Lets see, we left off in Colon, Panama… where we left on Friday morning to arrive in Miramar, Panama that afternoon. We thought we should arrive a few days earlier, in case the boat was ready to go before its official departure date. The road to Miramar was awesome, it ran right along the edge of the beach to the Caribbean. It was windy, well-paved, and we went through several small towns.
Portobelo port, an hour before Miramar

When we arrived I was kind of surprised to see how small the port really was. Maybe a deck 20ft long from shore, the wáter was definitely too shallow for the huge boat we ended up going on. They were loading everything onto a smaller boat and then unloading it back onto the big boat, pretty time consuming. We asked for Capt. Cierra, but a man that owned a kiosk right next to the port told us he wasnt at the port. The kiosk man rented out romos that smelled terrible for 20USD. We went to a neighboring town, and found a room for 10USD. We were about 3 blocks away from this awesomeness…
The next day we came back to Miramar and basically sat around for the whole day waiting for this Cierra dude. Mind you, when I first called him back in Colon i asked him if he could take us with the bike to Colombia, and all he said was ¨Miramar on Sunday¨and hung up. I had to call him back to straighten out the details… he was such a weird character. (Just realized Word is autocorrecting my words into spanish words, sorry if I dont catch some of them). We later came to realize that all of the sailors on the boat were strange characters. Really short, and will walk away randomly, major communication issues.
We went back to our town next door to inform them of our stay. Then we decided to head back to Colon for more groceries and dough (No ATMS in Miramar). The town we stayed in had no food! There were no functioning restaurants, food stands, NOTHING! They had a small store, but it hardly had any food, and it was obviously 3x more than the normal grocery store. It was so bizarre. . .
Sunday was another long waiting game, but they kept saying we would be leaving soon… at the end of the day, we would be leaving the following day. We slept on the ship that night. On Monday, while playing the waiting game we met a fellow traveler, Marshal Chupa, Canadian photographer extraordinaire. Turns out he was also going to Colombia! So we signed him up. Miramar also serves as the port town to catch the small boats to go to the San Blas Islands, an island chain of about 1000 islands between Panama and Colombia. Since Capt. Cierra had originally said they were not going to stop at the San Blas Islands, we decided to take a day trip. By this time, they told us wed be leaving on Wednesday. ..
So off we go on our lancha to the San Blas, we got a $5 buck discount each since he was going back empty.
IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! It was like a rollercoaster ride for an hour. The waves were intense, but we just jumped up and down. Got that same butterflies in your stomach feeling… we were going fast, the ocean was so green, and the boys sat in front of me shielding me from all the wáter. Note to people riding on passenger speed boats, SIT IN THE WAY BACK! Haha.
We got to Porvenir, one of the main islands, and hung out the whole day! Beautiful white beaches, clear wáter, sun, fresh fish, patacones, all so wonderful! We ran around taking pictures, enjoying the sun and each others’ company, and illegaly cutting up coconuts with Marks machete. (Illegal because the Kuna use coconuts commercially, makes sense, its all they have really).
See… (the boys are so bad, I couldnt do anything to stop them … they had weapons… so I just guiltily sipped the coconut juice haha).
On the Lancha, just leaving Miramar

Kuna driver (Im such a tourist, jeez)

The island consisted of: 1 museum, 1 police checkpoint, 2 hotels ($80 a night-pfft), 1 public bathroom (a toilet seat over the ocean), 1 airstrip, 2 restaurants, a small palm tree filled área, and two random huts. THATS IT! So naturally we stayed at the museum haha. The guy who ran it charged us $5 (lol museum entrance fee included), each to stay on the top floor where nothing was exhibited. Another great experience…
Museum/Hotel

5 star accomodations…you cant beat the sleep and learn package.
Dense palm tree section I was talking about…

Where we found this cool coconut…

Random airstrip. . . that would be one scary landing.

One of my favorite pictures so far…

Fun fact: The kuna flag has a huge swastika on it. Its their revolutionary flag, happened in 1925.

This is the traditional Kuna outfit

These are pics Mark took, this seems to be my confused face lol… dont remember what that was about… the boat in the background is the one we ended up taking back.
So on our way back, my first official experience on a cargo boat, I became super seasick. The boat was shifting 45 degrees from side to side, the ocean was pissed. After voming a few times, I decided to lay down in the cabin. There were three beds on each side of the small hall leading into the Capts área. I laid in a middle one, and was still holding on tight. Sure enough, before I knew it my seasickness was gone. Then all of a sudden a bigger wave hit or something and I flew out of the middle bunk and hit my head against the steel frame of the middle bunk on the opposite side. Oh whats that..? Blood? Mark and Jordan both ran over, the latter offering me his shirt. Pressure, alcohol, cotton swabs, I stood up, and got super nauseous again… VOM.. again. It was prettyyyy terrible. We were so close to shore too, about 10 mins away. As soon as we got there, I went to a nurse in Miramar who cut a bit of my hair off, cleaned the wound, and sent me to a doctor in Nombre de Dios, Panama (30 mins away). No one was there so they sent me straight into the doctors office. Youre going to need stitches… here are some shots of anaesthesia, some sewing, and I was ready to go. Make sure to get them removed in 8 days!
He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, some pain killers, and seasickness pills. The stitches were free, the meds were 12 bucks.
My rockin headband… MY FIRST STITCHES EVER WERE IN NOMBRE DE DIOS, PANAMA.. I could think of no better place.

We had my new favorite, fish and patacones, for lunch! YUMMERS!
We went back to Miramar and waited some more… slept on the ship again. On Wednesday… we finally left.. and guess what??? HE STOPPED AT THE SAN BLAS ISLANDS! Frustrating. . . since we made a pointless expense.
Oh I should probably clarify all the characters and their roles in THIS story: Cierra (owns the ship, and oversees all of the crew), Capt. Thomas (who Cierra assigned as the official captain), an admin guy, a whole bunch of Young colombian guys (two who are Cierras sons, one nephew, 3 others), a whole bunch of Kuna men (one cook, 3 other sailors). Jeez.. way too many parantheses. On the passenger side: Some europeans, an Australian, and a brazilian just going to porvenir. There were two colombians, one who was from Bogota- Ronald Preciado, a Jaime from Cali, then some Kuna going from island to Island, some pólice officers, Mark, Jordan, and I. There were so many people on that boat. Here we are at Porvenir, San Blas again, on our boat…
Hahahaha another one of my favorite pictures…

They stopped at several islands to drop off supplies

We had like 400 bags of cement, block, machinery, and even carried chickens! So cute…

This was the unloading the gas tank method…

sooo many islands…
Kuna bakery, this bread was so good.

Mark would spend most of his time on the top of the boat..this is Mark, these are his pictures…


This is his awesome dolphin shot…
We would travel all day and stop at night, we would get to explore the islands…I seriously had no idea where I was exactly those 3 days, all of the island names are in the indigenous language. Did I mention all our meals were included with the rate?
On the second day one of the pólice officers caught us dinner, two barricudas!

I watched as the kuna cook graphically chopped it into bits, and gutted it. It doesnt get fresher than that…

Ronald and I (we met up with him in Bogota)

On the third day we finally made it to Pto Obaldia. We cancelled our bike permito ut and got our Passports stamped… Then we took a 30 minute ride in a small lancha to Capurgana, Colombia. We loaded the bike onto this thing in the middle of the ocean… pretty scary… and off we go!

The bike was prettyy rusty by the time we made it to land. We left it in the courtyard of the hotel so the rain could wash it down. This was the unloading into Capurgana, the dock was low, thank God.

This is the hotel, 10USD a night… the guy here Christopher was extremely nice… a hundred percent recommend this to anyone who goes there. ..

Capurgana is a port town that is a vacation spot for Colombians… so we were pretty fortunate to have experienced that, and Sapsurro, its neighboring town. When we arrive to Capurgana there was no electricity so we had to wait til about 6pm to stamp our Passports in. The next day (Saturday)we checked out the price for a lancha to Turbo, and the owner tried charging us 150USD for the bike alone, which we didnt even have. Still no ATMs. We found out another cargo ship would be there the next day, so we decided to wait and go on that, which we knew would be cheaper. .. So we said goodbye to
Then we played the waiting game again… and passed the time…

We camped that night in a lot right next to the ocean.. it was very peaceful…

The next day the boat arrived and they let all three of us on for about 80USD, meals included. From there the boat headed to Sapsurro where they realized they were missing a coconut shipment from Pto Obaldia. Some of the crew took a small lancha to retrieve the coconuts, and we camped again on the beach. Another awesome place, still no roads to inner Colombia.
El Pipe, our new way into South America…

Jordan tried to eat more coconuts, unfortunately the leathermen was considerably less efficient than the machete was for coconuts…

had never seen a crab Shell like this one.. jordan found it.. pretty cool..

We left at about 8am Monday morning, and finally made it to Turbo that afternoon… I was SO happy and excited to make it into the interior…
Turbo!

…and to our pleasant surprise… everyone was on motorcycles!

Lets see.. afterthoughts on the trip. ..
I really did not enjoy being on Capt. Cierras boat. They were nice in the sense that they would listen and try to acommodate our needs , and would chat with us about different things. For one, he favored the guerrillas since they defended the poor. Which I heard some of those boats take drugs sometimes. Doubt that happened with our trip, since the pólice were on board monitoring everything. It was kind of bizarre, because I talked to an officer who was part of the equivalent of the DEA in Panama who said they relied a lot on intelligence, and a ´source.´ He said the US helped Panama with boats, subs, training, etc. To try and prevent the drugs from making it through the Darien. On the boat, cierra said he knew a drug dealer that said they now made two batches of cocaine. A pure one, and a bad one. They would leak the bad one to distract the officials, while the good one went through. He also talked about how he had 14 kids with different women, and would blatantly admit to having several affairs. They would all say demeaning things to the Kuna. They would treat them as though they were inferior. Also Cierra would also say crude things to me… He spoke Kuna so he would say things in Kuna and then the people that understood Kuna would laugh, and then he would tell me what he said in Spanish, which was most of the time something gross. He was a pig, and all of those Young boys were learning all this from him. Also that Capt Thomas guy had a family in Bogota who he hadnt visited in 15 years, and also blatantly admitted to having affairs. It was sad really. Besides their company, everything else was great… had never been on a boat like that before. The food was good, the island touring was awesome, and overall the trip was definitely an experience that I dont regret. The other cargo boat, El Pipe, consisted of some pretty awesome people, everyone was really nice and respectful. All in all, I was happy to finally be in South America!!!







































very interesting reading and photos. I hiked across the isthmus in 1986 and visited the islands including Porvenir. I used to go to Costa Rica in the winter, staying [camping mostly ] in the parks. I’m thinking of settling in Nicaragua, maybe starting a school/farm. Thanks for posting your adventure. James
Michelle, great adventures and awesome photos. there is low budget cabins in miramar now days and transportation too. alex mora a colombian northamerican helps alots there. alexmora2@gmail.com and his number is 66610267. for others that need him.
be well
alejandro
Hi Michelle, Great blog. I really enjoyed reading your style of writing and the content. I am in Turbo now with a moto and am looking for a way to Panama. People here are telling me its not possible to travel with my moto but I see here you were able to. I will keep trying.
Gracias.
I just read some of your stuff and I love it. I have lived in Costa Rica for 5 years and now I live in Panama… I just have a long weekend to do something and your blog popped up… I wont be doing it but it was a great read/story/adventure!!! love it, and i hope it all went good!!
How much was the boat? I am Portobelo right now. There is a ATM here. So over all three days to pt obaldia. Half hour to capurgana, then one day wait. Then half day to turbo right?
hello, how much was the total cost from miramar,panama to turbo, columbia by boat? cause im looking to travel that way as well in july ^.^ . well congrats on your journeys.. -garrett
Hi Garett,
The cost from Miramar to Pto. Obaldia was $300USD on a cargo boat (Lya del Mar). From Pto Obaldia to Capurgana it was $70USD on the speed boat, and from Capurgana to Turbo it was about $96 (170,000 pesos) on a cargo boat (El Pipe). The cargo boats had meals included. So, the total was $466 for transportation. If you needed to stay in Capurgana and wait for a cargo boat, it was $5pp/night at El Uvito (ask for Christopher) in Capurgana + whatever food you want to buy. If you decide to take the passenger/speed boat to Turbo from Capurgana they wanted $220USD. Remember that this was for two passengers and the 250. I’m not sure what kind of bike you’re taking, but it should not be more than that, since it was two of us. Hope you have a great adventure, let me know if you come across any trouble, would be happy to help!
Take Care,
Michelle
hello again, great info! ^.^ wow $466 for 2 people and a bike thats a great deal that like 230 per person
Wow. Great pictures. Looks like a fantastic trip.