Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 32 - Turbo, La Miel, San Blas, Panama City (Colombia, Panama)

After a late night ice cream in Cartagena, we were up early to walk across town to the meeting point for our travel group to the Panamanian border. Along with 7 others we jumped in a minibus organised by the Darien Gapster team to Monteria, 5 hours away, with Rhys perched on the bitch seat (definition – worst seat in a vehicle). Once in Monteria we swapped to another van for the last 4 hours to Turbo. Turbo has a terrible reputation and you wouldn’t want to explore the streets after dark which is part of the reason why we’d decided to join the travel group rather than making our own way to the start of the boat trip.

The next morning we headed to the port to catch our boat to Capurgana a few hours away across the bay. It was a beautiful little fishing village surrounded by lush forest and we wished we’d got there a few days earlier to explore. We spent a couple of hours there waiting to get our passports stamped to leave Colombia, the electricity was out so we had to wait for the guy to text all our details to his head office to get clearance. While waiting we ran into the oddest American guy ever, one of those people who should never have been allowed to travel alone, if you’ve ever seen Shooting Stars and are familiar with the character Angelos Epithemiou you’lll have some idea. When our passports were finally stamped we boarded another smaller boat for a short trip to Sapzurro where we met our captain, Adam, on the dock and loaded our big backpacks into the boat for storage.

From Sapzurro a short walk over a hill took us to the Panama border and down into the small bay of La Miel where we were to spend the night in hammocks at a hostel owned by the Darien Gapster team right on the beach. The hostel is still in the process of being built so it’s pretty basic but is on a beautiful little beach with warm sea and lush green forest – although the end of the beach away from the hostel is completely covered in plastic litter. To get there you pass through military checkpoints and past avocado trees full of fruit. Once there we headed out to swim in a natural pool in the river in the forest behind the hostel before walking back into the village to grab some lunch cooked by some woman in her home kitchen. That night we met the other 9 people who we would be spending the next 3 nights with and spent hours sitting on the beach drinking rum spotting shooting stars.

The first day of the Darien Gapster we walked a short distance to the next bay where we climbed aboard our boat. The first stop was at Puerto Obaldia, essentially a military check point where we bumped in to the crazy American again and spent a couple of hours waiting to get our passports stamped by a very friendly chatty immigration guy. Adam then spent another hour trying to convince the military that they didn’t need to empty and search the entire boat and managed to persuade them to find the sniffer dog to check it over. Finally we were off and on our way to the San Blas. We stopped for lunch at a deserted island and spent a couple of hours snorkelling and sun bathing before heading to Caledonia, a Kuna village where we were allocated hammocks for the night. It was a great experience; we were the only gringos there and nothing had been put on for show, people were just going about their daily business. We wondered around the village watching the kids play football and ate wonderfully fresh seafood in a small restaurant (and the only one on the island I think), Rhys had conch and I had octopus. That night a lot of rum was drunk.

Our second day on the boat we had the longest at sea, a 3 hour trip to Isla Iguana. The island was stunning, white sandy beaches, palm trees, coconuts and warm Caribbean Sea. Other than a Kuna couple who looked after the coconuts we were the only people on the island and strung our hammocks in little huts. We spent the afternoon on the beach and snorkelling, although the reef was a little way off the island and Rhys got stung by something unidentified. That night was a lot more chilled, a campfire using the driftwood found along the beach (Rhys was in his element), dinner, a few rums and we were in bed relatively early.

The third day we packed up camp and headed to yet another stunning deserted island where we spent the morning and had lunch of fresh fish, rice and lentils brought over by a Kuna man. This island was tiny and you could walk around it in 5 minutes. It was a little slice of paradise. The reef wrapped around like a half moon and offered great snorkelling with a huge sting ray. After lunch we boarded the Darien Gapster again to head to the last island of our trip, Isla Senidup. Still beautiful I think this was probably our least favourite stop, it had two hostels on the island, only little cabins on the beach not huge buildings or anything but still it was the first stop where we felt like we were back on the gringo trail. Lunch was announced by a conch trumpet and we spent the afternoon snorkelling, swimming and reading on the beach. As an addition to dinner we’d stopped some fisherman on our way to the island and brought their entire days catch of lobster and had it served up on massive platters, you’ve never seen anything like it, each lobster tail was the size of my forearm. After dinner we went to sit on the beach away from the disco ball in the bar. At about midnight the discovery was made of glowing plankton just off the beach so we all jumped in to splash around making the plankton glow like fairy dust in our wake. We slept that night in beds in cabins, the first beds we’d had in days.

Our last day we were woken for breakfast by the conch trumpet and spent the morning relaxing on the beach recovering from the previous night’s rum. We transferred our bags to a different boat so the Darien Gapster could stay moored at the island and motored the final 30 minutes to Carti. After weaving through mangroves, the boat docked in the middle of nowhere in the Kuna Reserve where we paid our fee and climbed into 4WD’s bound for Panama City. The next hour of driving was like a rollercoaster the roads were ridiculously bendy. I had the bitch seat and Rhys had to hold me in place to stop me flying around. The 4WD dropped the 7 people in our jeep at Luna’s Castle, a hostel in a colonial mansion in the old town area of Casco Viejo where 5 of us ended up staying. We were all pretty worn out (it’s surprising how tiring sitting on deserted islands drinking rum can be) and only ventured a couple of blocks from our hostel for dinner at a cheap café before heading to bed.

Grateful for a good night’s sleep, after a pancake breakfast we spent the morning exploring Casco Viejo. It’s a really sweet little colonial area but is in quite a state of disrepair with crumbling buildings and cracked pavement everywhere. There is a lot of investment in restoring the area at present and it’s starting to turn into a smaller version of Cartagena with flower filled balconies, art installations in the crumbling buildings and boutique shops and hotels lining the streets. We spent a lovely couple of hours just wandering around and looking at the artisanal stalls and admiring the plazas and views of the skyline of the new city (which could rival some of the big North American cities). After a brief visit to the fish market we headed back to the hostel before grabbing a cab with Caitlin and Brandon for a round trip to the visitor centre at the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal.

Although we’d been told that the Canal was a little boring we had a great time. We saw a massive cargo ship pass through the lock followed by a tanker and some smaller fishing and tourist vessels. The toll fees paid vary from $420k for the largest ever ship to $0.36 for a guy who swam it and the boat we saw had paid $400k – it seems expensive but apparently it would cost 10 times more and take 10-20 days to pass around the continent rather than through it. After spending an hour on the viewing platform we headed to the theatre for a 3D showing with some great Canal facts before whizzing through the 4 storey museum and back to meet the cab for the drive back in to town. The Canal is in the process of being enlarged, by 40% in width and 66% in length, due to complete next year and I can’t even imagine the size ships that will pass through then.

Back in Panama City we said goodbye to Brandon and stopped at a microbrewery around the corner from our hostel. A few pitchers and a tour of the brewery later and we headed back to the hostel to find Gina, one of the girls from the San Blas, had been to hospital with a blood infection that she’d picked up from a sand-fly bite – scary stuff. We spent the rest of the evening in the hostel bar in an outdoor courtyard making the most of $1 happy hour vodkas.