Ambling Through New Zealand's North Island (September-November 2021)

 

A coastal hike near Opotiki

Greymouth, New Zealand

It’s a prodigiously rainy and windy day, as a huge rainstorm batters the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Terri and I are huddling indoors at a welcome refuge at Duke's Hostel, a venerable backpacker's joint in Greymouth.  It’s a good day to write a blog post, and a good day to be under a solid roof.

One of the maps that Terri created for my new book during MIQ

It’s time to catch up on our travels. When last I wrote, I reported on our fun three-week jaunt through Turkey back in August, 2021. We then flew to Auckland, via lots of covid-related restrictions and hoops; there was an anxious ten-minute wait in Istanbul airport while Singapore Airlines check-in staff had a telephone conversation with New Zealand Immigration to make sure that I was eligible to fly into the country. We arrived late on the evening of September 4^th into a ghostly, almost-deserted airport, got processed and sorted onto our bus, and taken to the Rydges Hotel, our home for the next two weeks of Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ).

Some of Terri's grandkids

Those two weeks passed surprisingly pleasantly. We had a room on the eighth floor, with a view towards Auckland’s Sky Tower, two enormous king-sized beds and three delicious meals a day delivered to the room. We were confined indoors except for occasional “exercise” sessions on a rooftop terrace or along the ramp leading to the underground parking garage; we weren’t allowed to do anything that might result in us breathing heavily, so the word “exercise” didn’t seem to have its usual meaning. The weather was relentlessly cold and rainy, so we weren’t itching to be outdoors, and we amused ourselves by watching US Open tennis, reading and (in the case of Terri) working on the hand-drawn maps for my next book, about my Silk Road cycling ride.

After two weeks, we were certified as disease-free and ready to be released into the community. While we were in Turkey, New Zealand had had its first serious covid outbreak in over a year, and so Auckland, the epicentre, was under a partial lockdown. As a result the North Island was cut in two, and travel from north to south through Auckland was impossible. We had planned to wait out the chilly months of September and October somewhere in the north, but instead we picked up Edmund the Elgrand (our third camping vehicle, after our beloved Stanley and much-used Douglas) at Terri’s daughter’s farm on the northern outskirts of Auckland, spent a hurried couple of hours visiting, and then fled south to the liberty of Hamilton. We spent a week there at the house of Terri’s good friends Ross and Debbie, taking care of administrative steps like getting the van’s Warrant of Fitness renewed, getting our first shots of the Pfizer vaccine (we had not been eligible for vaccinations in Indonesia), buying me a second-hand bicycle, and obtaining a solar panel and second-hand storage battery to run our fridge/freezer.

Indiana with the first physical copy of my book that I'd held 

Another delicious dinner with Lilian and John

Terri with her cousin Phillipa and her family

We might have lingered longer in Hamilton, but covid began to leak out of the Auckland cordon into the Hamilton area, so we fled further to the Tauranga area where we holed up for almost two weeks with Lilian and John, inveterate globetrotting friends who had visited us in Tbilisi. They had a guest apartment where we hid out from more cold and rain, explored the fabulous variety of fruit trees that filled their property (we left laden with avocadoes and lemons) and worked on fitting out Edmund for the road. We bought a roof rack and a luggage box to go on it, had the 175-watt solar panel attached onto the rack, mounted an awning and tent to hang off the side of the vehicle, and I even put my physics degree to practical use as I wired up the battery, the solar controller unit, the solar panel and the interior electrical outlets. (My initial wiring wasn’t really up to snuff, and I ended up having to redo it a couple of weeks later, but since then it’s functioned perfectly, which pleases me immensely.) We also rode our bicycles around, hiked up Mount Maunganui, did pullup bar workouts in playgrounds (keeping up the routines we had established in Bali) and had late-afternoon beers and dinners with Lilian and John, recounting stories from the road. (They are some of the few travellers I’ve met who have been to far more countries than I have, and their stories of travels in the 1970s were epic.) Importantly for further travel, we were also able to get vaccinated (something that we had not been able to do in Indonesia) with our first dose of Pfizer. We also dropped in on more of Terri's friends and family living in and around Tauranga.

Terri and her cousin Pepper

Eventually the van was ready to hit the road, and we started our stately progress down the east coast of the North Island. We started with a few nights in Ohope, just to the east of Papamoa. It was my first experience of “freedom camping”, in which towns designate certain areas for self-contained vehicles (ones with a toilet and a grey-water container) to stay for free. The Ohope freedom camps were nothing to write home about, with lots of vehicles crammed into small spaces, but it was a chance for us to test out our set-up. We discovered soon that my wiring job wasn’t up to snuff, as I hadn’t quite gotten the connectors from the solar panels to the roof to complete the circuit; we discovered this when the car battery stopped working and I started crawling around the circuit with a voltmeter. Once I had the panel working, we were back in business. We also discovered that rain is a constant accompaniment to camping in New Zealand!

Morgan, steak chef extraordinaire

From there we drove to Kutarere, a tiny community between Ohope and Opotiki. There we were lucky to stay with Terri’s cousin Pepper. We were very glad to have a solid roof over our heads when a torrential downpour hammered down for two days and flooded Opotoki’s rivers. Pepper was an amazing host and she and her friend Mason kept us well fed and entertained. We tried our hands at gathering oysters near Opotiki, and were successful enough to have two massive oyster feasts. We also received in the post a new solar controller (I had mangled the previous one in my electrical incompetence) and this time I was much more careful in connecting everything neatly, with a crimping tool and lots of tiny ferrules to keep the wire ends neat.) Finally everything was hunky dory on the roof, and the electrics have remained trouble free ever since. The new controller also has a Bluetooth connection to our telephones, so we can check the status of the battery, the solars and the load circuit in real time, which is an addictive thing!

Eventually we tore ourselves away, via a night at the oyster beds (which proved to be a very noisy place to camp!) and our second dose of covid vaccine in Opotiki. We also had an auto electrician install a circuit to allow us to charge our storage battery from the car engine when it’s running, something which has been an invaluable boost to the battery on days when the sun hasn’t shone enough.

An oyster feast

Majestic horse near East Cape

From Opotiki we started driving towards the East Cape, the big and somewhat remote protrusion in the northeast corner of the North Island. We stopped in at Omaio, at a freedom camp that we had been told about, and stayed for almost a week. The campsite is a huge field up above the beach, and at times we had it almost entirely to ourselves. Even when there were a few other campers, we all had lots of space to ourselves. It was a lovely spot, with oysters to be had from the rocky shoreline and great cycling along the coastal highway. Terri was feeling a bit under the weather from her second vaccine shot, and this was a perfect spot to rest and recuperate. Most of our camping neighbours were keen fishermen, and we were given some delicious snapper as a welcome addition to our food supply. The energetic lady who ran the local shop kept us entertained with stories, and warned us that we were only welcome if we’d been vaccinated. She had been vaccinated, and was glad to report that although she’d been infested with nanobots and turned magnetic as a result, she’d used Epsom salts to wash them away. We nodded wisely and tried not to giggle.

From Omaio we made our way further out along the Cape to lovely Maraehako, a commercial campground with a lovely location in a secluded cove. We rented kayaks and explored the shoreline, deeply pitted with caves. That evening, as we were sitting in our tent, we heard the call of a little blue penguin and went to the shoreline to see one walking along the shore between brief swims in the sea. It was our first sighting of blue penguins this trip (although we’d seen them several times on our 2018 trip), and it was wonderful to see this endearing creature again in the flesh.

Edmund on the road back from East Cape

East Cape lighthouse

We made it to Te Araroa next, a small community just west of the East Cape. We drove out to the East Cape itself and climbed up the hill to the lighthouse that marks the easternmost point in mainland New Zealand, a beautiful if windswept spot. We liked it so much that the next day we jumped on our bicycles and rode most of the way back to East Cape, revelling in the fabulous coastal scenery, although we got caught in rain on the way back to Te Araroa. From there we drove inland to Te Puia Hot Springs (which were, sadly, closed) and then south to Tokomaru Bay, the first of a series of coastal towns that stretch north from Terri’s birthplace of Gisborne. We spent a couple of days in Tokomaru Bay eating delicious fish and chips, doing workouts at the local rugby field (the goalposts made a great bar to hang our gymnastic rings from) and lazing beside the shore. The beach was pretty, although it had a thick covering of driftwood resulting from the extensive logging operations on commercial timber plantations all along the East Cape.

Baby paradise shelducks at Cook's Cove

Male paradise shelduck looking protective of his brood

Lovely Tokomaru Bay

We moved on to Tolaga Bay, almost a twin of Tokomaru Bay, where we hiked out to Cook’s Cove (where James Cook anchored back in 1769), cycled, worked out and ate more fish and chips. It was an idyllic spot, but we could see bad weather appearing on our weather forecasts, so we fled to Gisborne to shelter under the roof of Terri’s childhood neighbour Helen. We ended up spending nearly a week there as the rain just continued to fall, breaking local precipitation records and flooding low-lying areas of Gisborne. It was a relief to be indoors, and we had a wonderful time catching up with Helen, her sister Vicky and their mother Bessie, who told us all sorts of stories from her childhood, her family history and the childhood of Vicky, Helen and Terri in the suburbs of Gisborne. Gisborne (which we had visited in 2018) reminds me a lot of my hometown of Thunder Bay. It has an industrial air to it, a commercial port, a feeling of isolation (a lot less in the case of Gisborne, but psychologically it feels remote from the rest of the North Island) and a sense that the economic and property boom engulfing the North Island is leaving Gisborne behind a bit.

Peaceful Mahia campsite

Cycling on the Mahia Peninsula

We almost didn’t leave Gisborne, not because we didn’t want to but because our van refused to start. We managed to get it going in the end and drove to the lovely Mahia Peninsula, where we camped on a fabulous beach after having to tow the van the final few hundred metres from the corner store where we had unwisely stopped the engine. The next day we finally got the car to start after many attempts, contacted a mechanic in nearby Wairoa and drove to camp nearby. We had a pretty place to stay, although the next morning we encountered one of the few instances of genuinely unfriendly behaviour of the trip from a local woman who let her dogs run free; when they tried to ransack our food supplies we asked her to control her dogs, whereupon she exploded in a foul-mouthed tirade. Still shaking our heads, we drove to Terry the mechanic’s place, had the problem diagnosed (our starter motor needed new carbon brushes) and camped in his backyard. The next day a courier delivered the necessary part, and by mid-afternoon we were driving away, back to the Mahia Peninsula to resume our interrupted idyll by the sea.

Neat rock patterns on the Mahia Peninsula

We spent a few days on the Mahia Peninsula, site of many happy childhood memories for Terri, whose father and mother used to bring the children there to the beach. It’s a spectacular spot, with a sheltered beach on one side and a wild coastline open to the ocean on the other side. We hiked, cycled, collected shellfish and chatted with our neighbours, an eclectic mix of travellers from all over the country. At the southern tip of the peninsula a company called Rocket Lab has a launch facility for commercial satellites; there was a launch scheduled while we were there, and lots of campers showed up to watch, but it was cancelled due to high winds so we weren’t able to see the spectacle.

Refreshed by the Mahia Peninsula, we drove south towards Napier, staying at a Department of Conservation (DOC) campsite at Lake Tutira. It was a beautiful spot, but we were raked by gale-force winds that stirred up the tiny lake’s surface into a roiling mass of whitecaps. We found a place to camp that was sheltered by a belt of tall trees, but in the middle of the night we were awoken by a thunderous crack that shook the car. I got up to find that a massive branch had broken off one of the trees, narrowly missing our neighbours who were sleeping in a small tent. As I got up, I saw them frantically packing up and throwing their gear into their car before driving off; had that branch fallen two metres to one side, they would have been crushed to death under it. It was a sobering night!

An angry and malevolent swan, Lake Tutira

In the morning we awoke to find the wind still strafing us, but we went for a lovely hike anyway high into the hills. It was a mixture of lovely native bush, mature pine plantations which creaked ominously in the gusts, and cutover slash piles from plantations that had been felled recently. Forestry is never a lovely sight to behold, but in New Zealand, where the native forests were often felled and burned a century and a half ago, these stands of alien-looking exotic trees planted in neat rows on land that was sheep paddocks not long ago, it’s particularly jarring.

Samson family reunion near Napier

Rock album cover shot

Cliffs along the way to Cape Kidnappers

Having survived Lake Tutira, we made our way to Napier via a few short walks in the hills, in tiny pockets of surviving native forest. At Haumoana freedom camp we rendezvoused with Terri’s sister Karen and her husband Joshua. We had a great get-together and a feast of grilled chicken before retiring early in anticipation of the next day. We awoke and made an earlier start than usual as our schedule was determined by the tide tables. We spent the day walking along the beach out to Cape Kidnappers, along the sand left behind by retreating tides, underneath impressive vertical cliffs. It took about three hours to get to our destination, a huge colony of Australasian gannets who nest atop the cliffs. We saw them a few years ago west of Auckland, but this was made more special by the effort required to get there. With a wary eye on the incoming tides, we retreated the way we had come, marching back past a smaller gannet colony as well as cormorants, gulls and terns. It was an exhilarating walk, and we got back to the start long before the tide cut the track. I went off for a short bike ride once we were back in camp, glad to get in lots of outdoor activity on the warmest, sunniest day we had experienced yet.

Yours truly on the way to Cape Kidnappers

A loud dispute in the gannet colony

A male gannet bringing a seaweed garland for his mate

Terri and a few of her gannet pals

The view from the top of Cape Kidnappers

The sheltering mossy forest on Holdsworth

From Haumoana, we drove south for several hours through agricultural land until we reached the foot of the Tararua Range and Mt. Holdsworth DOC campground. We set up our tent and awning and went for an exploratory ramble along the river. Back at the car we arranged accommodation for the following night in a DOC alpine hut up atop the mountains, grilled pork chops, packed our backpacks and got ready for our first overnight hike of the trip.

It dawned bright but windy the next day, and we sweated uphill through the dense forest, our bodies unused to our heavy backpacks. The higher we got, the more the wind howled, until by the treeline it was blowing a full gale, almost knocking us off our feet and turning our backpacks into sails. We persevered to Powell Hut, at about 1050 metres above sea level, where we sheltered indoors for several hours, unwilling to face the ferocious winds, lingering over lunch and endless cups of tea. Finally, around 2:30, it became less blustery and we were able to wander, carrying only a camera bag and some warm clothes, up towards the summit of Mt. Holdsworth. It felt like a homecoming to be up above the treeline in the tussock grass of the alpine zone, walking through a dramatic mountain landscape dissected by deep gorges. We made it to the top of Mt. Holdsworth and partway to the next peak, Jumbo, before turning back to trot downhill to the warmth of the hut. It was a full hut that evening, with a diverse group of trampers sharing stories and experiences. The Tararuas are not too far from Wellington, and a lot of the hikers came from there, either university students or government employees out for their first big hike of the year. It was a fun atmosphere, and Terri and I feasted on pasta carbonara padded out with a few rashers of bacon. The full moon rose as we headed to bed and lit up our hut room with its pale silvery glow.

Atop a breezy Mt. Holdsworth

Descending from Mt.Holdsworth

Castle Rock and its sketchy-looking summit walk

The sunrise the next morning was spectacular, setting the sky alight from first light. The winds had returned with a vengeance, and we were glad to get down into the shelter of the trees as rain clouds gathered overhead. We threw our packs into the car and drove to Castlepoint, a pretty seaside village that’s been gentrified with lots of expensive new baches (summer/weekend cottages). We hiked along the dramatic seashore and up to Castle Rock, a peak that seemed to loom perfectly vertically above the shoreline. The path proved to be less alarming than it looked from below, and the views were sensational. We descended carefully and set up camp in a little freedom camp on the edge of the dunes.

The vista from atop Castle Rock

A chilly Terri at Castle Point

Lazy sea lion near Cape Palliser

From Castlepoint we retreated to Masterton, the regional hub, sorted out Department of Conservation campsite passes (a steal at NZ $100 a year, given that one night in a campground costs $15 per person) and then headed south towards the southern tip of the North Island. It was a dramatic drive along a rugged, remote coastline to Cape Palliser and the 254 wooden steps leading up to its lighthouse, from where we hiked for an hour along the coast to an abandoned 19^th century Maori village. We swam in the rather frigid river, returned to the car, visited a nearby colony of sea lions and then drove back a few kilometres to camp at a DOC campsite at the foot of the Putangirua Pinnacles.

Sea lion pup, Cape Palliser

Putangirua Pinnacles

We explored the Pinnacles on foot the next day. They are very picturesque eroded conglomerate, rather like the Badlands of South Dakota, or the houdous of the French Alps near Guillestre which we visited last year. It was a decent-sized hike, almost four hours, and got us salivating about the longer treks we were hoping to do in the South Island. Our campground neighbours gave us some paua (abalone) which they had gathered, which tasted absolutely delicious. The fresh seafood and fish from New Zealand’s oceans really are some of the culinary highlights of travel in this country!

Putangirua Pinnacles

Wildflower, Pinnacles Track

Lovely butterfly

The next day was devoted to trying to find one of New Zealand’s most elusive and cryptic native birds, the matata or fernbird. We drove to Boggy Pond, one of the few places where they are reliably seen. Although it was a lovely spot, full of black swans, paradise shelducks, cormorants and tiny baby pied stilts, we had no luck with the fernbirds. We retreated for the last time to Masterton to have lunch in a city park with Terri’s old army friend Vivienne, and then headed out to cycle part of the Remutaka Rail Trail. It was steep for a train line (this section had its own specialized hill-climbing engines in the 19^th century) but made for a spectacular ride. It felt good to be cycling in nature rather than along the side of a highway for once! 

A baby pied stilt

Tuatara, Zealandia

We coasted downhill from the summit tunnel and then rashly followed Google Maps’ directions towards a freedom camp. The program saved a few hundred metres of distance by sending us along a dirt road with a small ford in it. We discovered that Edmund the Elgrand doesn’t really like fords when we lodged it firmly in the pebbly riverbed, partially tearing off the rear bumper in the process. We took off the bicycles from their bike rack at the back and Terri managed to coax the vehicle up the opposite bank. After all that, we didn’t even end up staying at the freedom camp since it was apparently abandoned and lived in by a collection of people who seemed to have substance abuse and anger management issues. Instead we drove to an idyllic DOC camp a few kilometres away and spent a peaceful night.

Red-fronted parakeet (kakariki), Zealandia

The next day was our last day of real exploration on the North Island. We tried to hike along a path marked on our map app, but the trail soon petered out, apparently abandoned and overgrown. Instead we drove to the other side of the Remutaka Rail Trail, pulled out the bicycles and pedalled up the other side of the previous day’s incline. The grade was far gentler on this side (1% rather than 5%) and almost imperceptible at times. The scenery was magnificent, and it was a fun morning’s activity. On our way towards Karen’s house at the Kapiti Coast, we stopped off at another birdwatching spot, Pauatahanui, again looking for matatas, and again striking out, although three biology students we met had seen one just ten minutes earlier. We admitted defeat eventually and drove on to Karen and Joshua’s house, where we spent our last days on the North Island eating, drinking and making merry. We did sally forth one sunny day to explore Zealandia, the amazing predator-free bird sanctuary in the very heart of Wellington (we had been there in 2018 as well), but aside from that, we stayed close to home. Joshua fixed up our mangled bumper, and we visited a couple of Terri’s nieces and nephews who live nearby. Once again we were lucky to enjoy such warm hospitality, always a wonderful feeling after weeks of living out of our campervan.

In the early hours of November 30^th we embarked on a ferry to take us across the Cook Strait to the South Island, but that story will have to wait for the next blog post. We spent a total of almost three months on the North Island, moving at a very leisurely pace and waiting (mostly in vain) for the cold, blustery spring weather to change into warm summer. It was pleasant, but we were both keen to get to the big wide-open spaces of the South Island and some larger-scale outdoor adventures.

Majestic kaka, Zealandia

 

Christmas in Panama (Retrospective: December 2019)

Click here for a Google Map of our Panama trip

Guillestre, September 22

Life here in Guillestre has settled into a comfortable routine of cycling, hiking, eating well and reading.  We are in a bit of a holding pattern as we wait to see whether my New Zealand visa will come through, or whether we will be able to head to Africa to resume Stanley's Travels.  In the meantime, my thoughts are drifting back to those long-ago days when international travel was simple and we all took it for granted.  I realize that I never wrote up my Christmas 2019 trip to Panama with Terri to meet up with my mother, and with my sister Saakje and her partner Henkka, so here is an attempt to remedy that situation.

The Plan 

My mother turned 80 this summer, and we 4 kids decided that we should make an effort to get everyone together for a big celebration.  The plan was to rent a cottage on a Canadian lake in late July, and once we had decided that, we also thought that we should plan a Christmas get-together as well.  The original idea was to fly to the Cape Verde islands, and initially flights looked pretty reasonable, but prices soon rocketed up and it looked like a long, miserable connection for my mom coming from Canada.  We quickly pivoted and decided to fly to Panama instead, since it's an easy connection from Canada, not too expensive from Europe, has great nature, and none of us had been there.  Not everyone in the family could make it; my sister Audie and my brother Evan both had bail out, but we still had my mother, Saakje, Henkka, Terri and I.  My mom insisted on renting a comfortable beach house, and we settled on a house on Bastimentos Island, in Bocas del Toro province, for a week.  Terri and I would fly in first for five days of exploring on our own before we rendezvoused with the others.  Once we'd bought tickets and guidebooks, we were more or less set.

Panama City and Santa Fe

Ruined Dominican church, Casco Viejo

Terri and I took a very roundabout route to get from Tbilisi to Panama, flying Qatar Airways to Doha and on to Miami before hopping across to Panama.  It took a long time (two nights) but it saved us a few hundred dollars.  It also allowed Terri to buy a new mobile phone in Doha airport before we grabbed a few hours of interrupted sleep on our air mattresses in the terminal, and then to catch up with my friend Rob for dinner in Miami before a few more hours of catnapping in Miami airport.  We were pretty bleary-eyed by the time we got to Panama mid-morning on Sunday, December 15th.  We caught a bus into town and, sleepy as we were, we hopped onto the wrong bus, one of the brightly-painted Diablo Rojos local buses that took the scenic route into town.  We alighted in the centre and walked half an hour into the Casco Viejo neighbourhood where our AirBnB was located.  The contrast between the crowded, slightly dingy area around the bus terminal and the charming upmarket gentrification of the old colonial Casco Viejo neighbourhood was striking.  Our room was just what we needed, and we passed out for a few hours of much-needed sleep.  

Colonial architecture, Casco Viejo

We woke up in time for a dinner date.  One of Terri's former teaching colleagues in Switzerland had subsequently joined the US State Department and was working at the American embassy.  We met up with him, his Colombian wife and their two children at a seafood restaurant, Finca del Mar, right on the waterfront three blocks from our accommodation.  We had a good evening of stories and reminiscences and ideas before our eyelids grew heavy and we had to wander back for our first sound night's sleep in three days.

Swimming hole, Santa Fe

We didn't have to be in Bocas del Toro for until Friday, so Terri and decided to head west to the town of Santa Fe in the interim, as it sounded like an interesting town in the highlands.  A couple of buses got us to Santa Fe by mid-afternoon, where we took a room in an almost-empty hotel just downhill of town (the Hotel Santa Fe).  We had time for a walk before it got dark, so we wandered along to a swimming hole just east of town.  It felt good to stretch our legs after too many days spent crammed inside airplanes and buses, and there were plenty of wildflowers and butterflies and birds to attract our attention along the way.  It felt good to swim, although the air was surprisingly cool and we were almost chilly.

Cerro Tute

Terri atop Cerro Tute

The next day we set off on a hike up to the summit of Cerro Tute.  It was a long way up under a pretty fierce sun, but the views from the top were worth the effort of getting there.  The landscape sloped away to the south towards the distant Pacific Ocean; it was a bit disconcerting to realize how much of the native forest had been cleared for farming and ranching.  The villages we walked through had tidy-looking homes surrounded by fruit orchards (the oranges were in season, and we scrounged a couple of fallen oranges from the ground before being invited to pick some from the tree by the owner.    We had a picnic lunch on top of the granite boulders at the top before trudging back down, a bit footsore, to have another swim at a different swimming hole (this time we were warm enough to appreciate the cooling waters.)

Alto de Piedra

Our hike the next day was another long, sweaty affair, this time up to the waterfalls of Alto de Piedra.  Sadly our trail was mostly along a paved road, but the views were fine and the waterfalls were really quite pretty.  We swam in a couple of them, trying out Terri's new GoPro.  The trudge back to town was a bit unappealing, so we ended up flagging down a passing pickup truck to shorten the walk and save our knees.

Alto de Piedra

Alto de Piedra

We spent much of Thursday on the bus to Bocas del Toro.  Crossing the central spine of Panama from the well-populated Pacific slope to the much wilder Caribbean slope take quite some time.  We had to retreat from Santa Fe south to the Panamerican Highway at Santiago, trundle along the Panamerican to the town of David, and then catch a third bus up and over the watershed to Bocas.  It ended up taking most of the day as we dozed in our seats listening to podcasts and nodding off.  The road across the mountains was chilly and foggy and quite dramatic, before we dropped into the lowlands.  It was noticeably less affluent on this side of the country, and the villages we passed through looked much scruffier.  We arrived in the banana port of Almirante (dominated by a Chiquita banana processing plant) just too late for the last commercial ferry across to the island of Bocas del Toro, but we managed to catch a lift with a small water taxi that was taking a few other stragglers back to the island.  It was slightly disconcerting to make the crossing largely in the dark, but we arrived without incident in the main town of Bocas del Toro, found a small, inexpensive hostel for the night, had a delicious seafood dinner and fell into bed tired out.

Bastimentos Daze

In the harbour

We spent the next seven days on the island of Bastimentos, in a big beach house called Casa Shorebreak.  Terri and I stocked up on groceries in town before meeting up with the property manager and catching a boat across to Bastimentos.  While Bocas del Toro was sizeable, full of restaurants and shops and people, Bastimentos was small and far less populated.  We lugged our grocery bags and backpacks into the house, met the caretaker (a rotund local man who stayed in a small room underneath the house as a nightwatchman), got settled in, then went back to the main island to wait for Saakje and my mother to arrive at the tiny airport.  We ordered lots of Indian food from a restaurant run by a Canadian expat (Bocas is full of expatriate Americans, Canadians and assorted Europeans, then walked over to the airport to meet my mom (whom I hadn't seen in over a year) and Saakje.  We ambled across, picked up our food and caught a water taxi back to Bastimentos to settle in for food, rum and catching up. 

Sundowners during a rare sunny patch

Bocas del Toro feels very distinct from the rest of Panama.  As in Costa Rica and Honduras, the Caribbean coast of Panama has a definite English Caribbean feel.  More people speak an English-based pidgin than speak Spanish, and the sound is pure Jamaican.  Many of the people are either black or indigenous, rather than the mestizos who prevail numerically on the Pacific slope of the country.  It really feels like a different country, and for me and Terri it was our first-ever taste of the Caribbean.  

Terri paddling into the mangroves

Saakje, my mother, myself and Henkka

Sadly, it was an exceedingly wet taste.  December is part of the rainy season on the Caribbean coast of Panama, and this week was exceptionally rainy.  We were glad to have a solid roof over our heads, and also glad that the house was built up off the ground on concrete pilings, as the yard turned into a flooded swimming pool around us.  Luckily it didn't rain all day every day, and we did manage to get out and see the local sights, but it was generally very soggy.  

Our days passed with lots of good food cooked by whoever was seized by inspiration at the moment.  We ate well, and drank lots of pina coladas.  Henkka arrived from France the day after Saakje and my mother and the five of us played cards, told stories, read books and generally relaxed entirely.  It was precisely the sort of vacation gathering that my mother had had in mind.

Trying to do stand-up paddleboarding

We did manage to get out to explore, although our first expedition, hiking with my mother to Red Frog Beach, had to be abandoned as the path turned into a treacherous mudhole that eventually defeated my mother.  A more successful expedition was taking a water taxi out to Sloth Island to take photos of the iconic animals.  Our first trip gave us 2 sloths to photograph, but a later trip yielded 7 or 8 individuals.  We also took a water taxi out to Starfish Beach one day to snorkel; there wasn't much to see, other than the multitudinous starfish, but it was great to have calm water for swimming.  Casa Shorebreak had some pretty sizeable waves pounding in from the open Caribbean and was not a place for a peaceful paddle.

My mother adopting the island lifestyle

The owners of the house were surfers, and there were surfboards and a standup paddleboard stored in the rafters.  We took the paddleboards out a couple of times on the calmer inland side of the island and rented kayaks to go along with them.  We explored some of the mangrove swamps leading inland, and saw lots of interesting birds.  We also tried surfing the waves one day, but it was not enormously successful, as we were on quite short boards suitable for experts, which we were not.  It was fun but frustrating.

One day we dolled ourselves up and wandered along the beach to the Firefly restaurant, a Bastimentos institution run by a couple of Americans.  The food was great (if a bit pricey) but the highlight was a live musician who played a mix of calypso and reggae, including a few of his own original songs, while bantering good-naturedly with us.  

Sloth island inhabitant

And then, suddenly and all too soon, our week was up and it was time to take the water taxi back across to Bocas del Toro town, walk my mother to the airport and say goodbye.  It had been a fun week, and we were already looking forward to the summer's full-scale reprise.  We had a couple of hours before our bus to Boquete left, so Henkka, Saakje, Terri and I rented bicycles and explored the main island in a rare patch of sunshine.  We realized that beyond the somewhat seedy main town, there were dozens of beautiful beach houses looking out onto surf beaches that we hadn't seen at all during our brief visits to the main town.  Maybe, if we ever come back to Panama, we can explore that part of the archipelago.

Bicycle expedition on the main island

Boquete Hiking and Mariato Surfing

On the Sendero de los Quetzales

With my mother on her way back to Ottawa, the rest of us decided to head away from the rain into the central highlands, to the town of Boquete, well-known for coffee plantations and retirement communities for gringos.  It was a longish afternoon on a somewhat overpriced tourist bus to get back over the central cordillera to David and then onto a smaller road leading north again into the highlands.  We had rented a small house on AirBnB that proved perfect for our needs, with a couple of bedrooms and a well-equipped kitchen that we put to good use.  

Our two full days in Boquete, a town with a very cool hippy traveller vibe, were devoted to hiking.  The first morning we caught a taxi up to the end of the road above town to access the Sendero de  los Quetzales (the Quetzal Trail), a famous hike.  Many gringo tourists get talked into taking a guide (at considerable expense) to walk the trail, but we figured that it was pretty well marked and couldn't be that fearsome, so we went by ourselves.  It was a lovely day of walking, leaving behind the coffee plantations cleared from the native bush and entering some fairly undisturbed cloudforest.  We never spotted any of the resplendant quetzals for which the trail is named, but we did hear several of them calling, leading to long minutes squinting through the dark canopy for birds that had no interest in being seen.  The walk was pleasant but by no means challenging, and we returned to town happy with a relaxed day in nature.

Saakje and Henkka were keen to climb Volcan Baru, the highest peak in Panama, the next day, which meant leaving at midnight to catch clear skies at the summit at sunrise.  Terri and I were less interested, so we waved them goodbye and went to bed.  Instead we slept late and welcomed back the conquering summitteers that morning before heading out for a much easier walk, up to the Lost Waterfalls.  It was a fun but very muddy hike leading to a series of spectacular cascades fountaining down out of the mountains.  As we got back to town, we arranged to meet up with Saakje and Henkka at the Boquete Brewing Company, a fabulous  brewpub, for a farewell to the town.

One of the Lost Waterfalls

A Lost Waterfall

Although we had enjoyed our time in Boquete, Saakje and Henkka were keen both to see more of the Pacific coast and to try their hands again at surfing, so we decided to make our next stop somewhere on the Pacific coast on the way back to Panama City.  It was approaching New Year, and so we were competing with all of middle-class Panama for accommodation.  We were almost despairing of finding a place when we finally located a hotel with rooms available in the little town of Moriato.  It was a long series of buses (to David, then along the Panamerican to Santiago, and finally a crowded local line to Moriato), but we got there in the end and decided that we had made the right decision.  Our little hotel (curiously empty given the season) was just inland of a beautiful natural beach with waves breaking all along it, and with an estuary full of seabirds at the far end.

Another Lost Waterfall

Playa Reina

Brown pelican

Our three days on the beach passed in a bit of a blur.  We rented much longer boards than we had had on Bastimentos with much better flotation, and it made all the difference.  We were much more able to paddle fast enough to catch waves and started to stand up on them.  Saakje proved herself to be the fastest learner, while Henkka wasn't far behind.  I was the least gifted of the three of us; Terri elected to watch from the beach.  We surfed as much as waves and tide allowed, and the rest of the time we wandered the beach and the estuary in search of bird life, or walked into the town centre of Moriato in search of pizza and fruit juice.  It was a relaxing time, punctuated by chats with the other guest in the hotel (an American guy on a motorcyle trip around Panama), card games in the evening and yoga sessions to loosen up muscles that were tight after the unusual activity of paddling a surfboard.

Cool toad from our hotel restaurant

Ibis and cormorants

Panama City, Pipeline Road and the Canal

Crimson-backed tanager

Crimson-crowned woodpecker

Our days in Panama were rapidly running out, and so regretfully we bade farewell to the coast and caught a bus into the city.  Terri and I booked a room in the same place as before in Casco Viejo while Saakje and Henkka stayed in a sister property a couple of blocks away.  Terri and I raced off to the Parque Metropolitano, the magnificent patch of rainforest in the middle of the city, and had a fun speed hike around the park before it closed, spotting lots of turtles and various birds (including a dramatically coloured crimson-crowned woodpecker, Campephilus melanoleucos), but none of the giant anteaters that Henkka had seen a couple of weeks before on his way through the city. An agouti (a large and rather endearing rodent) had to serve as a consolation prize.  We dined together with Henkka and Saakje in Finca del Mar, then arranged to rendezvous early the next morning for a day of birdwatching in the Canal Zone.

Black-striped woodcreeper (by Henkka)

Chestnut-mandibled toucan (by Henkka)

An Uber drove us inland from the capital along the main road through the Canal Zone, and we were soon deposited just past the town of Gamboa, at the start of a dirt road with the rather prosaic name of Pipeline Road.  This is known as the best birdwatching spot in Panama and one of the best in the world, so it seemed like a good place for Terri and I to spend our last full day in the country.  As soon as we stepped out of the car, we were already surrounded by wading birds in a marsh beside the road.  After spending a while photographing them and trying to identify them (our favourite was the rufescent tiger heron, Tigrisoma lineatum), we ventured into the embrace of the forest.  There were birds galore to be seen, including Central American specialties like antbirds, motmots, antwrens and caciques.  Since this is such a famous birding spot, there were a number of parties of serious twitchers, some with local guides, and we shamelessly parasited off their knowledge and their tips.  

Hideous facial deformity on baby howler monkey

Perhaps the most memorable encounter of the day was also the loudest.  We passed underneath a party of black howler monkeys and while we were watching them and trying to get a decent photograph, they began their howling.  For ten minutes, the forest was filled with their deafening calls until they ran out of interest and returned to eating leaves.  We managed to get a few monkeys to pose in small patches of sunshine, including a mother with a youngster on her back.  It wasn't until a couple of weeks later, looking at the photo more closely, that Saakje realized that the baby had hideous facial deformities, probably due to papillomaviruses.  I hadn't noticed them at the time through my binoculars or my telephoto lens, but once I'd seen them, I couldn't forget their nightmarish appearance.

Female slaty-backed trogon (by Henkka)

Juvenile rufescent tiger-heron

Terri looking pleased with herself at Miraflores Locks

In addition to birds, there were leafcutter ants wearing paths through the undergrowth, spectacular butterflies and big dragonflies to admire, and sooner than we would have liked it was 1:30 pm and we were hungry, thirsty and tired.  We trudged out back to town and raided a convenience store for overpriced snacks and cold drinks which we ate in a nearby city park that was itself full of bird species.  Henkka and Saakje were staying in Panama after we left, so they had booked a room in Gamboa so that they could return to Pipeline Road the next day.  (They had spectacular birding luck the next day, leaving us quite envious and keen to return one day.)  Terri and I headed back to Panama City, but with a stopoff at the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal.  Terri was keener than me to see them, but I ended up glad that we had stopped in and paid the 15 US dollar admission price.  We spent a good couple of hours sitting in the bleachers watching huge freighters make their way through the locks (and even bigger super-Panamax container ships passing through the expanded second set of parallel locks), and wandering contentedly through the excellent museum.  Terri's father had been fascinated by the Panama Canal and had taken a round-the-world cruise largely to experience the Canal, and he had passed this fascination onto his daughter.  We both really enjoyed the experience and were wowed by the engineering feat of building the Canal.

Sloth crossing Pipeline Road (by Henkka)

And then it was all over.  We returned to the city, had a delicious final meal at a Chinese restaurant, and the next morning caught a flight to Miami and on to Doha, where we splurged on a hotel room and found time to explore the Museum of Islamic Art just before closing time, and had a memorable Indian meal.  Six hours of sleep, and we were back at the airport, checking in for our Tbilisi flight, our Christmas holidays enjoyably spent. 

Little did we imagine that within two months, the world of international travel would be completely changed by covid-19, and that this would be our last trip in the world of the BC era (Before Coronavirus).  We have yet to do a real trip in the AD era (After the Disease), but Panama was a good spot to do our last trip for a while.  If I were to go back, I think I would want to have a vehicle (or a bicycle) to explore a bit further off the beaten track, and I would spend more time in the rainforests and cloudforests looking for birds and other wild creatures, as that's what I found most spectacular about the country.

 

Museum of Islamic Art, Doha