridng a bike isn’t enough, you can develop your whole body — not just your legs — by jogging around the islands; or, if that’s too much, you can admire the luxury yachts anchored in the bay or the container ships queuing up to get into the Canal.

The travellers’ grapevine tells you to avoid the big cities of Central America — Guatemala City; San Pedro Sula (Honduras); San Salvador; Managua; &, more & more so, San Jose in Costa Rica; but never Panama. I had never understand this. Each has areas to be avoided, but not the whole city itself. Panama City has its genuinely dangerous areas, where you quite simply don’t go, even during the day. Each can be dangerous, but I know of nowhere else where residents constantly tell you not to go somewhere or even physically remove you if you inadvertently step half a block too far.

On Tuesday, I managed to get my bike box. By Wednesday, the bike & 3 panniers of stuff were boxed & ready to be picked up for shipping. I was left with 15kg of stuff to carry around with me. That, I would enjoy. All that left for me to do was  visit one of the world’s most impressive engineering feats — the Panama Canal.

There was no accommodation at the crossroads, so I chose the nearer, Paradise Inn–option, rather than go a further 10km to the beach. The pool was mine for the rest of the day; I didn’t need the beach. It was also very quiet, so I spent the rest of the day swinging in one of the hammocks there & talking to a German aid-worker on R&R from Haiti. He was about to hand in his notice as he’d seen little improvement in the 18 months he’d spent there, in spite of the untold amount of money that had been spent since the earthquake. Being a Sunday the next day, I decided to have one more rest day before the end of the ride. I’d be in Panama City by Easter Saturday at the latest, hopefully a quiet weekend traffic-wise to arrive.

The road continued as it had yesterday: new, smooth tarmac & a great shoulder. Panama was also like Mexico in terms of high car ownership. This meant exploded tyres lying all over the shoulder. Exploded tyres have little metal studs sticking out of the end of them. Metal studs have been the biggest cause of punctures for me. Some sections of shoulder were in perfect condition; others were more like an obstacle course. You can’t avoid them all, particularly going downhill, & so it is hit & hope. Unbeknown to me, exploded tyres on good shoulders were preferable to the road becoming blocks of concrete with a terrible or unusable shoulder. Suddenly, I was flying down hills with bits of road missing or in terrible condition. This wasn’t what I’d expected the closer I got to the capital. Fortunately, the traffic continued to be light & the scenery worth taking note of, when I wasn’t staring down at the road. I also passed a number of indigenous women in brightly-coloured dresses of green, blue, red & yellow. There was no shortage of stalls offering them for sale as I passed by. Why is it that only the women dress so colourfully & traditionally? The men all wear Western dress. The only place I’ve seen men maintaining traditions of dress was on the island of Taquile on Lake Titicaca, & they looking equally as elegant as the women do.

Panama continued to be a country of surprises: no less so than in the amount of climbing I was doing. That day contained 4 climbs of between 100m & 250m. A lot of cycling days will have one such climb, maybe 2, but I couldn’t remember a day where I’d had 4. Being the Panam Highway the gradients were much gentler than on the other coast, never more than 10%, but usually as low as 4–6%. Rests were taken frequently in the heat. They needed to be. I climbed 1962m that Monday, the most in a day by more than 200m. This can be partly explained by the distance travelled, 118km. Distances between places were again long. I hadn’t experienced this since Mexico. Four of my last 5 days of cycling were therefore 91km, 118km, 106km & 94km; &, on 3 of those 5, I climbed 1024m, 1456m &, as I’ve just mentioned, just under 2000m. At the same time, it was enjoyable cycling, in spite of the traffic roaring past me at often ridiculous speeds. Surprising to me, Panamanians were the most aggressive & impatient drivers I’d come across. At one point, as I was cruising down a short hill into Aguadulce, a car horn beeped & sped right across my path, as I struggled to slow down to let it pass – driving at its worst. I’d had enough of the driving at this point & followed the vehicle as it took its place in front of McDonald’s. I wasn’t going to become a statistic just because somebody couldn’t wait 15 seconds longer for their bloody Big Mac. Satisfied that I’d said my piece, more so when I saw the 2 young kids in the back, I decided it was probably a good time for a lunch break – across the road at a local restaurant where the meatballs were sublime. If you build a fast 4-lane highway & police it poorly or have all of your police go on holiday at the same time, the result is a Formula 1 track.

I continued to amble towards the finish line. I was pleased that the end was near. Not because I’d had enough, but because Panama City was the goal I’d set myself back in San Francisco. It later fitted perfectly, in terms of time, with my plans to return to Europe for the summer to mark exam papers & look for a teaching post for September. Panama City is also a logical final destination for such a trip. The road runs 300km further south into the Darien Gap, which separates Panama & Colombia, but goes no further. To get to Colombia you either fly or to take a speedboat down the coast. Either option involves dismantling the bike & paying between $50–100 to have it accompany you. There are two other boat options: taking a 5–6 day sailing trip, which didn’t interest me; or going the slow way via cargo boats that supply the towns in the region. This is how I’d have travelled had I had more time, but the journey could take up to 2 weeks, as opposed to 3 days on the speedboats.

The traffic continued to get busier & faster, & then about 2pm on Wednesday afternoon, it dwindled to a trickle. Barcelona were playing Real Madrid in the final of the Spanish Cup. Everybody it seemed followed one or the other. About half an hour into the game, I stopped at a tiny kiosk for a rest. The family didn’t notice me at first as they were all glued to the television set. I walked around the back, was invited to join them & spent the rest of the game listening to their ‘oohs’ in favour of Barcelona, while their neighbours on both sides filled in the gaps with ‘aahs’ for the team in white. We were joined by 4 other men who’d stopped simply because they heard the game’s commentary as they were passing.

By Thursday morning, I was within 100km of Panama City. I would see what the traffic was like in the last 30km & make up my mind about whether to arrive that day or on Good Friday. The road had just been resurfaced all the way to Arraiján, some 15km from my destination, & the traffic was light going in my direction. It started to build up in the opposite direction at La Chorrera, 35km away, & just kept on doing so, all the way to my turnoff for the Bridge of the Americas at Arraiján. A quick refreshment stop & a firm telling off from 8-year-old, Cristián later, I was on my way towards the bridge. He was indignant that I couldn’t have cycled from Alaska to Panama in 9 months. “Impossible,” he stated stern-faced, “it would take 3 years.”

This final stretch of road was fast & busy. There were 2 brand new lanes on either side of the central reservation & the usual generous shoulder. However, the shoulder hadn’t been flattened out, so I stuck to the side of the road & moved onto the ‘shoulder’ for the several short climbs. The bridge appeared, & there went the hiss of my back tyre. This wasn’t a metal stud, it was a proper hole caused by something on the shoulder. Punctures within sight of your goal are annoying, back-tyre ones more so because you have to unload everything & turn the bike upside down to remove the tyre from the chain. It did mean that I got to use the 3 inner tubes that I’d had sent out from the USA to Mexico. Oh well, I got more of a view of the Bridge of the Americas than other cyclists do. I was also expecting a police escort across the bridge. The police had stopped anyone walking or cycling on the bridge in the last few years, as people who were down on their luck would threaten to jump unless the government cleared their debts. No police materialised, so I climbed up to the middle of the bridge & then, I was on my way down … 30km … 40km … 50km … 60km an hour. Two signs faced me, ‘Avenida de los Mártires’ & ‘Avenida de las Poetas’. I knew that both would take me to the old town where I was planning to stay, but the latter was easier to get on to at the speed I was going.

I found myself in a part of one of the city’s poorest & most rundown districts, Chorrillo. Gangs of youths were sitting or standing by the side of the road as I wondered whether to turn around or not. I gave them a wide berth but nothing happened, so I carried on. I was only 3 short blocks from the Avenue of Martyrs, where I wanted to be, but it was almost 3 blocks too far. First of all, a group of teenagers tried to organise an attack, but I was too quick for them; then, a young girl tried to get me into a dead-end street, but I carried straight on; &, finally, a football flew past my head. Less than 5 minutes later, I stood in front of Hostel ‘Casco Viejo’ 300 days after riding out of Deadhorse in Alaska. The only dangerous part of the trip had come in the last kilometre out of 14,655. I checked in, had a celebratory beer on the roof & thought, that’s it, no more cycling. It was hugely anti-climactic; I felt little emotion. I didn’t quite know what to do or think, & this has been probably the hardest couple of sentences to write because there is little to describe how I felt & what had happened. I handed my dirty, sweaty clothes in for a wash; took a shower; & had a nap. Tomorrow would be the first day of the rest of the trip. What would travelling like everybody else feel like after 9 months on the bike?

Even in such isolation, 3 cars managed to surpass any form of driving arrogance or stupidity I’d so far encountered. I was climbing a hill & a truck had parked by the side of the road. Ignoring the continuous yellow line down the middle of the road, the first one beeped his horn & raced at me. With no option but to head onto the verge, I just about saved myself from serious injury or worse. The road wound its way through some of the most lush vegetation I’d seen, up into the mountains & then back down to the coast. It was very hot & very humid. In spite of this, the sweat in Panama didn’t run down from my temples & into my eyes. Instead, it formed underneath my eyes & rolled down my cheeks onto my clothes. If you’ve got to sweat, this is the way to do it. I’d been riding for over 2 hours before I saw a little hut selling breakfast. It was a further 2.5 hours before I saw a place to stop for lunch. Tired, I stop there for almost 2 hours. I was only 3km short of my destination for the day, the Hotel La Amistad in Rambala, & its one TV channel — the soap opera one. I was at the foot of the Continental Divide.

For about 10km the road rolled up & down, gaining slightly in elevation, until the most obvious sign of an upcoming hill appeared. It started out so steep that I hadn’t gone more than a couple of hundred metres before I stopped for a rest & a water top-up – how I missed that camelbak. The gradient was 15% for most of the start of the climb & my t-shirt was soaked. I jumped back on & continued upward. The gradient slackened but was still continually over 10%. I stopped again &, for the first time, actually swapped t-shirts while cycling. I hung the other one on the back of the bike to dry. I wasn’t convinced this would be the only time I might have to do so. It was then that I noticed where I was for the first time. I turned around & was equally impressed. When I got around the next corner, I noticed where I’d come from, close to sea-level. I saw a shady tree & lay down for a nap. When I woke up there was a young man sitting there. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep or how long he’d been there. I attempted to make conversation, but it never went beyond the road is steep, so I got up & walked to the bike. A voice from behind called out for $5.

I took my next rest opposite a waterfall, & in I went. Another t-shirt change, a quick chat with the local population & a few more hills brought me to the highest point I’d reach on the road, over 1100m higher than where I’d started that morning. The road was now more evenly balanced between climbing & descending, but the climbs, although much shorter, were still steep. I was starting to wonder how far I’d get that day. It had taken me over 3 hours to summit the road & now I was in the middle of nowhere. The temperatures dropped & the rain began to fall. Suddenly, I dropped down onto a dam & a row of little shops, where I had lunch & watched each vehicle that slowed mobbed by the vendors.

Less an hour later, I was heading down into the valley towards the Pacific Ocean, or so I thought. I had a 100m climb through the pouring rain. Then, there were 28km of racing towards flatter land. I barely had to pedal as my momentum took me over the few climbs left in the day. It had taken me less than an hour to reach the small town of Guacala. I was enjoying myself so much I gave out a little groan as the town suddenly came upon me. There was a group of about 20 men excitedly chatting by the side of the road. When they saw the ghostly apparition appear on his bike, they stopped in unison & stared. “Adiós,” I called out to them. In unison, they responded with smiles. ‘Good luck’ & ‘Safe journey’ followed, & they went back to talking about whatever it was that had got them so excited in the first place.