Deer Park

There’s a lot on my mind as I head towards Panama City. Two things go through my head when I’m riding: the environment and the project, the rtw thing. More on this later when I unload what I’ve learned and not learned.

But out of Boca Chica

The roads are really dirty. Very very slippery on the Heidenaus when wet. Two things are needed to stay upright – good throttle control and balanced braking. The days of 1st World front wheel braking are a distant memory. Now it’s all about using both together well, all the time. This doesn’t take long – about 3 or 4 months, 1000’s of miles and a dozen or so near-death experiences…

Along the road I bump into my very first solo round-the-world rider, Henning from Denmark. He’s going the other way round and has come up from South America.

He’s on a radically modified 1150GS and like all the Euros has tons of gear

His journey so far on his pannier

And then a few minutes later an English couple roll up in a Landrover, Neill and Judy. They’ve been travelling with Henning for a while. They look English!

They’ve all been in the road for more than a year and a half and complain like crazy about South America and how hard it is. They loved Africa. Oh well. We’ll see.

I read Henning’s blog a bit and it seems while in Kenya he married a black girl called Fridah. He didn’t mention this.

We chatted for about an hour. I was eager to get going so cut short all the questions I had about what bothered them so much. I’ll find out for myself shortly anyway.

It was big ride into the City to no pics. Eddie met me on the outskirts of town, where I took a snap of a boat in the canal

A long day. Tired.

The track

I’ve dragged my goggles and snorkel around since September 30 and it’s time to use them. I guess they get mailed home in Panama City, maybe it wasn’t worth it. But today we’ll use them.

There’s a small group of islands, the Islas Secas, 15 miles offshore and offer the best snorkelling, and the biggest sharks on the coast of Panama. Below they appear under the words ‘Golfo de Chiriqui’

There’s no-one at the lodge and I get a ride out there for the cost of a two-tank dive. There’s the driver and a young guy along for the ride.

The islands are surrounded by reefs and shoals

The first snorkel is a jump off over a sea mount a mile or so from the islands. Unfortunately my Lumix doesn’t like under-sea shots but it looked a bit like this

Being alone on the mount, a mile from anything was very interesting and slightly freaky. A week ago I was swimming in the surf at Osa and asked a guy about sharks. He said some, but mostly a ways offshore. Oh great.

Towards the islands, more reefs

Bigger, a pelican on this one

And then the small islands. Uninhabited, windswept, green and black

On the lee side there were several small protected coves. This one had a beach a few hundred feet long

And another had the world’s best picnic beach. Except this is Panama and the heat staggering and the water warm, even out here

I was in the water for about 3 hours at different locations. You know, fish

And that was probably my best shot. Oh well. A ray

Up at the surface my camera did better. Hi puffer fish

Hi turtle

More spectacular shoreline on these tiny islands

The boat guys scouting for fishing spots between dives

Beside the islets

But they weren’t catching much today, just mackerel

A last view, then home

Just made it back to the mainland before the storm

Saludos

If you Google Boca Chica you get a picturesque town in Dominica. But there’s another town with that name, just 200 people, in Panama on the end of a peninsula in an archipelego. It’s the only town here, and remote.

The track. Another short day between cool things, just 88 miles.

We started off this morning from near Volcan. At the main intersection we waited behind this cow and took a pic. No idea why at the time, but it was to be a theme today

Then tore off through the countryside. Small farms in the hills. The super-green that started in Costa Rica hasn’t let up

Down to the dreaded Pan America highway. Arggh. No choice at this point…

By the way, the crap that’s building up around my steering head is getting worse. Lucinda’s bearings are shot. This is the second time so far. They were replaced in LA. Something is very wrong here. No way should they need replacing this often…

It will have to wait for ten days

Then we take a right south towards the sea, unaware of the beautiful sights ahead

But first, we stop for a minute to enjoy the view

And a strange thing happens. I guess the funny looking big-eared cows haven’t seen a Canadian before because they all start gathering, staring at me intently. It’s creepy

A close up of their stares

They’re transfixed so, never one to pass up an audience, I give them a ride report. This bull wanders over, obviously interested. These cattle are enormous and almost pretty

Then it was back to the ride which climbed up onto a ridge through red clay

When we topped out the view was fairytale. A river winding its way to the sea

And then the sea

Down to the village of Boca Chica

Here’s video of the drive-thru

video

Then down to the sea. Boca Chica, as remote as it is, with no infrastructural support, according to a friend the ‘Jurassic Park’ of ocean fishing.  So there are a half dozen fishing lodges here. In the bays there are maybe 50 sport fishing boats. I rode around looking for a place to stay and found one at a reasonable price. Off topic, the cheapest place so far? $10 in Alegria, where I stayed for two nights. Here

And this is what you get for that and a shared bathroom. But it had a picture.

I don’t post my hotels often, and when I do usually a day late or so, for security reasons. So anyway, here’s what greats you

The coastline looks like this

Saludos

Eddie, the Panamanian KTM adventurer, told me a few weeks ago about an orchid nursery on the outskirts of Cerro Punta, the highest village in Panama, at 6500 feet.

It’s called Finca Dracula, after a species of orchid. But that may be a cover story for something more sinister, we hope. Lucinda says to me ‘why don’t we go through Romania next year and do some blogs on Vampire hunting?’ 

Finca Dracula is one of the top ten orchid collections in the world and the largest in Central America.

I’m partial to species collections, so off we went first thing this morning, further up into the mountains.

Here’s a field trip sort-of post, for fun. Up we go

Over a river, the water gin-clear, making that vital mountain sound we’re so familiar with back home

Expertly laid out plots on the hillsides

To the village of Cerro Punta

And then rode around looking for a hint and saw this painted in blood red

It was pointing up this road, loose rock as it got steep for a few hundred yards into the trees. Stand on the pegs and give it huge gas! The local kids like this behaviour, so do some of the moms, but the dads don’t, so no stopping or falling allowed

A purr of gas over a mini jump because it’s a good day and it’s through this gate

Park in the courtyard. No-one around, as usual. Except Dracula, probably right behind that tree to the left I thought. ‘Except it’s daylight’  Lucinda said

About 75 feet through a garden to the nursery

Set against the hillside

Into this covered area

There’s absolutely no-one here. ‘That’s because it’s daylight, as I said before’ Lucinda says. We wander around, maybe 15 minutes later we bump into a young girl (very pale) and we ask ‘cerrado?‘. She smiles and says no. So off we go behind this door

To a general orchid display. My orchid knowledge isn’t that hot. I’ve only kept them on-and-off over the years as it’s not fair on them without the proper environment

But right away we come across a table of Masdavallia, which I have kept, because their beauty is more subtle than the stereotypical hospital-visit Odontoglossom types

Many species, some very small

Here, I’m guessing, is the Dracula orchid

A good yellow spray

And, I guess for the tourists, this unimpressive type

This little fellow was cheerful

Running the length of a wall they’d hung small pots

I’m generally familiar in a casual way with much of what I’d seen, but then I saw something which took my breathe away. A display of incredibly tiny orchids. The flowers on this specimen are only about 3mm tall across and the whole plant structure was fascinating

Even smaller, this whole plant is a couple of inches across

Many members of the same family on the wall. Look at this heartbreaker below. Notice how the flower and leaf have a single common stem, designed for the leaf to present the flower as it does.

So I’ve got tons of pics to research later as I don’t have any idea what I’m looking at.

Other than a labour of love and a collection, this is also a research centre and commercial operation. If you care to Google Finca Dracula you’ll see there are orchids here which sell for $5000 each. So it’s deadly serious, as any operation at the state-of-the-art is. I decide to wander behind the scenes.

The growing beds are totally professional. I would guess there are about ten buildings of ship-ready orchids of maybe 2000 square feet each. Noticed the sign a bit late

This room was very securely locked up. I’d guess this is where big-money buyers come and that display in the middle is maybe where you’d find a $5000 orchid

Behind the scenes, a whimsical propagation lab

A painted wall near a potting area

A pig in a pen. ‘Hey, he looks exactly like a 1200GS‘ Lucinda says. I say ‘Lucinda you know I have the GS. Stop with that’

I wander around for an hour or so looking at the commercial aspects of the operation with respect.

Then there’s a nature walk type thing going into the forest that’s quite pretty

And

I’m thinking that it’s been a great day and I’d better head back before the clouds explode, and it’s back to Volcan, which is a dive. This is the main intersection

The track