Coming from London where checking in at airports and other such activities are more akin to rugby scrums than anything else, the fast, easy and almost empty check in process saw us through security in a very short time, and before long we were waiting at the gate to board. This too was conducted on time, and an hour and and a half later we had landed at Cartagena International Airport after a comfortable flight with very little view unfortunately; the clouds were rather thick for the majority of the flight.

Another pleasant surprise was that once through passport control, our bags were already unloaded and waiting for us just next to the luggage carousel. Interestingly, from here we had to pass our bags through additional xray security; it would appear that Colombia is just as concerned with what comes into the country as comes out!

From the airport we grabbed a couple of taxis to take us to our hotel in the centre, and before long we were in the beautiful walled city of Cartagena! The hotel, as well as all the buildings in this city are all decorated in the original colonial architecture. Narrow streets abound with little alleys here and there taking you, unexpectedly, to large squares or little parks. Walking around after checking into the hotel really served to confirm all the advice we had been given; the place was absolutely enchanting, and the turbulent and sometimes violent history of this major trading post is visible everywhere.

With the car still expected to take a week to arrive, we were thoroughly looking forward to exploring this place and the surrounding areas. But for now, we were content to relax over a delicious dinner in one of the plazas and soak in the ambiance! A very quick, easy and painless entry into Colombia with an absolute gem of a city to stay in. We were just hoping that the cars would have a similarly easy route into South America, but given our previous experience of crossing borders, we were preparing for this not to be the case…

At the end of the presentation, the press were invited out to the canal side where the SRZero was parked. Despite the rain, the crowd kept on growing in size, and even included a whole platoon of young naval cadets eager to have photos taken with the car and team! Plenty of media interviews followed, and it was perhaps the most enjoyable place to have interviews on the trip so far as the ships silently made their way through the giant Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal, located mere metres behind us. What a location!

As the crowd slowly trickled away, something that the team had been waiting for for a really long time was just about to be begin. Back in October 2009, we had visited the Panamanian Ambassador in London, and there he promised that he would organise for us a private tour of the famous Panama Canal. And the Ambassador kept to his word, for just as we had finished with our press interviews, Carlos Beliz, one of the canal’s guides, showed up to give us a private behind the scenes tour which no tourist ever gets to see!

Taking us through a locked fence such that the edge of the canal was literally right beneath our feet, he started to explain about the history of the place and why Panama was so ideally located for such a canal. Aside from the fact that it is obviously the thinnest place to cross between the Atlantic and Pacific, rainfall, topography and lithology all play crucial roles in allowing the canal to be located here. Our talk on the side of the canal was short though because what he really wanted to show us was some ships passing through the locks, and the best place to see this was from the control centre itself!

The control centre, an old building dating back to the canal’s construction in 1914, is located on the canal’s centreline and between the two locks. The only way to get there is via a very thin walkway actually on the top if the canal gates! This is where we walked, a route strictly off limits for tourists, and it was absolutely breathtaking! On our left we had the water level almost at foot level, while on the right, separated by only 7ft (the thickness of the lock gates), we had the water level nearly 20m metres below us. We all gaped in awe as we walked across, being so close to one of the largest engineering feats of all time was an exhilarating experience!

Once making our way up to the control centre, we observed the 8 minute cycle of allowing ships into the lower lock, raising the water level, and allowing them to pass through. It is quite mesmerising to watch actually, and if you look closely you are able to see interesting hints as to how the canal functions on a larger scale. For example, when they open the gates into the lock containing sea water, you can see turbulence in the water; an indication that fresh water is mixing with salt water, this is because the whole canal is a gravity fed system, and fresh water from the reservoir (Lake Gatún) is slowly lost to the sea as the water passes down through the lock system. A good explanation of how the canal works can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_Locks

After observing this, we were shown a whole bunch of pictures of how the canal works and how it was constructed. This was no less interesting, but it was all leading up to the most anticipated point of the tour; the control room. Amazingly, up until 2007, they canal was still controlled by the same electromechanical computer that was developed and installed specifically for the canal in 1913…imagine a commuter built today lasting that long! It was huge; around 15 metres long with a whole host of dials, levers, switches and lights, and all ornately made out of brass and chrome. This, along with the subsurface layer of gizmos controlled the entire lock system, and also, through entirely mechanical means, prevented any mistakes in the opening and closing of the locks to be made. I have yet to research how this incredible machine works, but rest assured I will because it was absolutely fascinating!

With time rapidly ticking on, we had to conclude the tour, and after thanking Carlos profusely, we picked up the SRZero from it’s canal side parking spot, and we headed over for a lunch at the KPMG offices in downtown Panama City. It was a fantastic occasion to meet the partners from a number of different countries as there was a regional meeting going on with KPMG employees from all over Latin America. The food, conversation and company were all excellent!

After lunch we headed down to the car for photos with pretty much all of the 250 local employees, and with the facial muscles needed to smile completely worn out after all the photos, we headed back upstairs to give a presentation to a packed KPMG audience. Some very commercially oriented questions were asked, as you may expect from such an audience, and we stayed there chatting until around 5pm.

After this, we braved the absolutely wild Panama City traffic in order to make it across town to the British Ambassador’s residence for a cocktail reception. But before doing so, we made a stop at Compulab, National Instruments local distributor here, where we had more photos with the car and the employees. Incidentally, Compulab very kindly became the second sponsor of the trip as they decided to give as a new laptop to replace our ageing and faltering one. Finally we can run the software needed to monitor the car without the laptop crashing! Many thanks guys!

With photos complete, we spent another 20 minutes driving over the Ambassador’s residence, located in a beautiful and secluded condominium. 7pm brought the start of a cocktail reception which the Ambassador had kindly agreed to host at his house. A number of influential people were invited to see the car and meet the team, and along with some absolutely exquisite canapes, we passed the night in exceptional style! And then, on the recommendation of several of the guests, we headed to Calle Uruguay, the party street in Panama City, to let our hair down a bit!

Friday:

Despite going out the night before, we had an early start with some activities that the team were looking forward to. Our first appointment was at the Science Museum where we met, literally, hundreds of school kids who were super eager to learn about the car and how it works. I have to say that I was incredibly impressed with the level of their knowledge and their fluency in English despite being so young. Many of them were frantically making notes on what we were saying; the enthusiasm in their eyes was so evident. But to prove that the car wasn’t just a pretty piece of fibreglass, Toby did some high octane racing around the parking lot, and with each squeal of the tyres the kids got more and more excited! It was a wonderful feeling to inspire such interest in children with a vast amount of opportunity ahead of them if they work hard and believe in themselves.

Finally, it was time for us to become children again as we were invited into the hands-on Science Museum to have a play with the exhibits. To say we rushed around like excited 5 year olds on a sugar high would be a gross understatement; we all regressed by about 2 decades and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! But as always, time was running short, and we had to make it to our next appointment. In addition, we had just heard from Clemens that we would have to display the vehicles at a police inspection centre before we shipped the cars, and this had to be done today at 12.30!

So we dashed over to the technical university where we met hundreds more students, this time much older, in fact some of them were older than us! Unfortunately we were pushed for time so we quickly demonstrated the car to them with yet more tyre squeals, and we left in order to get to the police station on time.

And this is where the frustrating part of our stay in Panama begins; it took us over 5 hours of going backwards and forwards between myriad different government buildings in order to get the right paperwork. We were confronted by super unfriendly and unhelpful bureaucrats that wanted nothing more than to relax in their offices and wait it out until the end of the day. Going into detail of the frustration will only serve to shorten my life expectancy, so I shan’t go into it now, but fortunately we managed to get the right documents filled in by the end of the day. With all this done, we were now allowed to take the vehicles to the port of Colón, around 70km away, the next morning in order to put it on the ship. So with another very early start planned for the next morning, we headed back to the hotel for an early night.

Saturday:

Question: Who is mad enough to wake up at 5.30am on a Saturday morning?
Answer: We are!

By 6am we were all assembled in the hotel lobby, and with ourselves loaded up in the van and on Chris’s bike, we headed over to Clive’s house (Clive is the Consul of the a British Embassy) to pick up the SRZero as it was stored there over night. We met our police escort at Clive’s house, and from here we began the fast drive over to Colón. Fast is actually an understatement; we drove at 100mph on their brand new freeway! It was a beautiful drive through Panama’s interior, and a fantastic test for the car as it had never been driven for so long at that speed. It was Clemens who was lucky enough to drive this leg, short though it was!

Arriving at the port brought on today’s dose of frustration as after filling in yet more paperwork, we were forced to just sit there and wait for nearly 6 hours until we were allowed to drive the cars through and load them up into the container. The annoying part was that our container was sitting there all this time, and all we were waiting for was for someone to get off their behind and escort us to the container! But it was a Saturday, and it was hot, so of course this took a very long time to happen. But finally, we did get to the container, and the cars and bike were very professionally strapped down into the 40ft box of metal. I have to profess a slight tinge of sadness in seeing the SRZero drive into the container, for when the doors closed it marked the beginning of the longest period that the team hasn’t seen the car in about 9 months! At the same time though, we were very pleased to have finally organised all the shipping between here and Colombia, and we were looking forward to relaxing for the next couple of days until we and the car arrived in Colombia.

So with everything loaded up, we headed back to Panama City. During all this time, Daniel from Compulab and Clive from the embassy were so incredibly helpful that we decided to take them out for dinner that night. We met at a Lebanese restaurant (yes, I thought the same thing too…Lebanese in Panama?!?) but the food and atmosphere was absolutely incredible. Stuffed to the brim and after being entertained by some very talented belly dancers, we headed out for the night to do some dancing ourselves!

Sunday-Monday:

The next 2 days were fairly nondescript as this is when the productive part of our stay in Panama began. With the car off on a ship somewhere (or so we thought) we were able to get down to some hard graft in organising the legs through South America. We have been thrilled with the success of the project so far, and the documentary film is coming along extremely well, but we wanted to really escalate the project and so this required a lot of research and organising with our contacts down south. In addition, we had to book our flights and organise hotels etc for our stay in Cartagena which is where we would have to stay while we waited for the cars to arrive.

You may be wondering why I said that we thought the cars were on a ship. Yes, this is what we were told until we got a call saying that no, it wasn’t on the ship for some reason, and it would have to sail on the next ship nearly a week later! This was bad as it gave us a delay of a week and meant that we would be spending a lot of time and money in one place when we could have actually been driving south and completing our trip. Try as we might though, there was no way the car was getting here before the week beginning September 13th, so we prepared ourselves for a rather lengthy stay in Cartagena. However, from our research it appeared that this is actually a very beautiful city with a great deal of history, so as Tuesday morning approached, we were very much looking forward to making the most out of our week off. At least we could recover somewhat from the last 2 months of gruelling driving and organisation!

It all felt so easy; driving along, smooth roads, fantastic weather, little traffic, and the power of the SRZero electric power train silently propelling us along. It was a false sense of security however, because unbeknown to us, a hidden bump was lying in the road ahead, and at 60mph I was blissfully unaware of it…

BOOF! Not the sound that you are exactly thrilled to hear when driving a prototype electric car, and even less desired is the display going blank and the car losing all its power. So in reaction to this, I pulled the car over onto the side of the road, but as there was no hard shoulder it was actually still on the road; not the safest state of affairs! So, first and foremost we sent Andy a few hundred metres up the road with a high visibility jacket and a walkie talkie to help slow the traffic down and radio us when there was any traffic coming. We were lucky in the fact that aside from a few maniac trucks trying to set land speed records, the traffic was light and the vehicles generally slowed down as they approached. In addition, despite being in the middle of the jungle 30km away from any population, it was daylight, sunny, and not raining…not all bad then! With this in mind, we set about taking apart the car to determine the cause of the problem.

Our first thought was that the BOOF sound must have come from the car grounding out as we went over the bump, and that this may have caused some damage to the motors or battery mounting. Upon further inspection however, the rear of the car including all the high voltage components were completely normal, and there was no indication that this was the cause of the failure. Next we thought there could be a problem with the low voltage circuit thereby causing the inboard computer to power down.

When checking the power to the computer, we did indeed find no power being delivered, but upon checking the low voltage batteries and other low voltage systems e.g. the hazard lights, they were working fine. So what could be the problem?? The next thing we considered was our crash sensor could have tripped. Way back when we were building the car, we wanted to ensure that if there was a crash and the safety of the lethal high voltage circuit had a chance of being compromised, that the entire car would be safely shut down. To do this, we installed a crash sensor which is essentially a switch which under normal circumstances is closed, but under a situation of high deceleration i.e. in a crash, it would open and shut the car down.

This is exactly what had happened as going over the bump had caused a violent vertical acceleration. Several seconds later, we had the sensor reset, and the car booted up completely normally…problem solved! Then ensued a rapid rebuild of the car, with front and rear bodywork going back on, as well as the seat which is always a pain to put in and out.

But a few minutes later we were back up and running, and we were able to continue down the road. Despite delaying us by an hour, this was actually the first time we had been able to (inadvertently) test the crash sensor, and we were pleased with the way it safely shut down the car and allowed us to freewheel to a halt.

The drive was long but not especially difficult; there were a few short bursts of rain, but nothing to cause any fuss. The road remained good, and we were making good time. There are only 3 main things to report from the drive until around 100 miles outside Panama City. Firstly, I was being interviewed in the car by Claudio while I was driving, and in true man fashion, the difficulty of multitasking driving with talking to the camera made me forget to remove the handbrake. After a few miles I realised that our energy consumption was a bit crap, and something was wrong. After coming to a halt, the smell coming from the rear told me exactly what was wrong…the handbrake pads were now completely fried! Stupid me! Not a tragedy as they are readjusted fairly easily, but nonetheless a pretty big annoyance! I was deservedly teased by the team later on.

Next up, and far less interestingly, we saw a snake slithering across the road; the first time we had seen a snake on the trip so far. And lastly, the only thing of note was a massive crash of a petrol tanker off the side of the road. Given the nature of the crash, it looked very much like the driver must have fallen asleep, but nonetheless reminded us of the perils of driving on narrow single lane roads in countries with generally poor road safety records.

Around 100 miles before Panama City and after a quick stop for lunch, we met up with Daniel from Compulab, National Instrument’s local distributor. He led us into Panama City at breakneck speeds, and I was delighted to be able to push the limits of the SRZero on the smooth, windy and empty roads…great fun!

Upon entering the outskirts of the city we received our police escort which duly continued on with the speeding and, as usual, ushered us straight through the red lights. A major point of the drive at this stage was crossing the Bridge of the Americas, one of only several ways to cross between the 2 continents, and with this in mind, we took our first step (or drive) into South America! Woohoo!

However exciting this was though, it paled into insignificance compared to where we were headed to charge up…the Panama Canal! Just a few minutes later we were taken through security and parked right up on the canal bank. And what an absolutely incredible sight to see! Right next to us the huge Miraflores locks were working away raising and lowering huge ships without a sound. The atmosphere was absolutely electric…one could feel the energy of this place as being the lifeline and centre of world shipping, along with the huge weight of captivating history behind it. I can honestly say I have never been so impressed with such a place. However, we had to save the oggling for our private VIP tour the next day, and for now all we had to do was put the car on charge, and head to our hotel for some sleep before our big press day and tour tomorrow.

All I can say though is that with the canal ending the day’s proceedings, this was one of the most thrilling days of my life! A big thanks to Daniel for helping us into Panama City, and our extreme gratitude to the Panamanian Canal Authority for allowing us to charge off their electricity!

We had been told that the road to the border was largely in excellent condition, and the first half of the journey certainly didn’t disappoint! The road was very smooth, and we passed over the most incredible ravines and through some really beautiful mountains. The highlight was most definitely a river that we came across, and as we were waiting for Claudio and Chris on the motorbike to catch up with us, we decided to disembark the vehicles and take a look at this river from the bridge.

It was wide and quite fast flowing, with a large muddy bank on one side leading up to the jungle’s border. A sign on the bridge warned us about alligators, and before long we had spotted several of them basking on the banks. It’s amazing what a wonderful life these alligators have; nice warm sun, a river all to themselves, no pesky animals coming to try and eat them…all they do the whole day is sit there until they get hungry, upon which they go and grab the odd child who happens to be swimming around at the time…

After trying to persuade Clemens to go down and play/wrestle with the alligator, to which he refused unfortunately, we got back into the vehicles and continued on our way. The beautiful scenery kept on getting better and better until we reached the coast and travelled beside it for some way. Through the trees fringing the beaches we got glimpses of azure water and crashing waves…it took every ounce of our resolve to carry on driving and not turn off for the beach to have a quick swim!

If only the day could have continued like this though, for before long the clouds darkened and the rain started coming down. The road started getting much worse, and the speeds we could therefore achieve were reduced. On one occasion how, this did not prevent Nik and Clemens from striking an unavoidable pothole, and you can see from the picture the pain in their faces and the effect the pothole had on the car! Fortunately though, no damage was done, and we preceded to the border with no hassle, but just one incident.

This one incident was around 30km from the border and there was some road which was being repaired. The only way around the roadworks was an extremely rough and potholed stretch of dirt track. To capture the challenge of getting the car across this stretch, Claudio got out of the van to fit some cameras onto the side of the car. In doing so though, he mistakenly hit the emergency stop button, and the car shut down completely.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem as you would just restart the car with the ignition key, but as you know, since El Salvador we have had to start the car with the laptop. This meant starting the laptop which, being old and very slow, takes around 10 minutes to boot up the program we need. During this time, Nik and Clemens were getting absolutely soaked in the car, and we were backing up traffic for hundreds of metres. While we weren’t particularly chuffed with this, Claudio was as he had just found a way to get a bit of drama going if the project ever got a little too boring for the camera!

Anyway, it wasn’t long before the car was up and running again, and the brave SRZero easily conquered the stretch of shoddy road. It struck us again how remarkably resilient this car is despite its very low ground clearance. I guess we should have a little more faith in it given some of the road we have already crossed, but given the fact that we still have over 13,000km left of this journey, we don’t want to even come close to damaging anything!

Onwards we travelled until just 1km away, the traffic ground to a complete and utter halt. Nothing was moving, and hundreds upon hundreds of cars were sitting there hooting away. Further inspection revealed possibly the stupidest reason for a gridlock; normally there is one lane going out of Costa Rica into Panama, and vice versa. However, on this occasion, somebody decided they didn’t want to queue in the right lane, so they moved over into the left lane and tried to seed towards the border. Other people saw this guy doing this, and followed him. But this meant that the cars coming from Panama had a road with vehicles coming to towards them, and no where to go! So the border guards had to shut down the border until the situation got resolved on the Costa Rican side. Nobody was doing anything constructive to fix the situation, and it was absolute chaos all around!

This did not look good for our schedule, and I already had visions of us having to spend the night sleeping in the van! Nonetheless, we put the time to good use and started on the paperwork needed to allow us to cross the border with the 3 vehicles. In the meantime, a fixer was trying to organise for us to somehow get through the traffic jam, but nothing would help.

Eventually, we strapped a blue flashing police light onto Chris’s bike (a useful piece of equipment the KPMG El Salvador had given us) and pretended to be police escorting the van and SRZero to the front. And can you believe it, this outrageous stunt actually worked! The trucks and cars parted off the road and onto the verges, and we drove straight through to the front of the border queue!

Even though this was great and sped us up enormously, we still had another 2 hours of back and forth paperwork and bureaucracy to complete. However, at some point, the customs officials realised who we were, and the boss came down to explain to the official dealing with us that we had been specially cleared by the British Embassy to receive diplomatic status, and that we should be pushed straight through the border! I have to say that from this point onwards, we were treated very well, and after just a few minutes we were on our way again! Quite an amazing turn of events as we had no idea this would happen, and this diplomatic status meant that we couldn’t be stopped at any of the police checkpoints found on the roads here, no speeding fines, nothing!

So, with the border passed after 5 hours of waiting in the rain, we headed the 50km toward David where we had organised a hotel where we could stay and charge the car. Upon arriving and plugging in the car, we found out that the circuit breakers the hotel used in their fuse box were actually broken. So in the end, we wired the car directly into the mains supply with only a huge 70 amp breaker standing between us and absolute ruin should something short circuit (a circuit breaker is used to cut power when a very large current is drawn from a device, and this normally occurs during a short circuit malfunction). But with the car on charge, it was now time for food and bed, because yet another early start awaited us the next day!