Riding the Spine: A Bicycle Trip From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego
Part II: Sea Kayaking With Bikes From Panama to Colombia

With weapons leading the way, a group of heavily armed men jumped out of the brush and ambushed our campsite, interrupting an otherwise tranquil island morning. One guy wore a black ski mask and took cover behind a fallen palm tree, resting his automatic machine gun on the trunk and keeping a steady sight on us as the others approached.

“Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your head,” one commanded.

My initial fear was that they were F.A.R.C. guerrillas and we were being kidnapped. Sacks would be thrown over our heads and we’d speed away in a motorboat to a handoff point on the coast, where we’d be moved from one jungle encampment to another, until they had no use for us.

Crossing the Darien Gap

In truth, we had been given ample warning about kayaking from Panama to Colombia. “Take a merchant ship or fly,” everybody insisted.

The only person we found with any experience kayaking in the area warned us in an e-mail: “Swell can get pretty damn big in the Caribbean. Restless natives will kick your friggin’ ass if they don’t like you. Snake bites bad. Don’t camp near towns. If the police patrol sees you, they are really going to rough you up for the high freak factor. You will be searched thoroughly and aggressively with guns in your face. Have your papers in order. You will more than likely encounter other clandestine traffickers. They will not like the sight of tourists.”

He was one of the many naysayers trying to convince us not to pursue this adventure. After riding all the way from Alaska on bikes, we encountered our fair share of them, and there comes a point in planning any adventure when you just have to say, “Fuck the naysayers.”

All bike tourists encounter the same obstacle when crossing the border between Panama and Colombia: the Darien Gap, a mountainous jungle region that creates a break in the otherwise continuous Pan-American Highway. We dreamed of heroically trudging overland with our bikes, but the reality of wandering through a region inhabited by guerrilla fighters in a country practically at civil war influenced a more sensible choice. So we bought sea kayaks, figured out how to strap our bikes to them and decided to paddle through the Comarca (Reservation) Kuna Yala and into Colombia, where we hoped to sell the kayaks.

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Over 365 islands rise out of the Caribbean Sea along the 373-kilometer stretch of the Panamanian Coast that makes up the Comarca.

Revolution brought autonomy in 1930 to the Kuna indigenous communities. Eight years later, the comarca was established, and the Kuna have since governed their nation with its own system of laws.

Nemesio, our Kuna contact, impressed upon us the importance of staying within the legal boundaries as we paddled through their nation. He warned, “They are going to be very suspicious. Some villages practically never have tourists, while others haven’t seen much more than a handful of yachts and a few mochileros (backpackers).”

He helped us acquire a letter from the cacique (high chief) of the Kuna General Congress granting us permission to travel through the comarca and advised us, “Every village you enter will require you to visit the sahila (local chief) and present him with the letter. Oh, yeah. And don’t steal any coconuts.”

First Encounter

A pistol shook frightfully as it moved across the four gringo targets lying prostrate on the ground. “Somos la policia Kuna. We are the Kuna police,” one of them said, much to our relief, knowing that we had the letter from the cacique.

Unfortunately, the police weren’t impressed with our letter and insisted on escorting us back to the island of Ailigandí.

Paddling up to the island, we saw the entire population crowded at its edges trying to get a glimpse of us, the rounded-up criminals. At the police dock, we were escorted through a horde of curious locals and into their jail, where we would wait for the sahila to straighten things out.

An elder came in to speak with us briefly; he was one of the albinos common to the area, historically contributing to a legend about a tribe of white Indians. He removed his sunglasses, and, lacking pigment, his red eyes squinted severely as they adjusted to the light filling the concrete jail...