Cycling The Globe

I love travelling by sea, hence the decision to book a ticket for the last ferry from Cartagena to Colon seamed like the right choice. Travelling by sea, your soul will get the chance to travel with you, something that doesn’t happen when you go by airplane. In this case, my soul had plenty of time to catch up; First 12 hours of waiting in queues in Colombia, then 18 hours at sea.

I went around to have a look at our ship, named SNAV Adriatico. As the name suggests, the ship itself must be Italian and the crew also seemed to be mostly Italians. Then I found photos on the walls from northern Poland and Southern Sweden, leading me to think that the ferry probably has a history sailing on the Baltic Sea. If this is true, the ferry will passed the Danish island of Bornholm many times. Now she is in more exotic waters.

The other passengers seemed to be a 50/50 mix of locals and international backpackers. One of them was Gabriel from Hungary who had also been staying a long time in Colombia. Now we were both excited to see what Central America would be like.

As the sun was setting the ferry arrived in Colon, right at the entrance of the Panama Canal.

After another couple of hours of waiting in queue, first to get off the ferry, and then through immigration, I was finally in Panama! As I cycled through the dark streets of Colon looking for a hotel I was feeling excited. Panama officially lies in North America, and this is continent number 6 in Cycling The Globe history! Well, in Africa I was only in Egypt which is hardly the ‘real’ Africa, but Europe, Asia, Oceania and South America are all continents I have crossed by bike.

From here there is only 10000 km to Canada. I’m looking very much forward to see what Central America and North America has to offer!