A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA

I knew two things about Panama before we arrived:

1. Van Halen have a song called "Panama"
2. There is a canal in Panama.

The Van Halen song isn't that great - It goes "Panama... Panama-ah". To be fair, they get top marks for a very focussed chorus but when you consider how good the first Van Halen album was then it's a big step down in quality as far as I'm concerned. The US army weren't quite as fussy apparently and played the song repeatedly at high volumes in order to torture General Noriega as he hid in the Vatican embassy in Panama city.

As for the canal:
Dan Cohen, old friend and mentor, explained to me once that A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA is palindromic. This was quite an interesting chat for me and Dan; usually we spent lunchtimes discussing whether there is any need for 3/4 length trousers, the benefits of crossing the road diagonally and Dan's theory that it only makes sense to read popular books at least 2 years after everyone else has read them.

Another UBS colleague told me that of all the places in the world, he would most like to see the Panama Canal before he dies. His wife and kids thought he was a bit batty as I recall and I have to say that I was on their side at the time. Having visited the canal - or more specifically one of its three big locks - I think he might have a point. 77km long, it took 34 years and 27,500 lives to carve a path through the rainforest and connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. All very impressive and now they are expanding it to take even larger ships.

Other than visiting the canal, we hung around in Panama city for a couple of days - A very busy city with quite a cool dillapadated old town but otherwise not hugely interesting. We then took a bus to the mountain town of Boquete - ranked as the fourth best place on the planet for a cheap retirement by the US retirement magazine: "Departure Lounge". Boquete is a mediumly-charming town set amongst beautiful mountains covered in cloud forest and coffee plantations. The principal attractions for visitors are hiking, coffee plantation tours, cheap beer and American junk food. Mrs R and I achieved 2,3 and 4 but were dissuaded from our inaugral hiking expedition by 2000 inches of rain falling in 12 hours. Apparently the rainy season has come early to Panama this year.

Spooky castle, Boquete

We are now in very hot and super expensive Costa Rica. After 4 buses and a taxi we have not quite reached our target destination and so are hanging out in a sleepy town called Sierpe waiting for tomorrow morning's boat to take us to the rainforest town of Bahia Drake. Fingers-crossed for lots of wild animals and not too many mosquito bites when we get there.

That's it for now.
S&R

Possibly the least successful cycle trip ever

In the end it was my right knee that gave out. Reena's body seemed to adapt to the stresses and strains of cycle touring whereas mine fell apart progressively. After a few enjoyable days of cycling towards Seville the pain in my knee became pretty intense. We took some time out in Burgos hoping that it would get better but it was still just as sore a few days later. And so, with boredom thresholds set, as ever, to 'minimum' we decided to come home and come up with Plan G.

After much deliberation plan G involves flying to Central America and travelling around with a backpack for a couple of months. The Asia trip was unexpectedly enjoyable and so the hope is that, despite our painfully bad grasp of Spanish, we'll have fun travelling slowly north from Panama to Guatemala taking in the pyramids, beaches, jungles on the way. We fly out on Tuesday 24th March and will be back at the end of May. If any of you have any top travel tips then please let us know as (yet again) we are completely unprepared for this trip.

We have received requests (thanks mum) to keep the blog going. However we will not be upset if any of you decide that you want to unsubscribe as a trip around Central America isn't quite the same expedition as cycling to Istanbul.

More soon...
S&R

In summary: Things have not been going particularly well although they now appear to be improving.

Day 1: Nightmare tour of the Surrey hills – 80km with 1300m of climbing – torrential rain and howling winds for the last 1/3 of the ride.
Day 2: Sore knees all round – limped to the ferry but should really have had a day off
Day 3: At sea with the vomiting proletariat.
Day 4: Bilbao – torrential rain, sore knees, Guggenheim museum, no obvious viable route from the city, debates about where we should go (or if we should fly home).
Day 5: ** Cheating ** Taxi over the mountains in a southerly direction
Day 6: ½ day cycling in the sun and on a sensible mountain road in the general direction of Seville. (Not sure how we’ll get to Istanbul at present).



The long version:

South to Portsmouth
Our first day was almost enough to make us give up and head back to Wimbledon. The ride started well enough: it was sunny and 10 degrees and so we decided to take the scenic route to Fernhurst – 600m of climbing and 75km in total according to mapmyride.com. As far as I could remember we had one big hill in the whole route and that was it – not entirely true as it turned out. The first 30km were lovely – very narrow, traffic free country roads lined with autumn-coloured trees (weirdly). After 50km and a considerable amount of climbing we were both a feeling pretty unhappy however:

• It was significantly more hilly than it was supposed to be – with regular long and very steep uphill sections.
• Having not cycled for a few months (bad weather/Christmas /Barcelona/far east trip) it was a bit of a shock to the system – sore knees, sore back, sore bum
• Adding 20kg of luggage to a light road bike makes it much harder to climb hills – especially as you need to maintain a certain speed to stay upright.

With 15km to go it was cold, getting dark and the weather had deteriorated to strong winds and heavy rain. We were also completely exhausted but with no other options to hand we had little choice except to continue to the pub that we had booked for the night. Eventually, after a very fast downhill we arrived at the (delightful) Kings Arms in Fernhust – soaking wet, desperately tired and extremely cold. We changed, ate some food and collapsed into bed at 20:30. When I checked the GPS the next day it said we had climbed 1350m over the 80km. That explained a quite lot.

Day 2 should have been an easy day however Reena’s left knee was very sore and so we limped to Portsmouth.

The boat to Bilbao with the proletariat

The Pride of Bilbao is an enormous ferry with a casino, cinemas, swimming pool and numerous restaurants. In my wisdom I had gone a bit wild and booked the most expensive cabin available. This turned out to be a masterstroke given the dreadful weather we experienced over the 36 hour trip.

With the exception of another cycle tourist, the people on the ship appeared to be from one of two categories:

1. Mobile home enthusiasts (typically seen clutching a copy of MMM magazine and debating the pros and cons of rear-lounge vs mid-lounge layouts)
2. Members of the lower orders who had, incredibly, taken the 72 hour round trip solely to buy cheap cigarettes (£3 for a box of 20 in case any of you are interested).

Avoiding the delights of bingo with the masses we went to bed early on the first night only to wake at 4am with the boat lurching violently in heavy seas. This was both incredibly nauseating and a tad dangerous as it wasn’t possible to stand up without crashing into a wall or being hit by something flying around the cabin.

At 09:30 I (bravely) went for a walk to find: the hairdressers were closed (I remain shaggy-haired Steve for a bit longer), two men with tattoos drinking pints of lager and another two men sitting looking out to sea – one of whom was throwing up rather violently into a Tesco’s carrier bag. Other than that the decks were pretty much empty as sensible passengers stayed in their cabins for much of the trip.

After 36 hours of this we arrived in Bilbao.
Bilbao and South
As soon as we had cycled from the ferry and onto dry land the heavens opened – torrential hail/rain. The passport guy said it was a really bad time to be cycling in Northern Spain – we could go south, he said, but it wouldn’t get any better for a long time. Hmm... it wasn’t sounding entirely promising.

After a quick trip to the Guggenheim it was apparent that:

• Bilbao isn’t a hugely interesting city
• The weather was dire and not forecast to improve in the near future (although it had been 17 degrees and sunny last week – typical).
• All routes out of Bilbao involve very steep gradients – not the sort of thing that two unfit cycle tourists with bad knees should be attempting.

So... cycling in almost any direction would hurt Reena’s knee. Going North would get us to Istanbul but the weather would still suck. If we headed South to Seville the weather would be better at least – but wouldn’t get us where we wanted to go.

After much deliberation we decided to cycle to Seville, however with the rain pouring down we (shamefully) arranged a cab to take us south over the mountains to Trespadarmes.
Cycling from Trespadarmes was really excellent – the weather improved (probably coincidentally) and the roads were challenging but not ridiculously steep. We don’t have a plan at the moment as to how (or if) we’ll get to Istanbul but at least we’re a bit happier than we were and are enjoying the cycling. I guess there’s always the North Africa route although I might have to sell Reena and her bike for a camel in Tangiers and go it alone.

That’s all for now. Take care. S&R

Back in the UK - off again on Tuesday

After 28 hours on/waiting for planes, we arrived back in Wimbledon on Saturday morning and are now packing for the Istanbul trip (no, we haven't forgotten!) . Asia was a lot of fun in the end - I half-expected us to be a bit grumpy as we really wanted to be cycling but we relaxed into it and had a great time.

More detail below. For those of you who were hoping for some cycing action, it should all start on Tuesday. If it doesn't then I'll rename the blog to 'General timewasting in preference to job hunting' or similar.

Take care.
S&R
Details of the second half of the Asia trip (please feel free to skip to the photos!)

From Vientiane, we flew to Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam for a couple of days. HCM/ Saigon is incredibly busy with about a million motorbikes whizzing around you as you step into the traffic and make your way slowly across a busy road.

We then had a couple of days on the beach in Phu Quoc, Vietnam. A fairly low key place if a little expensive (for Asia anyway)

From Phu Quoc, we took 1 plane, two local buses, two boats and a hot minibus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. PP is a big, low-rise city with a nice mix of (slightly depressing) sights and buzzing bars/restaurants.

We then took a bus to Siem Reap, Cambodia to see the temples of Angkor. The guy at the guest house had recommended a minimum of three days to see the temples however we ony had one day left and so were up at 4am to see as many of them as we could. It turns out that you can see quite a lot in 12 hours if you race around in a tuk-tuk and dash in and out of each attraction. The temples were a real highlight - even with the wilting in the heat and the ridiculous schedule.

Photos

1. Reena chooses dinner in Vientiane
2. Corn on the cob, Saigon
3. Steve in a Vietcong tunnel - beard has since been removed
4. Beach at Phu Quoc
5. Ta Prohm, Angkor
6. Angkor Thom, West gate