Landon Bishoff ADV

20/02/2025

The people are always the best part! Made so many new friends on this trip & I’m sure many friendships that will last for years & years to come.

I want to thank Abdiel & Jerry the organizers & owners of the .challenge for inviting me to this event & taking such good care of me! Much better than I would have to myself alone haha.

It’s always a privilege to be in Panama & amongst the people here. You’ll find they are extremely kind & warm. The scenery is incredible, & the outdoor recreation plentiful!

The last slide shows my heat map from photos I’ve taken, & I’m feeling very informed & educated on Panamá as a whole haha!

Last thing left to enjoy it’s full outdoor scene is probably go to Tropic Star & catch a 1000lb Blue Marlin in the pacific Haha but hey gotta leave things to come back for.

06/12/2024

It always sucks when it happens, getting a flat tire, but this time it actually turned out pretty cool!

I was looking for a place to camp since it was getting dark and all a sudden I had a flat front tire right in front of this families home.

They saw what was going on and were so kind to let me use their stool to lift the bike up.

I think my favorite part was after it was all patched and I was putting the tire back on. It was getting dark and this little girl wanted to help so I let her hold the light.

We were on this beautiful ridge line where their home was and as the sun was setting the wind was blowing up the mountain and it was getting a bit cold. She didn’t hesitate to leave once and her eyes were extremely concentrated on holding the light where I told her to. Her dad & mom were right there as well watching the tire get fixed.

It was a cute moment, but my mind went to the funny memes about holding flashlights for your dad as a kid and getting yelled at for not holding it in the right place. I figured they probably wouldn’t have seen those so I refrained from yelling at her and then trying to explain my crappy joke..

After the tire was fixed they invited me to spend the night there & so I set up my tent just down a small hill from them. A few minutes later the grandmother along with everyone else came and brought me dinner and we chatted for about 30min all together before calling it a night and going to bed.

They belong to an indigenous tribe called The Ngäbe. Today with a population of over 250,000 people making it Panamas largest tribe out of its 7 that are in the country. Such a kind family & I felt very taken care of when I was with them.

01/12/2024

El Valle did not disappoint!

Got a good amount of hiking in for some exercise & enjoyed some sunrises overlooking the ocean in the distance! Beautiful area!

17/11/2024

We got to donate a massive event style tent & 50 chairs to the Embera & Wounaan tribe with the goal of helping them be able to accommodate bigger groups while meeting. In the Darien province it rains more than it doesn’t… leaving it very tricky for the tribe to meet at times. While you can rent these types of tents the only options in their area is for local alcohol distributors. Many members & leaders in the tribe discourage alcohol, and so it put them in a hard place with no options to rent. We also thought it was a good idea being that it is portable to where the tribe can move this tent to smaller more remote communities if they needed it anywhere else. They could also rent it if they wanted to generate some funds for themselves.

I want to thank everyone who has donated & made this possible! It was such an honor to get to spend so much time with the Wounaan & Embera tribe here in Panama. These are amazing people and the reason I decided to give this to them was because they took me in, housed me, fed me, all without knowing me or expecting anything in return. They were strangers who cared about me.

I especially want to thank my biggest donors Matt & Adri and Ryan & Stephanie! They wouldn’t want the attention, but too bad I gotta give credit where credit is due!

Thank you to Einer, Cristobal, & Diriano who were key people in realize the project.

I also want to use this time to report and be accountable to you guys. In total we spent around 2,100 dollars to make this happen. 1,500 for the custom tent, 400 in chairs, and about 200 in gas, and cost of delivering.

As more and more funds come in I find myself researching and looking for best practices in how to be a good steward of these funds. When I look into the “charity, 501(c)3, non profit space” unfortunately I see large amounts of what in my opinion is abuse and misuse of funds. Legal or not I see donated funds propping up massive, inefficient, groups/charities. I’m still working out the details of how I want to set a new standard in this space, but at a minimum I see a world where there should be 100% transparency on how every dollar donated is spent!

Thank you my friends! Cheers

10/10/2024

I’ve left Panama City and I’m now heading south to the end of the road here in Central America. The Darien province, specifically Yaviza where the road ends by being cut off by the Chucunaque river. Roads stop and river travel begins giving accesses to the “most dangerous” jungle in the world, the 50 mile wide Darien gap.

These two families fed me, and let me sleep on their property, as I make my way down to my opinion about the Darien Gap. The best part of staying at peoples house like this is getting to talk to them, learn from them, and hear directly from the source of what life is actually like down here.

I’ve got some really exciting stories coming up, so get ready! 👍

15/08/2024