Panama Whitewater

My girlfriend, Mandy, and I booked our plane tickets, checked our passports, loaded our paddling gear and headed to Panama for some mid-winter warm weather whitewater. The flight from DC to Panama via Mexico City was uneventful, but we did get to fly over the Panama Canal and have a peek. We landed in Panama City on a hot and humid evening and met the rest of the group we would be paddling with that week, led by the very capable guides from Natahala Outdoor Center. We would be based out of Boquete, a small town of about 6000 people that is nestled in the mountains of the Chiriqui Province.

The rivers were spectacular and progressed from mellow on the first day to quite challenging on the last. One of the oddities of Panama was that it poured rain nearly every afternoon. This in turn causes the rivers to flash flood during the night and then drop down to reasonable levels for the next morning. Upon arriving at the put-in for the day's river, the way to gauge the level was by the color of the water.

• Clear = Low water (you'll be dragging your knuckles a bunch)
  
• Chocolate Milk = Medium-low (few scratches on the boat, but they're rentals!)
  
• Espresso = Medium High (Prepare for some intense speed)
  
• Black Coffee = Flood (Say the Rosary & pay up yer insurance premiums)

When the rain does start in the afternoon you can literally watch the rivers rise. We would all start the mad dash to the finish before the impeding flood. One Thursday we were on a tight creek with a very rare road nearby. This particular rain shower was intense and the rapids kept getting steeper and more difficult. It seemed that every 1/4 mile a member of our group would call it quits and decide to hike off the creek. Mandy was a real trooper and stuck it out far longer than all the other men in our group. I felt like I was in the zone, hitting every line prefectly and landing every drop clean. The water was getting darker and more frothy by the minute, to the point that you could not easily see the river features to pick your line.

By the time we pulled up to the take-out our brave group of 9 kayakers had dwindled to just me, Mandy and our guide Rob. Mandy kissed the ground when we pulled ashore, thankful to have the ordeal over. Rob and I grabbed a bite of lunch and seriously contemplated running the second half of the gorge. We stuck a stick in the shore's mud and watched the river rise as we munched our sandwiches. Withen 10 minutes the river rise a full foot! I turned to Rob and said, "Um... do you really want to enter the second gorge?". He replied with a quick, "Hell no. Thank God you don't want to go into that dark gorge."

When in Panama, deep in a gorge with the river rising fast, far from any medical facility, why push your luck when you can just go back to the lodgings and drink rum all night long?

[Additional photos available in the scrapbook section of this site.]