September 29, 2015

You don’t get to Santa Catalina by mistake. It’s not the kind of place you stumble upon while driving through on the way to somewhere else. Santa Catalina is at the end of the road, about sixty miles down a road to nowhere else at the end of the Veraguas Peninsula. It’s mostly a small fishing village, but as with others along the Pacific coast of Central America, the surf has attracted a separate tourism industry. 

The ride down from David gets nice as soon as you turn off the InterAmerican Highway. The first sixty miles of InterAmerican Highway (I always called this the PanAmerican Highway, but it seems to have changed names somewhere along the way) are full of construction as they widen it from two lanes to a divided four lane road. After turning off at Tole, it’s mostly twisty road through the hills with glimpses of ocean.

 

There must be some serious fishing here, as I pass lots of places with large Grady White and Contender fishing boats with twin Yamaha outboards. Some have matching high-end homes, others are parked next to very meager houses. The boat is clearly worth more than everything else on the land. 

Somewhere about 15 miles before Sona, I ride through a swarm of wasps. The noise of them smacking my face shield and the sudden realization that I’ve been stung in the throat happen about the same time. I immediately think back to the last two times I’ve been stung by bees while riding, and start grabbing at my shirt and jacket to try to keep any that might have fallen down my shirt from stinging me. The pain continues through lunch in Sona (a great carne guisada, rice, beans, and a bottle of Coca Cola for $3.25), but begins to lessen by the time I reach Santa Catalina.

It’s off-season now, and there are only two German women staying at the hostel at the moment (and it’s managed by another German woman — is there a secret Central America movement I don’t know about? Clearly this part of the world has some heavy word-of-mouth advertising in Germany). 

I have a private grass hut overlooking the beach with a shared bath. Hammocks hang just outside the door, and the ocean breeze helps to mitigate the humidity.

 

Town and a fish dinner is an easy two kilometer ride. Otherwise, I don’t plan to move from the hammock for the next several hours.

September 30, 2015

In the morning I said goodbye to the beach and headed inland once more.

After backtracking 60 miles up the peninsula to the InterAmerican Highway, it’s another 60 miles down the highway to the turnoff at Anton. Parts of this ride remind me of Highway 99 through the Central Valley of California. Divided four lane, lots of farms and ranches, big hills in the distance. It just has a similar feel.

On the way it starts getting very dark ahead. It’s lunch time and looking like some serious rain is headed this way, so I pull off at a Chinese restaurant on the side of the highway. Big, nice place. Good food. And sure enough, it starts to really pour. Lightning. Thunder. Heavy rain. After an hour or so it lets up, and I’m back on the bike headed for Anton, my balding knobby tires performing better than expected for the conditions.

The road from Anton up to El Valle de Anton, or Anton Valley, starts out with some potholes but turns to a nice two lane. It starts in jungle-like foliage, climbs through pine forest, then up to clear-cut. The last climb is sharp and steep, with some switchbacks I can only describe as “quirky”. Just as suddenly the road descends via similarly quirky, sharp switchbacks into Anton Valley, which is actually in the six kilometer wide crater of an inactive volcano at about two thousand feet elevation.

 

I’m staying at the Bodhi hostel, which opened about eleven months ago and is doing a good business based on the people I see wandering in and out. Definitely the backpacker crowd, but this place is great for motorcyclists as well as they have a large fenced and locked lot adjacent to the hostel, and directly across the street from the police station. Secure parking shouldn’t be a problem.

The dormitory is huge and there are quite a few guests. I choose a private room with shared bath. The room is on the small side but comfortable.

Oreo, the adopted hostel dog, greets me at the door. I’m told he’s a “mountain dog”; he has helped guide lost hikers off the mountain several times. Apparently he helped a hostel guest down from the mountain, and the hostel since adopted him. He’s still free-roaming, but he wanders back every night.

Tomorrow is Panama City. I have a few days of projects, sight-seeing, and hopefully other things to do there. The weather won’t be as cool as here in Anton Valley, but I’m beginning to adjust to the heat and humidity of being this close to the equator. Or at least beginning to accept it.