Colombia Part 3: Welcome to Panama!

Sept 19 -- Sept 22

Most backpackers, when they need to get from Cartagena to Panama, either fly or sail via one of the many boats that pinball between the two countries. The cost for either option used to be significantly cheaper, but with the rapid increase in tourism to Cartagena, the price has doubled in only the last two years or so. A sailboat ride that used to be between two and three hundred US dollars now costs $550 to get to the Panamanian coast, and a plane ticket isn't much cheaper.

But don't worry guys, because for the low, low price of $150, we can get you not just to Panama! All you have to do is go through the mildly unsavory city of Turbo!

Graphic swiped from panamacolombiasailing.com

Here's the route:
We took a five hour bus ride from Cartagena to Monteria, then a five hour ride from there to Turbo. From Turbo we took a two hour boat ride to Capurgana, and another boat ride, this one only 20 minutes, to the Panamanian town of Puerto Obaldia. In Puerto Obaldia we took a short flight to Panama City. 

Turbo sits right in the Northwestern pocket of Caribbean Colombia, and thus is the only artery through which one may exit Colombia overland to the North. It has a not wholly undeserved reputation for being awful, on account of all the activity there that involves the transport of illegal substances over the border. And if you ask any hostel in Cartagena for information about how to get to Turbo, they will say they don't know, and you shouldn't go there anyway, it's far too dangerous, here, take this brochure about sailing trips.

But of course Cartagena doesn't want you going through Turbo -- they rake in too many pesos selling boozy island-hopping adventures to care about directing you elsewhere. And we are here to tell you, Turbo is not as bad as Cartagena likes to make it out to be. Though still maybe a little rough around the edges.

We left Cartagena the morning of Friday the 19th. The bus station is filled with competing bus companies, and as soon as we stepped inside, an agent from each materialized at our sides to 'help' us make our ticket reservations. Thanks, guys! After painstakingly double and triple checking with the lady at the information desk, we found the right bus, a twelve passenger van. On the way, the driver stopped excitedly to pick up a couple on the side of the road, ushering them over only to realize that, in fact, all of the seats were aready full. He squeezed the woman into the aisle anyway, and the man waited in the rain for the next bus.

The van dropped us off several blocks from where it actually told us it would, but you know, still in Turbo, so points for trying. We only had to ask directions three times before making it to our hotel, Residencias Florida, run by the very helpful and intuitive John Boltero. When making our reservation with John over the phone, at no point did we actually tell him that our reason for spending a night in Turbo was to catch a boat out of there the following morning, but he called the boathouse and reserved us tickets anyway. I think John's been in this business awhile.

Toilet for pillow.

The Residencias Florida is barred at the entrance, and the lobby is guarded by a German Shepherd named Sammy who lies sprawled in the middle of the room, staring at the door. On the other side of Sammy is the door to John's room, and a small balcony where John and his friends sit on plastic green chairs and smoke. The guests' rooms are furnished with a bed beneath a ceiling fan, and a toilet directly behind the head of the bed, next to the shower, which is a bare pipe jutting out from the wall.

Our room smelled overpoweringly of bleach. We went to bed with our pillows covering our faces, our eyes burning. The next morning John poured us coffee into Dixie cups and sat with us in the lobby, and the three of us watched The Dog Whisperer in Spanish until it was time for us to catch our boat to the Colombian coastal town of Capurgana.

Splash zone.

We had heard that one should try to get a seat at the back of the boat, to avoid getting slammed around on the waves up front, as that is allegedly how grievous injuries have happened in the past. Fortunately for us, the waters are relatively calm this season, because guess which lucky people got front row seats! I have a theory about seating on these boats, and that is that if you are a white person, you are not going to get first pick. Fair enough. For your own future reference, here is the trick all the locals know -- when the ticket taker calls for all the elderly and mothers with children to board first, you just go. Every single person in our launch stepped up claiming to be elderly, with the exception of about six of us who were foreigners.

Capurgana's real pretty.

When we reached Capurgana, a fellow passenger, and irritating French woman, told us she'd found the cheapest hostel there, so we followed her to a little jungle fort called La Bohemia (it was French). When I told her I was from Napa, she sniffed and said, as if graciously searching for something kind to say of the new world, 'I've had some decent wine from Chile...'

Charming.

Eian thoughfully snuggles a cat at La Bohemia. 

Capurgana is a little village, five blocks by five blocks. The social center of town is a sports field, and at almost any time of day, there is either a futbol or baseball game being played. Locals sit on the porches of the surrounding restaurants to watch, and blast -- BLAST--their music at insane decibels. We went for a hike into the jungle and were two hours' walking distance away, and one town over, before we could finally no longer hear it.

Oh, it's Anytime O'clock? Time for a village wide soccer game!

Beyond the sports field is a small airport. No one ever talks about this airport. The planes leaving fly only to the United States. Make of that what you will. On the coastline sits a derelict hotel that children play in now. Apparently it was once a magnificent resort, but the owner was arrested for exporting cocaine a few years ago, and no one has done anything with the remains of it.

The place is filled with military personnel, some of them uniformed and on duty, and some of them in swim trunks, twirling semi-automatics as they stroll along the beach.

For breakfast in the morning, we walked to a restaurant called La Arca de Noe, where a woman said 'Do you want breakfast?' We said yes, and she told us to sit down. Ten minutes later she brought us a plate of eggs, white bread, and a slab of cheese. Her kids wandered around our table, trying to stare without actually staring at Eian's guaged ears.

Hiking through the jungle to Sapzurro.

The border of Panama was within hiking distance, so after breakfast we hiked over the hill along the outskirts of the Darien Forest, to the town of Sapzurro, and then into the Panamanian village of La Miel. When we got into Sapzurro, which is sleepier and smaller than Capurgana, a man, without being prompted, simply saw us and pointed: 'La Miel, that way.' At the border a pair of military personnel sat listening to music, and watched with amusement as we took pictures beneath the 'Welcome to Panama' sign. They didn't bother with stamping our passports -- there's not really anywhere we could go beyond La Miel without taking a machete to the forest.

Steps up to the border of Panama

As we made our way down the main street of the village, we passed an awning, under which a group of people were sitting and nodding along to their music that was honestly louder than I had even thought sound could be? It was so loud, I was surprised we couldn't actually see it pushing the air around us. And the people were just listening casually next to the speaker, nodding their heads like, 'great song, right?' The eardrums on this coast are insane.

We sat on the beach and had fish and rice, and watched a boat bring in a whole soccer team of excited little boys holding trophies.

La Miel

Later we grabbed a boat back to Capurgana, and it was fun passing the chunk of jungle we'd hiked through to get there.

Storm's abrewin'

In the morning we took another boat up the coastline for Puerto Obaldia, a border town of Panama where we had heard they take security very seriously. As in, everything must come out of your bags to be checked, they will hold your passport for hours, they'll want to see proof of your intent to leave Panama, and proof that you have enough money to sustain yourself while you are there -- that includes bank statements and at least two credit cards. So we were prepared for the worst.

And all of this is true if you are Colombian. But it turns out Panama doesn't really care that much about what's in the backpack of an American. And when you tell them about your vague plan to be in Costa Rica at some point, they look at each other and shrug, like 'good enough for me! Give these crazy kids a stamp!'

We walked the length of the town, about three blocks, to weigh our bags and check in for our flight. No one handed us tickets. On their receipts for our fares, both of our names were spelled wrong. Not a problem, as no one would trouble themselves with looking at our names for this flight again.

We were early for our 11:50 flight, so we went to a restaurant that was entirely empty except for the cook, who stared us down for several seconds before yelling for her neighbor to come help her in the kitchen and disappearing. We sat down at a table, thinking to ourselves, 'let's eat quickly so we can get over to the airport with enough time to get through security.' LOL.

The airport consisted of one lobby filled with folding chairs, with bars instead of walls on two sides of it. There was one lady inside pacing around, who beckoned us forward when we showed hesitation at moving beyond the 'No Trespassing' sign on the gate. We took seats and hung out until 11:50. And then until 12:50. We went up to ask the pacing lady when the plane was going to arrive. She shrugged and said, 'The plane is in Panama.' 

The plane

Just as we'd been having the eery feeling that we'd be the only people on the flight, Eian looked across the street and realized the nearest restaurant was full of people with suitcases. And when the plane came bursting into view at 1:45, they all jumped up and hustled over to the lobby/jail. The pilots, two high-fiving bros who looked younger than us, left the plane smacking each other with papers and swaggering because they knew they looked sharp in their pilot costumes. They came over to let us onto the runway, and we stepped into the nine passenger plane and climbed over the top of all the seats, and also other passengers, to get to our spots. The pilots hopped in and we left. This plane landed, turned around and took off again in the span of probably ten minutes.

Hola Panama!

The flight was the best we've ever taken, even with the crampedness.The windows were four times the size of a regular plane window, and the view was amazing as we flew right over the Darien Gap rimmed with coastline, and then the dense forest cleared and it was all shiny cars and skyscrapers.

The ride was an hour, and then we landed in Panama City! And then all nine of us waited in a room for five years for our passports to clear. WOO! YEAH! WELCOME TO PANAMA GUYS, SIT RIGHT DOWN AND ENJOY THIS HOLDING CELL, HOPE YOU HAVE A DEEP AND ABIDING APPRECIATION FOR CANALS, BYE!

Next post is going to feature special guest The Panama Canal, with an honorable mention to its museum's barely disguised contempt for America.