Jan. 29 – Almirante to Santiago

Panama is not a bad country to travel in, relative to other central American countries we have experienced so far;  but it certainly has the worst road signage we have seen.  We needed a compass, lots of patience and lots of help to stay on the highway from Almirante to CA-1 (the Pan-Am ‘highway’).  Almost no traffic, fantastic scenery, unspoiled Caribbean coastline with offshore islands and idyllic bays, beautiful mountains and curving roads.  Also, lots of un-marked road hazards, like giant potholes and washouts;  boulders in the road so large that they do not have equipment large enough to move them, so they painted them bright colors and left them there!

After a beautiful ride down the coast, we turned south into the ‘real’ mountains, to cross the continental divide to the Pacific plain.  Back into cold, foggy, cloud forest, with rain and huge landslide areas, where large sections of the mountains had slid down and removed the road and everything else, creating huge scars in the vegetation, and rock-filled canyons with waterfalls and raging streams.  Very wild scenery, and a beautiful ride, as long as you went slow enough to avoid falling into the sections of missing roadway.

Finally, we descended out of the cloud forest, and down to the coastal plain, where we picked up CA-1.  Soon after getting onto the pan-am, Levi and I got pulled over by a traffic stop for speeding.  This time we paid the cop his money, and we were on our way again quickly.  Angry about the cost, but at least we did not loose half a day.  We go as far as Santiago when it started to get dark, so we stopped in what turned out to be another crappy town and a really crappy (but cheap) hotel.  Food and drink are very cheap in Panama, and that is nice for a change from Costa Rica.