Darien Gap – America's Finest Ambassador

Pre-hike

: Getting into Panama City from Tocumen International Airport. My Uber driver was a dude in his late 40s who was already retired and just drove Uber for something to do, to get out and socialize with people. Two of his uncles live in New York City and run a business there and, when this dude was in his late teens, he moved there to live and work with the uncles. He said the first time he felt the cold of winter, it was incomprehensible and unbearable. He told me that his uncles were in charge of all his earnings from the business. He said that he’d have to ask them permission for access to his own money – like, he had to explain what he wanted it for and it had to be a good reason, otherwise they wouldn’t give it to him. He said it was frustrating and felt kinda fucked up when he was younger, but turned out to be a great thing in the long run. He said his uncles wanted him to save up enough money to buy property and completely pay it off back home so he could have an easier life later on. And that’s what he did. And has a bunch of savings to fall back on on top of it. Which is why now he just drives Uber to meet people from all walks of life and just bullshit with ‘em while giving ‘em rides to places

: In transit to my hotel from the airport, the Uber driver wanted to go a bit out of our way to show me a clear view of this skyscraper which is presumably modeled after the penis of a duck

: View of Panama City’s skyline as seen from Parque Natural Metropolitano. So, the purpose of this trip was to do a hike in the wild untamed jungle area known as the Darien Gap, sandwiched between Panama and Colombia. And our group leader Rick recommended we all visit this park and spend some time walking around it during our time in the capital in order to acclimatize to the 90-degree heat and humidity before heading out into the jungle. So here I am, doing just that.

: Cerro Ancón as seen from Parque Natural Metropolitano. Along with La Calzada de Amador, I found Cerro Ancón to be another good place to do some walking around the capital before leaving for the jungle

: “Hey you guysssssss!” Err…no. Wrong Sloth. My bad

: I didn’t know that this sticker design was distributed worldwide. The one in Spanish that says “Don’t Touch My Taxi” I saw while walking around Panama City and the one superimposed on the bottom right of the photo there was from Amman, Jordan, in 2019 which is where and when I’d seen it for the first time

: Bike/jogging trail on the Cinta Costera, which is a manmade, horseshoe-shaped, 5km stretch of road that juts out into the sea

: Sunset on the Cinta Costera

: Biodiversity Museum

: The skyline of Panama City as seen from Plaza Paitilla Inn which is where I’d be meeting the group with whom I’d be going on a 100km jungle trek through the Darien Gap

: The pool at Le Meridien Hotel in Panama City

: Twilight’s last gleaming

: Expedition leader and jungle expert Rick Morales teaching everyone in the group how to set up their hammocks between two trees. Since there is so much vegetation and creepy crawlers on the floor of the jungle, camping out in tents there is impractical. The hammocks turned out to be pretty comfy and had a nice zip-up bug net on top that kept all the critters out, even on the night when one of our campsites got infested with a giant swarm of termites whose wings would detach from their bodies the instant they came into contact with anything

: In addition to those hammocks, every member of the group was given a little container of this Colombian-made product called Yodora cream. Our leader Rick said that we’d be crossing little streams and rivers like twenty times a day so our feet would be constantly wet throughout the entirety of the trek and to prevent the formation of a condition known as “jungle rot” (which we were told is similar to but slightly different from “trench foot”) we were instructed to slather every inch of our feet in this Yodora cream every morning before putting our socks and boots on. This technique seemed to work pretty well because after beating the shit out of my soaking wet feet all day every day on really rough terrain, I managed to make it through the hike without a single blister. And this wasn’t pertinent on the hike at all, but as far as I could tell Yodora cream would make for an ideal lubricant when giving foot jobs. Just make a foot pussy as I have there in the background using my arches, grease that shit up with some Yodora and have at it til your man splickety splacks all over them puppies

: The night before setting off. All the gear that I’d be bringing on the trek. There were gonna be porters that carried the group’s food stash, but other than that you were responsible for carrying all your own shit. In addition to having all my stuff wrapped in the Ziploc bags to keep it dry, I also lined my 65L backpack with a contractor bag for maximum water protection

: So, this photo is actually from after the hike. It was after our group had our farewell dinner together. Me and a few other guys from the group decided to stay out and have some more drinks. Eventually everyone went back to the hotel except for me and this one dude named Brett who I think was less interested in staying out for the sake of staying out and more so staying out just to keep me company – and maybe keep an eye on me – while on my mission to get obliterated. Ya see, right at the start of the 5-hour minibus ride from the town of Yaviza back to Panama City – the first place where I had phone signal after nearly two weeks off the grid – I flipped my shit off airplane mode and saw I had some vague but anxious-sounding texts from my brother saying that I should call him ASAP which I decided to get to the bottom of. So I texted him to see what was going on and he straight-up informed me that this guy Brian who was like his and my younger brother all throughout our childhood – he was the dopey neighbor kid who was always hanging out at our house and at all our family parties and who we’d play mindless hours of baseball with on the lawn and whom I’d give a ride to high school every day and then party with when he ended up going to the same college as me…the guy died while I was away and I missed his wake and funeral. It was an overdose on some stupid opioid bullshit, a habit that he’d been trying to kick for years and had been in and out of rehab for. I was devastated. That turned out to be the longest car ride of my life. I felt so isolated. Everyone else in the group was talking about our celebratory dinner and drinks that evening. I kept thinking about this shit and tried to keep a leash on the complex cocktail of emotions it was stirring up inside me. That night I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to just stay in my room by myself and sulk but at the same time I’d liked my group and figured I probably wouldn’t be seeing any of them ever again after that dinner, so…I decided to go out. But I wasn’t gonna drink. And so I was there with the group at the table just kinda silently hanging out and watching everyone slug beers and reminisce about the trip when someone looked over at me and said somethin like, “What’s your deal, dude? Why you so quiet this evening? Where’s your beer at?” And in that moment I had to make a decision. Do I bring the rest of the group down with my sad bullshit or do I switch gears and get drunk and have a good time with everyone? I chose the latter. I mentioned nothing about my friend and called the waiter over to order a drink. And after a couple quick beers on an empty stomach, once I entered that world of drunkenness, I didn’t feel any pain. And didn’t want to go back to the hotel or for tomorrow to come or to ever leave that drunken stupor to once again return to this shitty new reality where a friend I’d known for 28 years no longer exists. So after pretty much everyone went home, I bought a case of beer from a convenient store in a busy part of town and sat out there on the curb in front of the place with Brett (who I’d told about my friend’s passing before we’d gone out to the group dinner) and proceeded to get completely shitfaced while talking to anyone and everyone around us. During that time, someone snatched my phone out of my pocket. What can I say? I was asking for it. Long story short, none of my photos or videos from the trip had a chance to load to my cloud before going on this self-destructive bender. All my footage was lost. So, beyond this point, pretty much all the photos you see are the ones taken by other group members and shared via Google Drive after the trip. I don’t know which photos belong to who, but I thank everybody for sharing. That said, let’s now head into the Darien Gap for a little trip down memory lane…

Into the Wild

: Kevin the Irish lad buying a machete somewhere in the capital. When telling stories about drinking, I liked two of the adjectives he’d used to mean “drunk.” One was “polluted” and the other was “trollied.” Perhaps I’ve been living under a proverbial rock, but I’d never heard those words used like that before

: At this bathroom we saw along the way, it costs twenty-five cents to piss and fifty cents to take a shit. I wonder if you pay the shit price, do you get the right to do a little pissing as well? Because I always piss when I shit. Or would I have to pay seventy-five cents because I’m making both lemonade and chocolate at the same time? I demand answers!

: Shirt that one of the cashiers had been wearing at a small shop we stopped off at on the ride from Panama City to Yaviza

: I forgot the name of the town where we slept that first night, but then here we are the following morning, up at some ungodly hour about to board a boat to the town of Tucutí. The electricity in this town, Rick had said, is not connected to any main power grid from the capital. All the poles and power lines are connected to a local generator that runs on diesel fuel that, since no roads lead into this place, has to be dropped off via boat about once a month.

: The local guys on the other boat couldn’t get the motor started and decided it was broken and had to be switched out for another one that they had to go locate somewhere in town. This kinda pissed Rick off because it was fucking with his timing of everything. He said, “I use these same guys every time. They know what the deal is, they know weeks in advance that I’ve hired them to take this boat trip…I just don’t get it. Why wouldn’t they test the motor yesterday? Or any time beforehand. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

: Day beginning to break a couple hours later as we approach Tucutí. The guy in the front of the boat had been looking out for shallow spots and debris in the water that would cause problems for the boat and he’d relay what he saw to the driver who’d been sitting next to the motor in the back of the boat

: How our backpacks were transported

: Here we are in Tucutí which had been the official trek starting point. Here Rick is introducing the team of porters. Did you notice these dudes hike in wellies? That seems like it’d be pretty rough on the feet. Rick said that he’d actually learned about Yodora cream from these guys. He’d had other methods of protecting his feet beforehand which he’d abandoned after trying that stuff. This particular group of porters would only be with us during the first half of the trek because this was their territory and we’d have to switch to a different set of porters after reaching the town of Condoto because that was someone else’s territory. Also, that’s me in the front there on the left. I guess that’s one of the pluses of using other people’s photos. I’m in a lot more of them than I’d normally be when I use my own

: Typical river crossing

: Rick passing under a fallen tree – an absolutely enormous one. When I got back home, a few people asked me if I saw any migrants passing through the Darien Gap on their way to the southern border of the United States. I said we did not, because Rick had designed a route that doesn’t go near those of the migrants. On that topic, Rick elaborated, “Those people just do a short trek of 4 or 5 days in the jungle. They’re using the shortest possible route between the Caribbean coast and the Pan-American Highway, which doesn’t have the natural obstacles that we encounter on our trek. The route is not intrinsically difficult. It’s become a human drama because those migrants come utterly unprepared for the jungle, and they’re constantly robbed, raped, or otherwise taken advantage of.”

: Typical foliage we’d traverse day in and day out. Surprisingly, almost none of it was poisonous. The only plant the guys said we’d need to watch out for was this one called ortiga that’s said to sting like a bitch right when you touch it and then leaves you with an instant rash. There were no ortiga encounters during our hike, fortunately. And all the way at the front of the group – since the plant cover was so thick – had been one of the porters swinging a machete and making a path for all of us to follow along on. Couldn’t help but feel our group was gonna run into Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura on the hunt for a Predator somewhere out here

: The pace that Rick liked to keep us at was: walk for an hour, take a five-minute break. Walk for an hour, take a five-minute break. And when it was break time, Rick would blow his whistle so even if you couldn’t see him at the front of the group, you just stop wherever you are and sit down and drink a bunch of water and eat whatever snacks you could during those five minutes. And after four minutes had passed, he’d yell, “One minute!” which basically meant to get up off your ass and start getting ready to go. Here we are taking a break on a steep hillside

: Porters! If we weren’t there slowing these guys down, they probably coulda done 2-3 times the distance we’d do each day

: Water refill break. The local guys drank this river water straight up, but all us gringos filtered all the water we put into our bodies. I used a Sawyer Squeeze to get the job done

: Ray and John cooling off during a lunch break. John, a retired lawyer and aspiring author that has dreams about a man named Chet Floss who he’s never met before, had tried to do the hike the year beforehand at 68 years old and ended up getting sent home early by Rick who said he was holding the rest of the group up. He was super dehydrated all the time and moving slow and just wasn’t cutting it. So then John went home and trained his ass off the whole next year, then came back and did the hike to completion at age 69. I told him that I respected the testicular fortitude required to do something like that and that I hope I’m still able to pull off a hike as difficult as this one when I’m pushing 70…if I even live that long

: First you find two trees that are maybe like ten to fourteen feet apart. And then you set up your rain tarp. And below it, you tie off your hammock just like Rick’d showed us by the pool at Plaza Paitilla Inn back in the capital. It should be noted that areas like this were not naturally clear and open. These campsites were cleared out by the porters who’d go on a hacking spree with their machetes making these spaces livable for the evening.

: Typical tarp and hammock setup. Some people chose to hang their backpack from their hammock ropes every night but I did not. I set up a contractor bag on the ground under my hammock and laid my bag there on top of that. I did hang my boots and socks and dirty wet hiking clothes from those cords every night. I think it only rained one night during the whole hike and it wasn’t really that bad – like, not bad enough where my backpack would get washed away or anything like that. Rick and John said that the year beforehand they experienced a pretty crazy storm during which one of the trees that a couple of the hikers had tied a hammock to had fallen over in the middle of the night. Thankfully it didn’t land on anyone and no one got impaled on any sharp little machete-cut stumps when their hammocks went falling to the ground

: A lot of the time, hiking through the jungle was like being inside a giant green tunnel. It wasn’t very often there’d be a break in the trees while at elevation providing views like this

: Brett, Richard and myself amidst a river crossing

: This is a photo of everybody eating dinner on the second night of the hike

: This is what lunch usually looked like. Segundo, the dude in the pinkish shirt on the right side of the photo, is Rick’s right-hand man. He’d set everything up on that little tarp there and everyone would come over with their bowls and get a helping of whatever was being served that day. He told me that his mind gets way more tired than his body when doing these group hikes with Rick. So much logistical shit to deal with, so much coordinating with the porters and meal planning and cooking and cleaning. He played a very important role in the success of this – and many other, I’m sure – jungle treks with Rick

: The most common lunch was the one shown here. You get cereal and a scoop of powdered milk, some nuts, some dried fruit, a sprinkle of chocolate chips, maybe a spoonful of peanut butter and that’s it. You gotta add your own filtered water to turn the powdered milk into liquid milk

: Here was the other lunch that we had a couple times. You take a tortilla, cover it in peanut butter and then wrap it around a banana and voila! There ya go – that’s lunch.

: Fried Spam. A staple of breakfasts in the jungle. In the pot had been porridge which I’ve never been a big fan of. I can’t eat it without thinking I’m choking down a bowl full of chunky jizz

: So, a couple of photos ago I used the word “tortilla” and there I meant it in the sense of a Mexican tortilla made of flour. In Panama, however, if you say tortilla, this is what is meant. They’re fried and made of corn. And we had them at breakfast on probably like 4-5 days of the hike. They were pretty good by themselves but even better with some hot sauce sprinkled on ‘em. And they were really good with a bit of hot sauce on ‘em and a piece of fried Spam on top. Artery-cloggingly delicious!

: The best natural swimming pool on the whole hike. In order to avoid any skin problems, Rick said that everyone should bathe every day once we arrive to a campsite. And then afterwards, to help our feet dry out properly, we were to spray rubbing alcohol on them

: This was also a really good bathing spot

: A close-up of me bathing in the swimming spot shown in the photo previous. I remember that as I was floating around there all these little fish kept coming up and trying to nibble on my torso

: Big tree with big roots

: Fellow hiker Isabelle photographing a local dude who’d been looking for gold

: I think this was on Day 3 when this dude from the group named Eric fell quite ill. He wasn’t shy about letting everyone know that he didn’t do any training for this hike and it showed quite clearly during the first two days in his inability to keep up with the group and his excessive perspiration/heavy breathing while walking on flat terrain. Here on Day 3 when we’d been starting the day with something like a 700m climb, about two hours into it, Eric’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed. Thankfully we had three doctors in the group who all came over and tended to the man, making sure he wasn’t gonna die on us. It was determined that he was going to be okay but that the hike was over for him and that he needed to be evacuated back to Panama City.

: Here’s Rick looking at his GPS trying to figure out how we can evacuate Eric and still save the expedition by finding an alternate route for us to hike

: Segundo doing his part to coordinate the evacuation via a satellite phone

: Eric walked off the mountain carrying nothing. We’d divided up the belongings of his bag among the group and each carried a part of his stuff. I think Brett or maybe Richard carried his backpack for him. Here’s the last we saw of him as he was being sent away on a boat from the middle of nowhere

: Another boat ride

: Paolo taking a selfie with me and the boat driver in the background

: Boat ride POV

: Tiny shop in a tiny village

: Perfect sidewalk in the village of Condoto where we’d end up spending two nights. This was more or less the halfway point of the trek

: Local kid watching me eat a packet of tuna when we’d first arrived to Condoto

: John enjoying his rest upon our arrival to Condoto

: This is the building in which the two previous photos (of me and John, respectively) had been taken. What you’re seeing here is everybody’s dirty laundry laid out for the local women to come and collect then take down to the river for a good washing. I forget how much was charged for this service, but it was definitely under five bucks per person.

: A meal in that same building

: I think the leaves on top of the desk were a nice touch

: Condoto after dark whereupon John had been putting his lawyer skills to good use and grilling everybody on things such as illegal drug usage and first sexual experiences

: In Condoto, a lot of us slept in the homes of local people. Here’s Brett having a look out from the house where he stayed. You can see his hammock strung up behind him there

: The closer hammock is Kevin’s and the further one is mine, both hung up right on the edge of the second floor of someone’s home

: A few people set up hammocks at the local schoolhouse instead of at someone’s house

: Richard and John thrown in the Condoto stocks for public drunkenness

: Purchasing local handicrafts

: Me taking a shower

: Two-story outhouse. I’d probably use the second floor

: House on laundry day

: Girls using the local payphone

: Hanging out at the local pub/convenient store

: Shock the monkey

: Chillin inside the local pub/convenient store

: How the hours and days are passed in Condoto

: Denis getting some sick ink. A lot of us got stung by hornets here and there throughout the trek, but Denis takes the cake with that one. At what I think had been the last campsite on the trek, this dude got stung something like 59 times – he counted the stings all over his body. And shortly after that, the nest was located and the local guys went up and set it on fire. Rick explained that the hornets think the fire is an enemy that can be attacked, so as the fire is getting near to the nest they all come flying out directly into the flames and get burnt right up

: Looking out over Condoto from the pub. Sweet Bill & Ted phone booth there in the background. Nah, just kidding – the one from the movie was actually red, not blue.

: Boris the Spider. Unsurprisingly, there’d been a fair amount of insects everywhere in the jungle, but not as much as I would’ve expected – especially mosquitoes. I don’t recall having seen or getting bit by a single mosquito during the whole trek. Maybe my clothes and I stunk so fuckin bad that the thought of sucking my blood completely disgusted them. For me, the horseflies were probably the most annoying bugs out there and their bites were quite painful. I was quick enough to smash one that’d been sucking on the back of my calf and my entire palm was left full of blood. Greedy motherfucker had been eating so well that its belly was too full to fly away

: Rare harpy eagle sighting. Think Rick said you might only see one of these guys every 4-5 years if you’re lucky

: Paolo, Richard and Tim. The three guys at the back of the group always talking about stupid shit. Whether it was the invention of scratch-n-sniff porn or snorting lines of leafcutter ants, we always had somethin to talk about

: Richard being taller than me for a photo. Back home Rich works as a doctor and at the end of a 5-minute break during one of the first couple days of the hike he’d asked what day of the week it was. Someone said, “Not sure. I think it’s a Tuesday.” And as he was standing up and getting ready to walk again, he was like, “Tuesday, huh? Hmm…my clinic is probably full of patients right now.” And then he looked really pensive for a few seconds before he shrugged and said, “Fuck ‘em!” Then, like everybody else in front of him, he started walking again. On only the second or third step that he took, he tripped on something and stumbled into a tree. “Oh wow,” he said, “how’s that for instant karma?”

: Me hangin out with my man Paolo Italiano. One of the funniest stories I heard on the hike was the one Paolo told about visiting Disneyland back in the early nineties when he was 19 years old. He said he didn’t really speak good English back in those days and had been wearing a shirt that had a headline reading “The Ten Greatest Lies” followed by a list just below it. I don’t remember any of the examples, but the first nine lies were pretty much PG-rated and he said that as he stood in line waiting to go on the rides there, people would look over and read his shirt and smile and then keep reading until they got to the final lie which read, “I promise not to come in your mouth.” At this point they’d usually turn away in disgust and divert their children’s attention away from Paolo and his filthy t-shirt and it wasn’t until years later that he understood why

: Brett at breakfast

: Richard next to a flower that looks kinda like a Koosh ball. One more thing about Richard…he was the only guy who showed up to do the hike without trekking poles. Rick had said beforehand that they’re 100% absolutely mandatory for everybody. Richard told Rick that trekking poles are for tossers. And Rick said, “But they’re mandatory.” And then Richard said back something like, “Well…now they’re not.” To be fair, they were unnecessary the majority of the time. I mean, none of the porters used ‘em. I normally never use ‘em either and had only purchased mine specifically for this hike. After a couple days, I started carrying only one pole and packed the other one up in my bag. I never used it for flat terrain or uphill, but found it useful on dangerously steep downs when there weren’t any tree trunks to grab onto for balance and when trying to navigate all the big slippery rocks during river crossings.

: Ray and Anna

: Like bumps on a log

: The birthdays of both Denis and Richard were during the hike, so Rick planned on making them a cake. 98 is their combined age. If I remember correctly, Richard turned 57 and Denis was turning 41

: I think Isabelle did the decorating here

: Doing a slippery-rock river crossing in pitch blackness on the one massive day that we started hiking at 3:30am. Think we ended up hiking for 12 or 13 hours. We had to go up a very steep thousand meters and then back down another very steep thousand meters

: Segundo enjoying the view from somewhere along the thousand-meter ascent or descent

: Breakfast spot on the last day of the hike

: It’s weird how when you’re living something like this it’s the most real thing in the world but two months later as I’m writing this, looking back at all these photos it seems like a distant dream from another lifetime

: Rick telling the history of the Darien Gap during our last break of the expedition and tying it all into a motivational speech to amp us up for the final push

: First glimpse of the Pacific coast

: A porter taking video footage of our arrival to the sea

: Me ruining someone else’s photo

: Me and Paolo ruining Richard’s photo

: The tide was not ideal for us to get picked up by boat at that very location as planned, so we had to hike a few kilometers over to another beach where the boats could reach us

: Kevin with his machete looking like a pirate during our group photo on the beach

: Segundo transforms into Super Segundo – the hero of the hike – when he puts that cap on. Hell, even if he doesn’t put the cap on, he’s still Super Segundo

: Playa Muerto – where we’d spend two nights before making our way back to Panama City

: View of the mountains as seen from Playa Muerto

: Arrival to Playa Muerto

: Mealtime

: Rick just chillin in his hammock after pulling off yet another successful expedition through some of our planet’s most unforgiving terrain

: Brett photographing a shipment of goods being dropped off by a tiny boat at Playa Muerto

: Buying Snickers bars from the local shop

: John and Anna seesawin’ about

: One of the guys from the group wanted to take portraits of everyone before we all parted ways. I asked what he wanted me to do. He told me to do something really gay. This was the best that I could come up with

: Old Man John gettin fuckin swole on the beach with this Flintstone-ass weight set

: One of the local cops came by and told us how much more he could lift than all of us. And then showed us to prove it

: Time to leave the Darien behind

: Bye-bye, jungle adventure. You were fun while you lasted

: Shortly before we returned to civilization where I turned my phone back on and got the shitty news about the death of my friend from home

: Back in Panama City. Sometime after the farewell group dinner. Me drunkenly urinating through a parking cone not long before someone stole my phone out of my pocket