The Long Road 2015: First leg on the road back

After departing Panama City we began our journey back to the US, a strange feeling to be heading backwards for the first time! The first half of the journey that day was relaxed and easy; open highway, clear skies and very little traffic made for quick progress. Of course, it wouldn't be an adventure though if we didn't run into challenges and once we'd passed Santiago we hit road works and delays. As the afternoon drew on, progressing at half the speed of the morning, we wer...e beginning to wonder if we'd make it to David, our destination for that day. We didn't have to wait long for an answer to that question; 70 miles from David, the highway was blocked by indigenous Panamanians, protesting the construction of a dam nearby; the traffic was backed up for miles but lucky for us we had the advantage of being able to slip past on the side of the road. After reaching the front of the traffic, we navigated our way past the road block and the crowds, pushing through to open roads again and the relief of getting through all that without having to wait for hours!

The relief was short lived though, Tim noticed an increasing vibration from the front end of his motorcycle and, pulling over to investigate the cause, we found that he had somehow punctured the tire while passing through the protesting crowd. Being prepared for such eventualities, we filled the tire with Slime and re-inflated it with one of our portable tire inflators, hoping that it would be enough to get us to David. The goo didn't work though, the hole was too high up and air continued to leak out, albeit slower than without Slime. Not wanting to stop get stuck in the middle of nowhere, we attempted to continue our travel to the nearest town with a mechanic, stopping every 1.5 miles to re-inflate his front tire. After travelling this way for about 10 miles the Slime lost all effectiveness and the tire wouldn't inflate past 10 psi, less than half of the required pressure; thankfully though, there was a small village right near us. Talking to the owner of the local mini-super (a tiny store to buy groceries), they were more than happy to help us out by letting us camp there for the night. Tim parked his motorcycle in their garage, removing the front tire in the fading evening light so that we'd be ready to go to the next town, San Felix, to find a mechanic that could help us remove the tire and repair the tube.

The next morning we awoke, packed up our sweat soaked camping gear (the night didn't get below 80!) and waited on the side of the road for a colectivo to pass by and take us to San Felix. We didn't have too long to wait thankfully and we ran into a German expat at the mechanic that was able to help us translate what we needed to do to the tire. Within 10 minutes, the mechanic had removed the tube, patched it up and we were ready to go; all for only $3! Now we were ready to continue our journey and head to Boquete.