Santiago
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The other half of Kristian's business is a gym. We were offered free use of it during our stay but we thought we probably get enough exercise on the bike and didn't use the facilities.
By the time we ended the day we were tuckered out. We stopped at a campground for Christian youth groups that also host travellers in exchange for a donation. Didibo was a great host and we could pitch close to the toilet block.
The views from the balcony at Roots hostel were amazing. We were also enjoying the cooler mountain air. We knew we had a big day ahead of us and set off nice and early.
Our day began with a descent back down to nearly sea level. At first it was pretty steep and I was glad I had done some maintenance on the brakes. Lower down the gradients became more gentle and we could enjoy some long fast descending. We could feel it getting hotter as we dropped down.
On the way down we crossed a Panamá canal. Obviously not the Panamá canal but it amused us to think of there being more than one canal in the country.
At the bottom we joined the Pan-American highway. It is very quiet this far west from Panamá City and with a lovely smooth surface. There are no other roads going our way so we had to settle for the highway even though it is not our favourite sort of riding.
Food options are mainly truck stop type places. The set up seems to be a canteen style which always appears to be very meaty at first glance but we have always managed to find things like rice, beans, eggs etc.
This one amused us as the walls were covered in pictures of trucks. We assume that, as well as driving a truck all day, truckers like to look at pictures of them while they eat.
We ended our day at Las Lajas in a small hostel run by Kristian, a German ex-pat. It was only 12km from the beach but we didn't have the energy to go down for a swim.
The Pan-American highway is super quiet. At times it felt like riding on main roads back home during Covid lockdowns. We were making the most of rolling along and not thinking about much when we realised that we had missed our planned turn into one of the few side road options. We weighed up backtracking for 4km or just continuing. Given that the road was quiet we decided to carry on.
We had great views of mountains off to our left. The temperatures grew hotter and the road constantly undulated. It was very hard going. As it was a highway it was quite straight and we could see the climbs for ages ahead. The gradients were gentle but it meant they went on a long time.
It turns out this was extremely useful as I got sick in the night and had many frantic dashes to the toilet.
We didn't have any spare food to stay another night and we didn't fancy sitting round in the heat of the day. So, even though I was not feeling great we left and had a very gentle 30km ride to Santiago. We found a hotel with A/C and I promptly slept pretty much straight through the afternoon and evening.
Feeling on the mend today so just need to replan our next few days to get us to our sailing to Colombia in time.
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