I motorcycled North and South America from 2001-2003. It was fairly simple, and cheap, to fly from Panama City to Quito, via Bogata. The yacht technique was the source of quite a few bad stories, while Colon, the step off point from Panama, was awful. I had to build my own motorbike box, but some others had theirs done for them. These days the number of riders is huge, and the process for flying should be very well covered in the adventure motorcycle sites like horizonsunlimited.com.

I did get to ride on a yacht through the canal - and that was amazing.