It was now time to leave the mountains again to head to the coast. This creeping ever eastwards, heading north before retracing my steps to head south, makes for slow going. However, I haven’t let it deter me and am seeing a good portion of the country regardless. I wanted to check out the western side of Peninsula de Azuero before heading further east again to work my way down the eastern side of the Peninsula. Unfortunately, this was another instance where it was necessary retrace one’s tracks or skip it altogether as there is no connecting roads between west and east.
Once back in Santiago, I found where the bus to Torio left and fortunately didn’t have to wait long before it left. It was a pretty drive down to Torio which was about half way down the coast. I could have gotten further down the coast on another bus, but didn’t have time to wait for it to leave. I had the annual Council meeting for the Australian Speleological Federation which I needed to zoom into by 6pm so wanted to be in the hotel room I had booked in Chitre before then.
I thought I would just get dropped off where the bus stopped in Torio, have a quick look around, maybe grab a cerveza, then jump on another bus back to Santiago. A whistlestop little detour of the area. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. The bus driver wanted to know where I wanted to get dropped off and when I told him just in the centre, he wanted to drop me off on the side of the road which didn’t consist of much at all. As there were other passengers on the bus not getting off and knowing that the bus terminated at Torio, I was somewhat puzzled. They said they were going down to the beach, so I decided to stay on board until the bus rumbled to a stop at a crowded, black sand beach. I asked when the bus left again and was told in 20 minutes time, so decided I would have a quick look then return on that bus.
As luck would have it, I soon stumbled on a beachside bar with icy cervezas which ticked that box. I had just enough time to down one and grab a couple of photos before heading off back to Santiago. By now I was most familiar with Santiago Bus Terminal as I had used it to transfer to Santa Catalina, Santa Fe, Torio and now Chitre. Such is the complexities of travelling through Panama. Fortunately, I managed to find a bus that went directly to Chitre, which saved me much needed time as the detour down to Torio had taken me much longer than anticipated.
The bus pulled into Chitre just prior to my meeting starting so I just had time to register. Then it was a matter of listening on while I bought some beers and walked the 1.5kms to my hotel. Checked in, I could finally relax and participate a little more fully until my bit had finished and I crashed for the last hour, waking up just before 1am when it was finishing up.
Wild Woman Wandering 