Posts for August, 2010

This morning we visited the village of Raquira about 30 km from Villa de Leyva. Nina wanted to buy some more souvenirs, and this is a colorful town that is composed almost exclusively of souvenir shops.

Today we headed north from Villa de Leyva starting the last leg of our South American travels. By this time next week we will be in Cartagena and starting the paper work to ship the Tiger to Panama.

Much of the morning was spent winding through jungle covered mountains on a narrow two lane black top. The 40 km from our gas station stopping place into Bucaramanga passed through the gorge of the Rio Chicamucha and then up and over a small mountain range. It was slow as there was a lot of heavy vehicle traffic. From Bucaramanga the mountains continued for 100 km before the country opened up into wet jungle lowland with rolling hills.

Our plans changed again during the day. We did not find anywhere that we liked to stop for the night along the highway so we pushed on to Santa Marta and Parque Nacional Tayrona.

As soon as the park gate was open at 8:00 we travelled the few miles to Gayraca beach. The road was in even worse condition than the one we traveled last night and at the rate it is deteriorating it will be non-existent in a few years.

Today we drove to Cartagena, the port from where we will ship back to Panama, and checked into a hotel. Our South American journey is over.

After a somewhat tedious wait in Cartagena the ship has finally arrived and we have completed the necessary formalities. We dropped the Tiger at the port on Saturday and today(Sunday) returned to the port so that Nina could attend (and unlock the house part of the vehicle for) a narcotics inspection. That took a couple of hours and Nina had to take all of our stuff out of the vehicle while inspectors searched through it and the vehicle looking for drug hiding places. Nina said that the police where polite, and helpful, but thorough.

Not much to say about today. We picked up the final Bill of Lading - the main document we need to get our vehicle in Panama - from the shipping agent, had Pisco sours and pizza for dinner at the only 5 star hotel in Cartagena.

It is amazing how a one hour plane ride can take up the entire day!!

We got the Tiger from the port of Manzanillo today, in what turned out to be a surprisingly easy exercise; though it was only easy because of the assistance we got from the folks at Wilhelmsen Ship Service. After a brief stop at the Wilhelmsen office in Howard Panama we went to their office at the port of Manzanillo (100kms away) were we were guided, by a Wilhelmsen employee, through a series of steps at various port and customs offices. By 15:00 we had the Tiger and were on our way back to Panama City through yet another tropical rain storm.

Last night I downloaded renditions of the song On the Road Again by - Willie Nelson, The Loving Spoonful, Canned Heat, Bob Dylan and Tom Rush. We had them playing this morning as we drove across the Bridge of the Americas and out of Panama City. It is good to be back in the Tiger and moving again. Three weeks waiting in hotels is too much.

We heard last night that there would be a young dance group performing at the RV park tonight so we decided to stay another night. To fill in the day we drove to a nearby town named El Valle situated in the cone of an extinct volcano. From the highway a minor road wound up into the hills for about 30 km climbing 2000 ft through lush green country. We spent some time walking a jungle trail to a nice waterfall and had coffee at a shop that advertised gourmet coffee - it was good.

It seems strange to me that one crosses Panama by traveling west. The US is supposed to be North!!

In addition to some chores in nearby David we spent a much of the day exploring Bouquete. This town is famous as a retirement place for all manner of foreigners. Apparently some years back a US magazine rated it the best place in the world to retire. With this reputation we were curious to see what it had to offer. The town itself is small, consisting of only two main streets and square and a bunch of not very impressive shops - oh and a number of real estate agents. We explored the roads around the town climbing up into the mountains among the coffee plantations. The country side was beautiful and the weather balmy. We made the obligatory stop at a local coffee shop before returning to our camping spot. All in all a nice place but we don't see what the big attraction is. We did not put down any deposits on retirement villas!

The border crossing turned out to be quite straightforward though a little slow - details are given below in the camping section. Once into Costa Rica the road deteriorated into winding two lane black top with frequent large deep pot holes. The key task of drivers on this road is to avoid these holes - they would do serious damage.