Around The World In 80 Waves

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?

I went down to Chulo’s office first thing this morning with every intention of making a nuisance of myself until the car was back in my care.

However in fairness to everybody at my customs broker it really isn’t their fault. Chulo made me a cup of coffee and sat my down in his office watching the BBC news whilst he had guys all over town trying kick some butt at the various Aduana offices.

I sat there for five hours having a good chat with Chulo telling him that he must have the patience of a saint to be in his line of work because there is no way I would have any hair left if I dealt with such an inefficient service.

As we were getting into the mid afternoon and I was starting to worry that there would not be enough time left to get all over town to sort the various remaining steps of the process when we got word from Chulo’s courier at the final Aduana office that the paperwork was finished and I could pay the import tax. I shall gloss over the fact that the tax was approximately 50% of the value of the car because the sooner I forget about that the sooner I will stop seething about it! Legalised theft!

Despite a further minor delay at the national bank I managed to pay the tax and then collected the paperwork back at the office so I could get the car out of the bonded warehouse. I kid you not it is about half a ream of paper. It is no wonder the process is so slow if there is so much paperwork to be completed. I may have discovered the reason for the deforestation of the Amazon!

Raul the courier took me back to the bonded warehouse just as rush hour was starting, to collect my car but left me to it. It was a fairly straight forward process until they offered me a credit note instead of cash for the $165 rebate I was due on the time I had not used of the month’s storage which I had been forced to pay in advance. (At this stage I will explain that I was very tired by now and have been under the weather for a few days with a fever so was not feeling too good.) It was definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I lost my temper quite badly. At the top of my lungs I stated “No dinero, Yo no vo!” which may or may not have been good grammar, but the sit down protest which followed made it pretty clear that I was not leaving until I got my cash back. It was late Friday afternoon and they were trying to fob me off saying I could come back next Thursday for the cash, but I wasn’t having a bar of it and refused to budge knowing they all wanted to go home. The senior manager of the site eventually came to see what all the row was about, and had to good sense to find a way of paying me my cash, because I would still be there now had she not done so!

Even that took forever though, but I can happily report that the car is now in my posession again. I am free to sell it and have already installed the ‘for sale’ signs in the windows to self advertise the little green surf machine. I will be driving it around Panama City for the next few days trying to drum up some interest, but sadly still have not finished the importation process. I have to go to another customs office on Monday to get the vehicle stamp removed from my passport, which was the whole reason for undertaking the importation process in the first place. There simply had not been the time to complete it today.

There are loads of sloths in this area. Just like the customs people here they don’t do a great deal.

As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloth’s body-weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take a month or more to complete. The leaves they eat provide little energy, and sloths deal with this by a range of economy measures. They have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a mammal of their size), and maintain low body temperatures when active (30–34 °C or 86–93 °F), and still lower temperatures when resting.

Sloths move only when necessary and even then very slowly. They have about a quarter as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight. They can move at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator (4 m per minute), but they burn large amounts of energy doing so. Their specialised hands and feet have long, curved claws to allow them to hang upside-down from branches without effort.

While they occasionally sit on top of branches, they usually eat, sleep, and even give birth hanging from limbs. They sometimes remain hanging from the branches after death.

In a similar vein I am expecting to be found slumped over my keyboard when the notice that the customs process is finished has arrived.

They are announcing the winners of Billabong’s annual XXL competition on Friday. This picture is of the biggest wave ridden in 2006.

There are a number of categories up for grabs, biggest wave, biggest tube, etc but my personal favourite is the best wipeout. As usual there are a couple of gems this year. You watch them thinking ‘that has just got to hurt!’ These were last year’s shortlist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2J1Sj3TRHQ

I don’t think I will ever have any entries in the pot for the competition, but take my hat off to the chargers that do. Check out footage of this year’s surfers at the website: http://www.billabongxxl.com/

I haven’t so much as dipped my toes in the sea for more than two weeks and it is killing me. The massive waves of Santa Catalina seem a long time ago now.

However thinking about them reminded me of something I meant to pass on at the time. More than once at Santa Catalina I was the only person to get past a set of waves and looked back to see everybody’s boards tombstoning behind me.

Tombstoning occurs when a surfer has been pushed down so deep below the surface by the impact of the wave landing on them, that their leash becomes fully outstretched. The surfer’s weight pulling down on the leash yanks the board upright, leaving the front sticking straight up, rocking to and fro as the surfer moves about with the currents of the water underneath.

It is more likely to occur in larger waves following a cleanup set or a particularly bad wipeout, but when you see the whole line up behind you doing it, the resemblance to all the tombstones in a graveyard is clear, hence the name.

Most surfers who have been out in big surf will know about this and perverse sensation of schadenfreude you get when looking back towards the shore at it. The surfers usually resurface unaided, but some aren’t so lucky, unconscious and dangling in desperate need of a tug up. At least their boards tell you where your mates are if not how to get them out if they are in difficulty.

I am getting really annoyed by the Central American approach to getting something done. Every day I am promised that the customs process will be finished tomorrow, which means I sit around all the following day waiting for the call that never comes, with my cash at the ready to pay the importation tax.

I held back on some of the tourist things to do once in Panama City because I could see this exercise in patience coming from a mile away, but I have now exhausted even the limited options available to me here in the city, and I cant leave the city because I don’t have my car.

I am so bored just sitting around the hostel day after day adding to my insect bite collection, only to be spun another load of ‘probablies’, ‘think it will’ and ‘possiblies’ at the end of each day about what will be happening tomorrow. I didn’t come on this trip to waste my time like this. I was told the process would take less than a week, but it has now been more than two.

As a project manager the scale of the inefficiency of the process offends me.

All they have to do is put a value on my car so the import tax can be calculated and I gave them a copy of the receipt from when I bought it.

Pull your finger out you useless twats!!!!!! I have got far better things to be doing.

It would appear that great minds think alike. I have been contacted by a Canadian surfer called Gavin whose home break is near Vancouver and who is up to similar adventures to my own.

He stumbled upon the details of my trip whilst trying to shortcut to the details of his own journey.

For those of you on Facebook, you can check out what he has been up to using the following link:

www.facebook.com/aroundDaWorldIn80Waves

There is a chance our paths may cross later in the year when will both be in Asia.

I am not talking about the recent Disney movies here, more about the two British seafarers who had a significant impact on this part of the world. I have been hearing a lot about them since arriving in Panama so thought I would pass some of that on.

In particular I am talking about Sir Francis Drake and Admiral Sir Henry Morgan who caused quite a lot more havoc than I have whilst visiting the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.

On his ship The Golden Hind Sir Francis Drake was the first person from Britain to circumnavigate the globe, and I suspect that feat was a tad harder than my own trip in 2013. He was also largely responsible for the defeat of the Spanish Armada when it intened to attack England in 1588, but that is just as well because he was probably part responsible for the Armada being created in the first place due to number of attacks that privateers like him made on the Spanish settlements in this neck of the woods. Under the sponsorship of the English monarchy Drake and others like him would sail into the ports and steal all the gold and silver warehoused here ready for transport across the Atlantic, which the Spanish had in turn largely stolen from the indigenous people here.

He also died off the coast of Panama after contracting dyssentry on the last of such voyages. The lead coffin he was buried at sea in near Isla Grande on the Caribbean coast is still being looked for by treasure hunters today.

Half a century later Henry Morgan, who was originally from South Wales, was up to the same sort of mischief. He is remembered as the greatest of the privateers, amassing huge fleets and attacking prominent targets. His three most famous exploits were the 1668 sack of Portobello (which is just down the coast from Colon), the 1669 raid on Maracaibo in Venezuela and the 1671 attack on Panama City. Most of this was done with the support of King Charles II of England but the attack on Panama City with about 1,000 men in which the city was destroyed, was undertaken after a peace treaty had been signed between England and Spain, so you can imagine that the Spanish were not best pleased.

Morgan was summoned back to London because the situation was at the very least embarrassing for the English too. However not only was he never punished, but he was feted by the gentry and commoners alike upon his return who were impressed with his exploits. He was also knighted by the king and then sent back to his base in Jamaica as Lieutenant Governor of the island, where he worked on improving the defenses of the island which was Britain’s jewel in the Caribbean crown.

He was guilty of the death and torture of countless innocent Spanish civilians and spread terror far and wide on the Spanish Main, but the English loved him. So much so that the Captain Morgan dark rum that you may enjoy today over ice with coke is named after him.

All of which means I have a lot to live up to in the time I have left here! What would they call the drink they name after me?