Our nautical nonsense began with a visit to the Panama Canal. This seems like the obvious place to go in Panama and we searched for other things in Panama City to see and visit, but basically it's all about the canal. There's an exhibition centre and museum at one of the three locks. We saw a cruise-ship coming through, which was pretty impressive, and some parts of the museum had interesting facts and scale models of crazy, steam-punk, Victorian machinery. However, the overall experience is actually kind of ridiculous, turning one of the world's greatest engineering projects into a low-grade local aquarium level of entertainment. There were several pointless exhibitions about whales, pictures of wildlife, and a lack of any actual, in-depth history of the Franco-American project and war against Colombia etc (the museum made it out that Panama woke up one day, decided to become independent and the U.S. just happened to show up around the same time with a canal plan). What there WAS was a 3D movie. It used all the power of 3D to make you really believe you were at the Panama Canal. Which of course we were, but you can never be sure until you've seen it in 3D film with lots of needless pointing and birds flying into the audience. It should be said that we actually enjoyed this experience greatly. How could we not? We were next to one of the most incredible feats of engineering ever known, a testament to the genius and hubris of the Industrial Revolution. But it wouldn't be the pinnacle of Western civilisation without a 3D movie, the lamest and most kitsch invention since nodding dogs. The juxtaposition of the two couldn't be a funnier microcosm of our culture.
Still giggling, the next day we struck out for Portobelo, which we had been told was the best place to start finding boats from Panama to Colombia. The port did not seem to exist and the local gringo hostel advertising itself as "experts" on the subjects of boats and local captains just wanted to sell you a $500 island vacation/sailboat cruise. We camped out for a couple of nights, trying to gather information and exploring the town, which had lots of pretty colonial/pirate era forts, which are now the haunts of vultures.
Also, as you can see, we had our own tour guide. A small dog with ridiculous ears appeared during our first day and proceeded to hang out with us until we left. She never begged for food, just curled up near us, slept outside our tent, followed us to the shop and back and generally made sure we were all in order. She is probably recounting to fellow street-dogs about how she had to look after some helpless backpackers for a few days.
When we moved up the coast to Miramar, as we had heard that more boats left from there for San Blas, we wished we still had someone as organised as her. Our first real piece of bad luck was that the seas were too high for anyone to go anywhere for three days. We amused ourselves swimming in the Caribbean, eating very tasty seafood in the little restaurant we were camping outside and by the second day finding a couple of other confused tourists. Boats were supposed to leave on Tuesday, but for one reason or another did not. By Wednesday we had multiplied to a crew of nine and were able to get a small launcha boat to El Porvenir. We got completely drenched on this journey of about two hours and one of our companions spent the entire time cackling maniacally behind us. El Porvenir is the capital of the Guna Yala autonomous region, which covers a stretch of the Caribbean coast and many small islands.
We caught another short, much drier, boat to Carti, a main port in the area. Our tempers were a little strained here to discover there is actually a road from Panama City direct to Carti which two people we met there had successfully hitch-hiked. We would recommend this route to anyone else trying to make it to Colombia, as even though in Carti things are still very ad-hoc, there are a lot more boats. While cooling our heels for another day we went swimming in the beautiful, clear blue waters. A cargo boat would have been willing to take us down the coast for $100 each though this would have taken five days. In the end a gang of eleven of us got another speedboat to Puerto Obaldia, where we could get stamped out of Panama and he would wait for us to take us to Carpurgana in Colombia. Of course, the migration office in Puerto Obaldia had closed at 5pm sharp (we arrived at about half past) and there was one more night to wait there. The next day, we only traveled the half an hour to Carpurgana as rough seas meant there were no boats for the final leg of our journey until the next morning, Saturday. Because there was neither Internet, Western Union, nor ATMs at many of these places, we were running short of immediate funds, not to mention desperately needing a shower. Finally we crossed the bay and made it to Turbo, not sorry to see the back of the Caribbean and seas in general for a while.
We had a Couchsurf arranged in Medellin, but the aforementioned financial faff delayed us getting a bus until six in the evening for what was supposed to be an eight hour journey. It turned into a twelve hour one due to delays, and meanwhile the brutal air-conditioning had us shivering (bonus luxury we do not think). We rocked up in Medellin this morning and seem to have fallen on our feet as our host is lovely. We've been discovering some of the many Colombian baked goods, showering, sleeping and generally starting to feel a bit more human. Tonight we also enjoyed a Colombian movie, Contracorriente, which we'd heartily recommend if anyone feels like a very beautiful film about love, responsibility, and Doing the Right Thing.
Thus restored, we've remembered to be excited that we are on a whole new continent and shall begin exploring tomorrow.
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