Icarus on a bicycle

My route from Trujillo led me back into the moutains. Following the rio Santo on dirt roads up through the magnificent Cañon del Pato, through its many tunnels and out into the valley between the cordelerias blanco and negro, with the towering snowy peaks to my left, I arrived in the mountain climbers' delight that is the town of Huarez. Here for the final time I met up with Philip and Valeska, my Austrian friends, who had spent a week hiking in the surrounding moutains, while I had been getting myself back into the saddle in Trujillo. After a few beers that night we took an early (for me, late for them) start together and continued up the valley untill our paths seperated at the entrance to the national park guarding the Cordeleria Blanco. They were headed down to Lima and I was headed across the mountains towards Bolivia. My dirt path led me up to the guard station and at 4100 m it was incredibly cold and the park rangers were kind enough to let me sleep in their station and feed me with hot food for both supper and breakfast the next day.

I had just spent over two weeks at sea level and my ascent from 2000 m to my present 4100 m had taken me 2 days. A note here about altitude sickness: it is not the absolute height you reach that is important but the relative change of height and the speed at which you ascend. I had climbed high, fast and I was paying for it with a thumping head-ache. However after a rest at the guard station and some tea, I felt much better and ready for my climb the next day over the two passes ahead of me, the taller of the two at 4880 m. In the morning I felt good and despite a shortness of breath after relatively little exertion I was confident. This lasted untill about halfway to the first pass I was at about 4600 m and my crushing head ache was back with avengance. The smart thing to do here would be to go back down and spend the day acclimatizing. However I figured that if this pass was too much I could use the low point between the two passes to camp at and acclimatize there. By the time I reached the top of this first path my head ache was crippling but none of the other symptoms (lack of co-ordination, lack of focus, extreme cold) of Acute Mountain Sickness (yes I did my homework) were present. So I decided to keep going and hoped that the 200 m descent down to the low point would ease my head ache. It did not in fact, it got worse and a listlessness started to creep into my attitude and I realised I was too high to stay at over night, if I remained here I could be subject to two fatal conditions (HAPE and HACE, which are scarrily common causes of death in mountaineers).

Like Icarus I had tried to go too high but my only way out of this mess was to go yet higher. Unlike Icarus my machine was working fine, it was my body that was melting away. As I tried to cycle on the rough road bumping me around made my headache exrutiating and combined with the exertion and the gain in height I felt like I was about to vomit. I knew that if I did this I would loose all my strength, I would need all of this. So I got off my bike and started walking up the slope. As I climbed my co-ordination started to go and I kept stumbling on rocks, every 50 m I had to pause for a break to get my breath back and fight down the waves of nausea. Despite my worsening condition, I was not oblivious to my surroundings and I walked past glaciers on one side and snowy mountains away to the other. After 2 hours of struggle I crested the pass only to see the road, after an initial short dip snake up again round the next mountain. The next hour was one of the hardest of my life, the knowledge that dark was coming on and that if I didn't start to descend soon I was going to be in big trouble kept me moving despite the useless state my body and mind was in.

With half an hour of light left I crested the final pass and as I did so the rain started, first as a drizzle and then as a downpour. I was already cold, being at that height the day time temperatures combined with wind chill were below freezing and I was wearing 4 layers. The rain soaked me through despite my waterproof and the additional wind chill from descending rapidly penetrated all my layers. Icarus descended from the skies to the rocks below, I descended from altitude sickness to hyperthermia. My recovery from the altitude was as quick as my descent and felt almost like it had been a nightmare that had never actually happened. As my mind unfogged I realised that if I didn't find shelter from the rain and wind soon I was again in serious trouble, my whole body was already shaking uncontrolably, my feet and hands were blocks of ice. The trouble was the nearest settlement was about 30 km's away. Then as night fell I came upon a mining camp. I begged them to let me sleep in one of their porta cabins (by now I was down to 4200 m and only a head ache persisted), I think they could see I was in a bad way because they they let me in with little argument. I got into the porta cabin as fast as I could and started striping off my clothes, not an easy task given how hard I was shacking and the numbness of my hands (zips had to be done with my teeth). As I pulled on all my remaining dry clothes there was a knock on the door and one of the miners appeared with a mattress I grinned and mumbled my thanks and then climbed into my sleeping bag, curling into the fetus position and willing the shacking to stop. It did, and as it did another minner appeared with hot soup, chicken and rice. After inhaling this food I was almost hot and feeling like a different person. I feel I'm pretty lucky to have escaped this episode with no lasting damage and I don't think this would have been the case without the help of the minners, it seems there's a guardian angel looking out for me. Maybe its Icarus taking care of those with equally foolish ambition, those who try to travel too close to the sun.

Down but not quite out

I should have realised that bad things were to come when my first night in Peru was ominously terrible: I had finished the border crossing with about half an hour of sunlight left to me. I spun past the straggling shanty of a border settlement and took the first track I could find off the main road. This shortly led me to a wood and what has, traditionally, been perect camping territory. I whipped out my cooking kit and got the rice and veg combo onto cook before having a look around. What I saw was this, spiders. Hundreds of bloody huge spiders, dangling from their webs between the trees, fangs glistening with arachnic intent. I'm not one to freak out about insects in general so i kept my cool. Found some open ground around a path through the wood and layed my sleeping mat down. By this time it was dark, I dug out my torch and flashed it around, thousands and thousands of tiny beads of light flashed back at me. It took me a few moments to realise that these beads where spider eyes reflecting the torch light back at me. My heart jumped, instead of the relatively few creatures confined to the trees, I was surrounded by legions of the eight legged beasts carpeting every possible surface. Supper would have to be to go. I packed up as fast as I could, taking care to leave any unwanted guests behind, and hit the road. Finding a new camping spot by torch light was going to be a little hit or miss but I thought I had hit the jackpot when I found another side track to an unused field. I had my food while inhaling the scent of mint I had crushed beneath my feet, congratulating myself on a job well done. That was untill I lay down and realised that I had landed myself slap bang in the middle of a swarm of mosquitos. The blood sucking did not let up till after I was back on the road with the dawn and my skin was a painfully itchy pattern of red blotches.

The next few days took me down through pampa (prarie land) to the coast and into unrelenting headwind kicking up sand and dust, from the desert surrounding my road, into my unprotected eyes. This three day struggle along the barren coast was terrible but as I reached the town of Paijan, cane fields and shelter from the wind I was just half a days ride from Peru's second biggest city Trujillo and a planned stop off at the world famous (cycling-world that is) Casa de Cyclista's. I was in good spirits and after twenty minutes of cruising through the fields of cane I saw a few guys by the road side next to their moto-taxi (the Peruvian answer to the rickshaw), not an unusual sight and I waved them a greeting. At this moment the foremost hombre drew a long kitchen knife from behind his back and wielded it in an unmistakingly threatening manner. I was only a few meters away from him and that distances was rapidly diminishing. My natural instinct was to swerve away, out of slashing range. This manouvre killed my speed and the bandito was able, after a couple of strides, to just grab the last item on the bike, my helmet dangling from the rear. He managed to drag me back in and taking a firmer grip hurled me into the center of the road, my bike landed on my chest and I was pinned against road. In an instant my attacker was joined by two more ladrones as they attempted to rip off my bags while dragging my bike to the side of the road. I clung onto the bike tight, with two of my panniers between the bike of the road and my leg round a third they were only able to get one of them. When the assailant with the knife realised his efforts at dragging the bike away were being hampered by my grip. He brought the knife a little closer to my face than comfort dictated and I let go. Two of them picked up my beloved machine and chucked it into the roadside ditch before making good their escape.

It took me a while in my shocked state to realise that leaving my bike behind was not benevelance on their part but a practicle measure, they couldn't have fit it into the moto-taxi and by chucking it into the ditch they reckoned on buying themselves enough time to escape. They were right. My bike had a gear lever ripped off, both rims were bent and the handlebars were at right angles to their accustomed position. I took stock of what was missing: one bag out of four it could have been worse. That's when I realised it was my bag containing my passport, my bank cards, my money, my camera, and the two most irreplacable items: all my photos on their memory cards and all my notes and contact details of those I had met along the way. At that point I have to admit that I thought it was game over and thiss thought hit me like a tonne of bricks. And if it had not been for the help and support I received in the Casa de Cyclista's this might well have been the case. This amazing place, home to any itinerant cyclist who finds their way to Trujillo (and most who cycle South America do), gave me a place to stay, other traveller's to get advice from and distracted me by hosting a world record, by a co-resident, of spending an incredible 33 hours wheeling round the main square in his wheel chair, without break. Acting as support team in this event helped me get over my problems and after 11 days in Trujillio I had a money card couriered out from England, my insurance was handled, a new passport ordered and most importantly Luchio, finest bike mechanic in Latin America (no exageration) and the man behind Casa de Cyclista's, had worked his magic on my bike and it was now better than new and I was ready to head up into the mountains.

The avenue of the volcanoes

Type these magic words into google, hit "Images" and enjoy pictures of towering mountain peaks, stunning sunsets and erupting volcanoes. If on the other hand you decide to cycle through this route in May don't forget to bring your rain gear. I spent about a week toiling up and down the valleys that run at right angles to my route. This means to get to that point, just over there on the other side of the valley, so close you can almost touch it, you in fact have to turn to your left and follow the road for km after km down to the unbelievably inconsiderate river cross the bridge and then sweat your way back up the far side. This maybe would not be so bad if it was an occasional punishment but it is continuous, in the Ecuadorian Sierras the word plano (flat, for the linguistically challenged out there) does not exist. It also would have been bearable, maybe even enjoyable, if these alleged views had been visible. However in my week of Ecuadorian mountains I developed a vitamin D deficiency and turned from carribean-tanned to bed-sheet-white from lack of sunshine. Hyperbole aside, I managed to catch a glimpse of one volcano for about 5 minutes before it was again swallowed in cloud and these "stunning valleys" were 9 times out of 10 no more to me than a swirling mass of cloud and fog.

There were a couple of highlights to this section and, as always seems to happen when nature lets me down, these came from people. The first was when the weather let up enough for me to camp next to a river in, what I thought was, a secluded cannon. Above me, perched on a shelf in the cannon, lived a family of indigenous farmers. When they realised that they had a gringo guest camped out below them they whipped out the welcome mat and, after my futile protests, handed me chocla (corn on the cob), peaches and apples, straight off their respective plants. Never has corn tasted so good as it did in the mouth of a hungry cyclist, after a day of struggling through valleys and so fresh it was almost alive. The second highlight came when I eventually met up with two Austrian cyclists. I had first met Phillip and Valeska way back in December on the Baja. We had got seperated by the crossing to the mainland and had since taken different routes. However we had kept in pretty good contact and finally in Ecuador we managed to meet back up and have a few days of riding together to Cuenca and finally into some sunshine. This Austrian couple are exceptionally inspiring, having now spent over three and a half years pedalling the globe, at a much faster pace than any other couple-bikers I've met. Their attitude to what is an amazing feat of endurance however is incredibly relaxed, in Phillip's case utterly childish in the most entertaining of ways, and is summed up by the name of their website: http://www.2-play-on-earth.net/. So with many an entertaining story from their travels and the occasional fart-gag from Philip the rainy km's to Cuenca slipped by.

Cuenca itself is a good looking colonial town, something seemingly scarce in these parts, and I enjoyed a few days there, waiting for my cycling shoes to finally clear customs. Here I departed from the Austrian duo as they decided to get down to the coast and out of the rain, while I, ridiculously, decided to stay in the mountains and give the elements another chance. After two and a half more days of pants weather I finally cleared the last of the clouds with a pass out from the town of Loja. That evening just as I was searching for a place to camp, I came round a corner and saw the town of Catacocha perched on it's hill, with swirling cloud, golden with the setting sun, surrounding its base. I have never seen a sight that looked more like it belonged in a book of fairy tales. The next day saw me pass up and down my final Ecuadorian valleys and into the flat lands of Peru.

Quito

They say that first impressions are important so when I arrived exhausted after nearly 100km and 1500m of climbing, soaking wet from the driving rain and unable to see anything but low smoggy clouds I felt me and Quito had got off on the wrong foot. I trudged, driping the equatorial rain, into an internet cafe to look for a hostel and saw I had a message from a Quitoñian cyclist I had contacted. After a quick phone call, I had a place to stay and as I walked out the door the sky was brightening and the sun was threatening to make a welcome breakthrough, things were looking up. 30 minutes later I had been greeted by Luis, my host, with a big bear hug and was tucking into a delicious lunch. Things kept on improving: Luis had spent 6 years living in London so he knew well the British sense of humour (aswell as being fully supplied with tea and marmalade) that I had been missing; on top of this both he and Margarita worked as guides in Ecuador and so I learnt a great deal from them about the country I was now passing through.

I had originally planned to spend only a few days in Quito but this changed to over a week as I waited in vain for ash-delayed shoes to arrive from England. However a combination of language school and Luis's energy and passion for cycling and promoting our fine sport kept me extremely busy. Luis quickly put his network of contacts in gear and before my 8 day stay was over I had done an interview for a national radio station (you can hear the complete terror in my voice in the first half before I managed to relax a little), an interview for a Quitoñian cylcing campain, ciclopolis and given a talk at Luis's sons school. The last one of these was by far the most enjoyable as talking to and interacting with kids, who seemed genuinely interested by the idea of my trip, was surprisingly rewarding and also gave me a chance to really assess my trip to date and the people and places I had seen.

However not all was work: on the weekend we headed out towards the volcano, Pichincha, that dominates (when the clouds allow) the western Quito sky. As we dropped into the adjacent valley, that holds an easier route to the summit, all memory of the big smoggy city melted away. The countryside was strangely very English with lush green fields dotted with cows and of course plenty of cloud. The cloud was so abundant that after a delicious lunch of typical Ecuadorian food (a root, similar to a new potato, and big green beans stewed together, served with fat corn on the cob, potato cakes and roasted pork) we decided it was pointless to try and climb the Volcano and so on a whim we stopped off at a Hacienda on the way home. We spent the next 4 hours walking round the grounds, playing football and I even tried my hand at miking a cow before sitting in front of a roaring fire drinking hot choclate, made from the milk I'd just been skwirting into a bucket, chatting with the owners of the Hacienda, who were also very keen cyclists.

On every Sunday a very special thing happens in Quito: they close to traffic a route through the city, around 30 km's from North to South. On this route only vehicles without an engine are allowed, the most common is of course the beloved bicycle but there are also plenty of walkers, joggers and kid's on push scooters. This weekly event gives an amazing opportunity to see the city and with Martin, one of Luis's sons, I took full advantage of this and together we cycled the length of the route and back again, passing through the modern commercial center, then the historic old town before heading into the Southern suburbs and finishing in a beautiful city park. After such a long stay and having done so much with Luis and his family I was sad to be leave them and the weather mirrored my mood as I peddalled out into a torrential downpour. I had one final treat waiting for me in Quito, a meeting with another cyclist. Mario had spent four months cycling round Ecuador, written a book about his adventures (I am now a proud owner of an auotgraphed copy) and was putting the final touches to preparations for cycling round his home continent, a 2 year trip. Cycling the back roads of Quito listening to Mario talk about routes and places to visit on my way down to Peru was a fitting end to my stay in this phenomenal city.

When the going gets tough...

Easy is not the word I would choose to describe my ride as far as Medellin. However I had been on the road for six and a half months and up till then any problems I'd had were one off's: trouble with my front rack, a particularly hard stretch of road, or fighting through rain and wind. All these problems were temporary or a quick fix was available and generally speaking my ride had been trouble free. Hard work, yes but I had never felt like everything was falling apart. That is untill the Southern half of Colombia.

My troubles started innocently enough: I was staying with a Colombian cyclist in the Zona Cafeteria, the heart of Colombia, and he wanted to take me mountain biking to show me the area around his finca. A great day was had, bumping and skidding down (and back up) a beautiful river valley. Unfortunately my bike was not made for aggresive down hill biking, so when I had a look at my bike a couple of days later I was not completely surprised to find cracks radiating from several spoke holes. I guess after 7,000 miles of carrying me and my kit the mountain biking was the final straw. However all was not lost, only one crack looked like real trouble, the other ones were just hairline, so I fancied my chances of making it to Cali (2 days down the road), where I was sure to find a replacement. After 2 days of searching every bike shop in Cali (no mean feat in just 2 days), I concluded that finding a replacement would involve a 10 day wait for one to be shipped in. This was not part of my plan so I bit the bullet and went to get the severe crack welded. Now this is quite a desicion as welding aluminium is a tricky job and I had heard plenty of accounts of frames and racks being destroyed at the hands of cowboy workmen, on top of this for the second time in the trip I would have to rebuild my wheel only to have the prospect of repeating this three hour operation (that's right, I knocked an hour and a half off my previous time) when the rim gave in down the road. However el maestro did a superb job and after a few hours of reconstruction I was back in buisness.

The day I left Cali, for my ride up to Popayan, the weather was fine but as evening approached the clouds started to gather quickly and the rumble of thunder sounded over the mountains on both sides. I found a spot to camp and had just finished eating my supper when the heavens opened. Great timing I thought, luck is with you. Luck was not with me: it rained and it rained and it rained, easing off with the approach of dawn. Now so much water had fallen from the skies that despite being well up a slope I was now camped in standing water. This would not have been such a problem at the beginning of the trip but by now my kit was starting to show the inevitable wear and tear of life on the road and both my tent and one of my panniers had holes in them. This meant that about half my kit was soaking wet and I would need to spend time drying it out if it ever stopped raining. Well it didn't stop raining and so when I rolled into Popayan that afternoon I was looking forward to a hot shower and dry clothes. I, being the team player I am, put all my kit out on the balcony of my dorm room, not wanting to subject my fellow guests to the god awfull stink of damp cycling kit. This turned out to be a gigantic mistake: the next morning I went to see if all my things had dryed out over night only to discover that my shoes were missing, but for some reason the rascals had chosen to leave my stinky cycling rags behind.

The upshot of this was that I had to cycle to Quito, a week down the road, in shoes that were little more than slippers (Colombian's have tiny feet and Icouldn't find replacement cycling shoes anywhere). Every pedal stroke was agony as the soles were too thin to prevent the pedals digging into the soles of my feet and the grip on them was so lacking that my feet were constantly cramped with the effort of hanging on. Still though this was character building stuff, that was untill I choose the wrong tap to fill my water bottle from. The next 5 days were horrendous, struggling up and down vast mountainsides, constantly feeling weak and like my guts were going to drop out, not being able to eat much as it quickly made its return to the outside world in various new and disgusting forms. A couple of nights were so bad that I was forced to take rest days to recover, I will remember the two nights of pain I spent in Tulcan, just on the Ecuadorian side of the border, for many years to come. So at last on my trip, seven months in, the going got really tough and how did I react, did I get going? Well for two days I definately did not go anywhere apart from regular trips to the bog. However I managed to keep making progress (at about half the speed I would normally have made) and so I'm pretty happy to conclude that this trip has made me half-tough, quasi-Bear-Grylls maybe a camp Ross Kemp.

This post has been pretty glass half empty but now that I have the luxury of looking back at it, I can slip on the old rose tinted glasses and appreciate some of the great things during this part of the trip. To start with was the staggering beauty of the mountains: three times I climbed over 3000 m as I headed into the Andes proper and thanks to the proliferation of rain, when it cleared I was cycling above dollops of clouds left in the valleys below, giving a sureal feeling. Next was Miguel, a Colombian cyclist I travelled with for a couple of days, allowing me to see yet another side of this great country. And as always the people I stayed with were phenomenal, espeically Miller in Cali, who has opened his house wide to cyclists and is always ready, with advice and a smile, to help out his fellow pedal pushers.

Colombia es pasion

This slogan is pasted across trucks and dotted on walls in many Colombian towns. It could not better sum up what Colombia is all about. From the moment Windfleet, the boat that carried us from Panama, rounded the point into Sapzuro bay the vitality of Colombian life sprang out at you: from the colour splashed across every building, to the people laughing and joking with each other in the streets. Every person you meet is immediately engaging and lively, from bums still pissed from the night before, through other cyclists (and there are a lot of these) to Finca owners, everyone wants to talk and there is never a dull moment. In every town I've passed through, the streets have been teeming with people chatting and doing buisness.

For the first four days of cycling in Colombia I was with Binya, a czech cyclist who had also come over from Panama on Windfleet. Binya claimed he was more of a traveller by bike than a cyclist but this was now his second long tour and his pace was almost identical to mine. This, his laid back attitude and love of lunch time beer made him the perfect travelling companion for me. Those four days took us across snooker table farm land, up and down and up jungled river valleys and then the climb into the highlands. This turned out to be in fact three climbs and to reach Medellin (1500 m) we climbed somewhere between 5000 and 6000 m. This was also the most spectacular scenery I had encountered since Guatemala and included my favorite road so far. I'm not going to say exactly where it is because as soon as the word, that Ed Herbert sage of cycling lore has determined the "Best Road between Vancouver and Medellin", gets out the place will be teeming with lycra clad thighs and the streets will echo with the clip-clop of cleats on cobbles. Let it suffice to say that the road passed up from the busy main road into the Alps-like mountains, through a beautiful village clinging onto the steep valley sides before snaking its way ever upwards to a pass at 2400 m about 800 m above the lorries left far below. Along this road in 2 hours I tallied: 4 motor bikes, 2 cars, 3 trucks, 1 pot hole, it doesn't get much better.

So considering this I should probably quit now, I mean if this is the best then its all going to be downhill from here, surely? Well I quite want to go past active volcano's in the north of Colombia, cycle among snow capped mountains and eat guinea pig in Ecuador, climb through passes of upto (and maybe over) 5000m, visit Manchu Pichu and colonial cities in Peru, pass through the salt plains in Bolovia, cycle through vineyards and beef country, and watch the junior rugby world cup in Argentina. So probably now is not the best time to stop, plenty more to see and do.

My stay in Medellin was one of the most amazing in my trip. I met Eduardo and his brother on a road perched above Medellin, with the city lying snuggling in its broad mountain valley below. They had spent the day up in the mountains and were now on their way back home, they invited me to stay and so I did. The descent down into the Barrio of Blancazal was exhilirating, following the boys on their motorbike while dodging the buses coming in and out of every side road. Blancazal is surely one of the poorest Barrios in Medellin but the Colombian vitality and passion is as alive here as anywhere else and Eduardos huge family (Mum, Dad, Uncle, four brothers and sisters (all with espoza(o)), and countless cousins) welcomed me in like another member of the family. I have never met people with so much kindness and giving about them: over the two days I spent with them they cared for me so well: cleaning my bike while I was asleep, washing and mending my rag-like excuses for clothes, shopwing me the city, sharing their food with me (it was an uphill battle convincing them to let me contribute) but most of all they opened themselves up and truely let me into their lives with their laughter and caring. When I left they insisted on carrying my panniers to the top of the hill for me, I thought this meant to the top of the steep hill fust outside the house (maybe 200m). At the top of this hill I stopped to retrieve my things, I was told no, they were going to take my bags to the top of the pass out of town and before I could protest they had set off. 2 hours, 1000 m of climb and 42 km later we arrived at the top of the pass and our final goodbye, there were tears.

Although Eduardo's family is the most amazing display of the Colombian spirit, its essence has been echoed many times both before and since. From people sharing their time or some fruit (or a Antioquia cycle club water bottle), to people that have taken me into their homes and shared their lives with me, I have been truely stunned by this fantastic country. Colmbia truely is passion.

The Road to Nowhere

Having spent 10 days doing around half the cycling I was used to, then 10 days sitting on a beach, drinking beer, chatting shit (particularly Andrew) and occasionally popping into the water for a brief surf, I had grown fat and used to the comfort I had been embracing. Well now was time to whip myself back into shape and try to claw back some of the money I had been hemorraging on the Samarian beach. I set myself the target of reaching Panama city in 10 days, that would average at almost exactly 100 kms every day and allow me to catch a boat sailing to Colombia. The first day was tough, the heat was fierce and to get away from the coast the road sprang up and down like a jack-in-the-box. However that night, camped in the back garden of a friendly Costa Rican, I congratulated myself: 110 km's done, $5 spent and only some mild cramping. The next day was a different story though. It started off fine but as the day wore on and the clouds burned off the heat become really intense, and before long I was completely saturated with my sweat, being able to ring out of my clothes. Despite drinking 10 litres of water that day my body started to protest hard: first shortly after my lunch break my left knee blew out, making progress agonising work. Then the cramps started: first my feet went, then it slowly spread to my calves, up my legs to my quads then hamstrings, my hips went first before my stomach, ribs, chest and even the left side of my jaw followed. It felt like I was having a heart attack (I have since been told it was heat exhaustion), but being in the middle of nowhere I had to struggle on, and after 5 km's of utter agony and testing my will to the limit I made it to the top of the hill leading down into Costa "del sol" Rica, the area surrounding Jaco, which is all to reminisent of the Spanish South coast, or the southern Californian one. On the descent my body cooled enough to allow my cramps to ease off a little. That night I lay out on a beach praying that the next day would find my knee in good enough condition to ride. To start with it was solid with stiffness but thankfully the coast road was flat and I was able to warm it up and get it functioning. That day was equally hot but this time instead of the paltry 10 litres I consumed close to 13 and this seemed to keep the cramps at bay again I ended up sleeping out on a beach with a stunning sunset, only to be continualy woken by crabs investigating my prescence all night long with their claws. The next two days took me along lovely jungled roads, through rolling pasture land and finally up to the Panamanian border: 5 days 550 km done, $40 spent, I was on track. Three things immediately struck me about Panama: soldiers, cars and a complete and utter lack of bicycles. Costa Rica is extremely rare in that it was no army and so for the last three weeks I hadn't seen camouflage uniform's strutting up and down the streets like the cock of the roost. So immediately crossing the border and being confronted by this sight was a bit of an unpleasant shock (I'm not a big fan of automatic weapons being waved about). Most of Central America is a very poor place so the numbers of private cars is relatively small, this is not true of Costa Rica but I had been sticking firmly to out of the way roads, so after 2 months of few cars, coming into Panama was like entering rush hour London for me, thankfully though the Pan-American highway comes fully equipped with a nice wide shoulder for the rare cyclist. Rare because Panamanians don't seem keen on the method of transport. Originally I thought it was because they were all rich enough to afford cars but then I started to cycle pass carts being pulled by oxen. I think the reason is because of the quality and speed of their bus service, which speed pass me every few minutes at break neck pace, often providing moments of great hilarity, like dogs calmly standing on the roof while being whisked along at 60 km/h. Unfortunately due to my target of making it to Panama city, so as to catch my boat, I had to stick to the Pan-American throughout Panama. This meant tediem and plenty of it but the glimpses of the real Panama I saw when I turned off the road for food (best chicken I have ever had) or a place to camp, gave me the impression that with a little more time this country had plenty to offer the touring cyclist. 10 days after pulling out of Samara I crossed the bridge of the Americas and into Panama city and the end of the road (almost). In the ten days I had shed my beach flab and was as fit as I had been when I had entered Costa Rica a month earlier, this gave me confidence as my next target was Medellin in the Colombian Andes and all the work I had done over the last 5 and a half months would be put firmly to the test.