Home » Panama » MISTY BRIDGES, TOURISTA COPS AND PARALLEL TRAVELLERS

Misty Bridges,….visions of the sweaty clamouring heaving silicone of a budding porn queen….no, rather the engineering/meteorological interface phenomenon suffered by early risers on a stormy day, the tourista cop, maybe, and the parallel travellers come back to haunt me.

Finally it had rained in Panama after threatening for weeks, or maybe I brought it back to P City from Colon (don’t mention the irrigation) after the transit. Whatever brought it on, it worked, so I left early and went West, funny set-up, but Panama actually runs East - West, not North - South as you would think!…I only discovered this as we went up the canal, at one stage I glanced at the compass, we were heading WNW, I nearly stopped drinking!, but they assured me with another can that all was well, but it still has me scratching, WNW?

MISTY BRIDGES, TOURISTA COPS AND PARALLEL TRAVELLERS

Bill Shum
2006-08-21 17:14:24

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impossible to buy a road map in Panama but I had downloaded something that looked like it had been scrawled with a broken HB on the back of an envelope….therefore I was not surprised when the turn-off to the mystery road was somewhat misplaced.

Fabulous run up and over the mountains, tight corners and a bit cooler than the coast, down on the Carib side and turn off to Almirante as the last couple of coffee stops had garnered me differing stories on ferry availability…..followed the main (?) road, dusty, potholed, old train tracks down the middle until it petered out at the cannery, around the side was the ferry. Quite a fair size ex-Russian vehicle ferry with a couple of trucks already on board, I stumbled into the bar and naturally found the ticket seller, $10 for me and the bike, leaving in 30 minutes, perfecto!

The ferry takes 1 hour 45 mins to get to Bocas so I had time to chat to a German guy who had just started running one of the better hotels (way to exy for moi) and got some of the goss on Bocas del Toro

The town stretches around the shoreline of the main island with clunky, 2 storey buildings new Orleans style weatherboard with ornate balconies and decks hanging out over the water, restaurants and the dive school having fabulous backyard views, out over crystal clear water, fish, coral and starfish, the rest of the town is a sleepy, tropical similarity, very Asian feel to it all, friendly people once they open up, most of the businesses run by Europeans, lot of Poms, Spanish, all nice people, a big ex-pat, old fart, retiree group of seppos and a constant trickle (being the low/wet season) of touristas, the old, sick and lame off the cruise ship circuit and the young, pimply backpackers, and of course the suave, sophisticated, ubercool motociclistas !! Ha

When I was quite young I made a list of many things I wanted to do in my life. When I was 15 I went snow skiing, one of the listed items. ...