While in Panamá, I explored the La Yeguada Reserve and the nearby San Juan River, into which I immersed myself and developed a theory of rivers…

    I find my new favorite place in the river again, close to where the trail leads to the river’s edge.  There are a few rocks that form a chair, of sorts, and you can sit in that chair and the water pushes you back against the rocks and the current pulls your arms back and you lean your head back and think you might look like Jesus on a cross.  And the river wants to pull you away, take you with it.  And you feel like it’s pulling something from you, washing you, stripping you of things you don’t need.  It’s always rivers with me.  

    It came to me that, to truly feel part of a place, you must submerge yourself in its waters.  Especially its rivers, the veins coursing through the body of land.  These are sacred moments, offerings, baptisms.  Cold, naked, vulnerable, open, alive, refreshed, renewed.  You absorb the cold, beautiful blood and it takes you in.  You will never dry it off completely.  It is in you, a part of you.  Neither of you will ever be the same again.

    Shortly after this, at the end of North and Central America, the miles behind me passed before my eyes.  I knew I had traveled 11,289 miles, but couldn’t imagine there were 13,807 more to go.

    Most days had been mostly the same: wake up, straighten the bed a bit, when sleeping in the van; roll up, sleeping bag/blankets, collapse, and pack tent, if camping; open up the backend and get water out of the plastic jerry can or my water bottle for coffee;  retrieve camp stove and percolate coffee with propane gas or make instant coffee with handheld coil heater if there was electricity available; eat my breakfast of a banana with a granola bar or in oatmeal with coconut, ginger, and peanut butter; pour coffee into thermos; and clean up and stow coffee pot and breakfast dishes.

    After breakfast, it was usually a mixture of lodging and route research using online, mobile apps, and paper maps, then following those routes as best I could, allowing for incorrect information, closures, etc.; retrieving and mounting the GoPro camera on the driver’s side windshield wiper and connecting it to my phone inside; finding food and clean water, although my immune and digestive systems were impressively strengthened throughout; and stopping often to take still photographs of all manner of beauty and curiosity.

    I often ate my lunch while driving, my preferred simple hand foods being combinations of either saltine crackers and cucumbers or carrots and peanuts.  There were also quite a few tortillas with peanut butter, where and when I was able to find that delicacy.  Most of the vehicles that passed me while munching on a cucumber were offered a little show.  The show varied, depending on the time of day, my mental state, gumption, etc.  And I can’t be sure who actually saw these shows.  But rest assured, shows were offered.

    Dinner preparation and cleaning protocols were much the same as breakfast, with rice and beans, bread and instant soup, and oil, vinegar, and vegetarian pasta, where cheap street food or restaurants weren’t available.  A cooler seemed rather pointless.

    Bedtime meant clearing off the bed, hanging the curtains (less often the further south I drove), and closing the sliding door(s) behind me.

    There were a few times that I found laundry services, but mostly I did my own by hand, by half filling a collapsible bucket with soap and water; putting in 2-4 garments; agitating with a perforated, handled plunger; rearranging clothes and repeating 2-3x per bucketful; stacking soapy clothes until finished; repeating process with water until soap is removed; and hanging clothes until (mostly) dried.

    Crossing a border with a vehicle, especially one packed to the gills like mine, was something.  One process for immigration, another process for customs.  Most agents didn’t look through my car much at all.  I’m sure the color of my skin and the direction of my travel had much to do with it.  Fluency in Spanish helped, too.  Some of my best interactions along my journey were with immigration agents, soldiers at checkpoints, or local police.  

    Connecting to the mobile phone network was one of the first tasks in every country south of Mexico.  SIM card switch!  And I had to get vehicle insurance a few times – some mandatory, and liability only; some full coverage for multiple countries.  I have no record or recollection of purchasing vehicle insurance anywhere in South America.

    There is no viable land route from Central to South America.  There is a narrow piece of land, but there are no highways or roads of any sort.  The Darien Gap is traversed mostly by drug and weapon smugglers, human traffickers, desperate refugees, and the like.  Being none of those, I had to make other arrangements.

    From Panamá to Colombia, there are boats and there are planes.  Overlanders must choose between Roll-On-Roll-Off (RORO) ferries or container ships for their vehicles.  Some ship their vehicles and take an expensive, leisurely sailboat cruise through the San Blas Islands.  I chose to take the simplest, quickest, cheapest route: a flight from Panama City to Cartagena.  That was the easy part.

    The hard part took over three months, 75 emails, a day for registration/inspection in Panama City, multiple copies of documents on short notice, a two-hour drive to deliver the vehicle to Colón for shipping, a 2 hr bus ride back to Panama City, and 12 hours of running around the port, nearby offices, and banks over two days to complete a 21-step process to retrieve the vehicle in Cartagena.

    Some aspects of the journey were definitely more ecstatic and glamorous than others.  There was also much monotony and repetition.  And yet, no two days were quite the same.  The individual tiles together made such a beautiful mosaic.