Around The World In 80 Waves

Many happy returns to my brother Richard.

Hope you have a great day.

Thinking of you from South America.

Much love

Robert

The Darien Gap is the informal title given to the break in the highway which would otherwise run from Alaska to Chile. It gets its name from Darien, which is the largest and eastern most province in Panama, but also includes the northern extremes of neighbouring Colombia. It is what stopped me driving on towards South America

It is a vast area of rugged, sparsely populated, jungle covered terrain, which is second only to the Amazon in scale and within it’s confines are the huge Darien National Park and a self governing indigenous area.

Europeans first visited The Darien in the early 1500s. However people from my own shores arrived in 1696 when 2500 Scots tried to establish a trading colony. Many of the settlers died from disease, and those that didn’t had everything destroyed by Spanish soliers a few years later.  So much of Scotland’s wealth was invested in the colony, and subsequently lost, that Scotland was nearly bankrupted and effectively lost its status as an indepent nation as a result of the fiasco.

I know how they must of felt because all my own best laid plans are starting to look more than a little shaky because I can’t off-load the car. I have now significantly dropped the price to get rid of it, because it will be impacting on my later plans in a big way if I allow things to drag on much longer. A cheap selling price is not ideal but the financial implications of the potential delays, the time itself and the administrative overhead of any changes needed, will be far more costly for me in terms of this trip.

Drastic times call for drastic measures and I spotted this place a few doors down from my hostel yesterday. (www.darien.org.pa) I have decided that if I do not sell by lunchtime on Monday I will walk into their offices and hand over the keys. That would be outrageously generous of me but I really have had enough of feeding the local mosquito population and just sitting around for days on end. We did something similar on the Sahara Surf trip, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world and a lot of good would come from it, not least me leaving!

Massive congratulations to Wigan Athletic for winning the FA Cup. I have been following the text update on the BBC website for hours. It is great to see a team come up through the ranks and win the oldest knockout football competition in the world. King Street will be rocking tonight!

It is brilliant that the chairman (who admittedly is not without a few bob) is above everything a football fan, and not just using the club as a Billionaire’s plaything. That he actually broke his own leg playing in the 1960 Cup Final, just adds to the romance of the tournament.

I can’t believe it Swansea and Wigan, which are my two favourite nights out in the UK, bagging both the cup competitions and I am unable to join the party for either of their biggest nights ever. Gutted! With all the above and all the Welsh success it may be better for my sporting teams if I do not return to the UK. I have turned into something of a Jonah!

Apologies for the radio silence but nothing much has happened to update you about. I am still trying to sell the car and am getting a great deal of interest in it, but nobody has bitten yet.

I have also been doing my own share of self publicity driving it around the city with the ‘for sale’ signs on display, as well as trying to find interested buyers.

On one such journey I was following a motorcycle down the road. The rider went into a pot hole right in front of me and never came out!

I swerved to one side to avoid following him in and peered over the precipice to my right to see if he was ok. Alhough somewhat dazed and a bit confused by what ha just happened he seemed to be ok so I helped him get his bike back upright and out of the hole. In true biker style however he was back on his way in seconds.

Yo Bro. Hope you have a great day you old git.

I couldn’t put all the required candles on your cake in fear of starting a fire at the server farm where the website is hosted.

Will try and catch a few left hand waves in honour of your lefty ways as soon as another beach is in sight.

Catch up soon.

Robert

x

I did a final trip to the customs office yesterday to get ‘Autorizada la salida de este viajero sin su vehiculo autoridad. Nacional de Aduanas’ stamped in my passport. So far each of these 13 words has cost me $150, a day from my time exploring and surfing in South America, and a considerable amount of my sanity. Even yesterday’s efforts were a joke with nobody even acknowledging my presence at the relevant desk for nearly half an hour despite half a dozen people sitting around doing nothing. The paper mountain is now complete though and I am free to leave once I sell the car.

Since putting the for sale signs in the window I have already had three people try to ask me about it whilst I am driving down the road, one of which pulled alongside on the motorway, wound down the passenger window and was actually trying to haggle whilst swerving along the road at 60mph! I could barely here a word he said and just kept pointing at the telephone number eventually jamming on the brakes so the maniac would go past me.

I have to say I am now desperate to sell the car and if it goes on much longer I will practically give it away. As ever time is far more precious than money to me, and every minute I am spending pacing around the garden at Panama House waiting for a buyer is a minute where I could be doing something new. I am trying to keep myself both busy and positive, but there is only so much of that I can do. On the plus side I am getting many calls about the car, but as with selling a motor back home you get a number of time wasters, false promises, no shows, etc which adds to the frustration. I am going to rock up at a number of used car dealers tomorrow to see if anybody will take it off my hands. Please can you keep you fingers crossed for me?

There was nowhere at the surf beach to even get a drink so after my bodysurf session and an hours scorching in the sun we drove to the nearest town which is called Nueva Gorgona for a couple of beers. We found an amazing little beach there where my loud shirt was the only evidence of western tourism. Whilst there I fell in love with the latest in a very long line of mellow surf mutts that I have befriended on my journey south. Got to get myself a hound when I get back. It is long overdue!

The beers were lovely but the little shack did not serve any food so we pushed on once more stumbling across this fantastic place which had been built from the wreck of an old US army station. www.laruinatavern.com It’s owner Frank, himself a former GI told me the history of the place and the town. The original Gorgona is now a very long way down under the waters of Lake Gatun, which is the reservoir in the midle of the Panama Canal. It was flooded during the construction process and the residents were reimbursed with land on the Pacific coast, hence Neuva Gorgona.

The station was set up by the USA who finished the construction of the canal (it was started by the French) to help people relocate, establish schools, infrastructure, etc, but was abandoned around the time of the second world war because the people had been resettled.

We had some great food in the brilliant venue that Frank has built up like a phoenix from the ashes, but I got a call from an interested party about my car so had to dash back to the city sadly a long time before I even got to enjoy a game of darts with Jenny. 

Frank did tell me how to find the local surf shop where I was hoping to sell my board in order to avoid the ridiculous surcharges that airlines now make surfers pay when I move on (despite golf bags, skis, etc. weighing far more), and we called in there on the way back to the city.

The foxy female surfer working there could tell I was offering a great deal but her boss wasn’t interested without seeing the board and he was out of town, so it looks like the board will be visiting South America with me.

The only other thing to report there was the animal you see here who I will call Cat Dracula. I thought he was cute at first but the eyes tell the story. He was evil. All my best efforts at chatting up the Shred Betty were in tatters as he kept sneaking up behind me and sinking his sharp little fangs into the back of my unprotected ankles. This would be followed by me doing a flip-flopped version of the can-can. I definitely prefer dogs to cats!

We drove the 100km to a beach where the surf is supposed to be ok and I had been told by a surfer I had bumped into in the city that there was a surf shop.

Upon arrival at Playa Malibu, which does not resemble its USA namesake at all, we found all the locals huddled under whatever shelter was available on the beach. All the cabanas were taken. 

Sadly the steeply shelving sand meant that what little waves there were at the beach largely just reared up and dumped on the sand.

Although it looks flat in this picture the sets would roll through and at least one wave would result in the entire cast you see here getting swept off their feet. This would almost certainly result in a broken board and given I was attempting to sell it later in the day I thought better of risking it, instead opting to go bodysurfing instead. 

I swam out to the area where I thought the waves were breaking first, which was somewhat further than everybody else messing about in the shore break. Whilst waiting for the sets I would have tiny fish leaping out of the water around me and sometimes into my face, which was a first! Then spotting a set on its way I would try to pick the big one and swim like a man being chased by a shark.

The wave catches you in the same way it does a surfboard and you then try to stay a rigid as you can planing along the wave. I rode a few waves in this way all the way to the shore, each time getting unceremoniously dumped at the feet of many people who were now watching my exploits from the sand. Sadly Jenny didn’t get any shots of me doing so, but I suspect they would just have been of a couple of hands sticking out the white water superman style so I have added this picture of Barack Obama styling down a wave as it should be done in Hawaii.

It wasn’t great but I can’t tell you how good it felt to be back in the water, and I definitely surfed what was available. One more wave for the scrapbook!

It is Sunday and there is not much going on so I have decided to escape the city for the day.

The road out takes me past the national stadium, which is quite impressive. Just a quick snap of it though because I am keen to get to the beach before the wind gets up.

With no little difficulty myself and Jenny, who has once again joined me for this trip, find the Pan-American Highway and eventualy cross the new Centenial Bridge across the Canal on our way Westward.

It is a stunning piece of engineering and we saw huge container vessels traversing the canal a long way beneath us on the way across. 

I make this bit of travel sound easy but it really isn’t. It has been so long since I was in the car I had forgotten how bad the road signs are here. Even that suggests that there actually are some, when the regularly aren’t resulting in guess work or solar navigation on the fly regularly making incorrect decisions for you. Some signs on the motorway are actually placed after the turnings to which they refer to and others are in a font so small that you cannot see it until far too late to take corrective action. There is usually a prolonged period of spleen venting which follows!

It is great to be mobile again. Today I invited a Venezuelan biology teacher called Jenny to join me in the little green surf machine for the day. Jenny’s English is as good as my Spanish, but the two of us enjoyed a lovely day getting out of the city.

We took the Corredor Sur which is the road going across the sea that you can see here, built because they had run out of land in the city! However we stayed on it far too long and then had a bit of a shocker trying to get to our destination mostly because I had failed to notice the car was running on empty when we had started. Thankfully though my green friend did not let me down when I had company.

We were trying to find the ruins of the original city called Panama Viejo (or Old Panama in English), at least what was left of them after Henry Morgan and his shipmates went on the rampage through here in 1670. The picture here is what is left today of the original cathedral, which was the first one to be built in the Americas in the early sixteenth century. Epic work by the man from South Wales. I may have to burn down the hostel in his honour later this evening!

It was all quite impressive but having grown up just down the road from Conwy’s castle and walled town, which dates back to the thirteenth century I can freely admit to being more interested in the waves on the horizon that were breaking underneath the Corredor Sur.

Even though the water quality is appalling here I almost needed holding back. The opportunity to be the first person ever to surf under a motorway was rather tempting, especially so because I have not had a wave in weeks! It does mean there is swell about though, so maybe tomorrow. 😀

We strolled around for a bit and enjoyed all the remnants of Spanish architecture, including the convent you see in the background here. It wasn’t actually ruined by the Welsh pirate, it just was never finished after he had trashed the rest of the old town. After the attack it was decided to abandon this area and simply move the entire city westwards a few miles because it could be better defended there.

We also walked through a local artisans market, where every trader tried unsuccessfully to talk me into selling my soul for a brightly coloured beer can holder or equivalent. However after a few hours we had spent enough time in the area.

We weren’t rushing back to the hostel though and stopped for a drink or two on the way home. A top day.

By the way if like me you have ever wondered why Spanish influence in this region faded from near omnipotence across two continents to nothing bar the language being spoken, think Napoleon. I have been looking into it and as best as I can make out there had been revolutions and declarations of independence throughout the world in the late eighteenth century, and the feelings in Central and South America were no different at the time. The Spaniards kept a lid on it at first but when Napoleon invaded and conquered Spain a short while afterwards, also I believe putting his own family on the throne, it gave the locals the excuse they needed to throw off European shackles and stand on their own. I believe that to be true for all the Spanish speaking countries from Mexico to Chile, but please could anybody correct me if I am wrong?