If you missed our latest post detailing what exactly the Darien Gap is and why we keep talking about it, be sure to check it out here. For the past year or so we’ve periodically sat down at a computer, done a bit of searching for articles and websites (Drive the Americas is a particularly … Read more
The Darien Gap: Preparing
August 31st, 2013 | Posted by in Border Crossings | Colombia | Darien Gap | Panama | The Places We've Been - (8 Comments)The Darien Gap: An Introduction
August 30th, 2013 | Posted by in About | Border Crossings | Colombia | Darien Gap | Panama | The Places We've Been - (18 Comments)We’ve been talking about the Darien Gap with increasing frequency over the last month or two. It has existed vaguely in our awareness for a couple of years, but we intentionally delayed any real focus on it so as to avoid unnecessary stress. That luxury has slowly slipped away now as we’ve driven closer and … Read more
Soberanía National Park
August 29th, 2013 | Posted by in Panama | Parks | The Places We've Been - (2 Comments)Twenty-five kilometers north of Panama City, bordering the eastern flank of the Canal, is Soberanía National Park. Founded in 1980, the park’s 55,000 acres of humid tropical forest are a welcome respite from the ten-car-horns-a-minute hustle and bustle of the city just twenty minutes away. Home to an estimated 525 species of bird, Soberanía is … Read more
A Day in the Life: Panama City, Panama
August 28th, 2013 | Posted by in A Day in the Life | Panama | The Places We've Been - (0 Comments)This is an installment in an ongoing post series detailing a typical day in one of our destinations. Not everything in this schedule might happen on any given day, but it should give you a good idea of our usual activities. 6:00AM – The building starts to come to life. Our walls are seemingly pretty thick, … Read more
Amador Causeway
August 26th, 2013 | Posted by in Panama | Sports | The Places We've Been | Video - (1 Comments)Jutting six kilometers into the Pacific Ocean, the Amador Causeway is situated at the southwest tip of Panama City. Built from rocks excavated during the creation of the Panama Canal, the structure connects the mainland with four small islands via a two-lane road. Its original purpose was as a breakwater to protect the entrance to … Read more
Everyday Essentials: Panama City
August 25th, 2013 | Posted by in Everyday Essentials | Panama | The Places We've Been - (0 Comments)This is a series detailing some of what appear at first to be more mundane details of a place, but will hopefully be illuminating as insights into the grind behind the “glamour.” As I sit down to categorize and write about this month’s day-to-day tasks, a common theme has begun to emerge: I don’t really … Read more
The Panama Canal and the Miraflores Locks
August 23rd, 2013 | Posted by in Panama | The Places We've Been - (3 Comments)I remember hearing years ago that the Panama Canal wasn’t worth visiting because it was just some boat going slowly through a passageway, and there was really nothing more to see. From Kansas in the early 2000s, that made sense enough to me to dismiss any potential excitement about the place, an easy acceptance and … Read more
It started to rain as we climbed into the taxi we’d flagged down near the casino. Downpours are a daily occurrence in August in Panamá, but they’re also often fleeting so we carried on carefreely with our Saturday adventure. We had read that finding reasonable parking in Casco Viejo could be quite the challenge and also that … Read more
Computer Trouble in Paradise – Part Three: The Conclusion
August 21st, 2013 | Posted by in Costa Rica | Panama | Speedbumps - (3 Comments)In case you missed it, here are links to Part One and Part Two of this saga. The next two weeks were an exercise in patience and maximizing efficiency. We worked out a schedule where we would alternate blocks of hours at the computer. On several occasions, off-time saw us writing blog posts with a pen and … Read more
Computer Trouble in Paradise – Part Two: The PC Doctor is In
August 20th, 2013 | Posted by in Costa Rica | Speedbumps - (3 Comments)In case you missed it, here is a link to Part One of this saga. Broke-ass computer in tow, we pulled into Neily around lunchtime. The PC Doctor wasn’t hard to find, right across the street from the largest grocery store in town on the main drag. We stumbled into what looked like a pretty … Read more