PANAMA CITY

23rd February – Lots has happened in the past couple of days! On Sunday Nigel and I took ourselves off into the old city, it was a bit disappointing in the fact that although some effort is being made to preserve the old buildings but in general it is quite run down. At the turn of the 20th century I would imagine that it was quite some place. Its very Hispanic, lots of old wooden doors leading into shady courtyards, balconies overlooking the street – you could be anywhere in Spain. Unfortunately the city’s worst ghetto is just a few blocks away so you have to be very careful how far you wander. Our taxi driver made us lock the doors as we had to drive through it to leave the city, not even the taxi drivers like driving through there.

The new city is a mass of high rise apartment blocks mostly occupied by Americans who have retired there because the living is so cheap and the healthcare is excellent. Yesterday we visited the shopping malls checking out the prices for our ‘store ship’, if you shop where the Yanks go then you will pay double the price anywhere else, and when you have got to buy 50llb of flour to make bread the costs rise quickly. It’s cheaper to buy beer than it is coke, coke is twice the price of beer! Four pm on this boat is ‘Beer O’clock’!

Life on the anchorage isn’t as bad as we first imagined, it can be rolly from the canal traffic but our main gripe is it’s sooo hot with no breeze. We are getting regular visits from rays who patrol round the yachts, 2 nights ago we had a visit from a small shark. Nigel did a spot of night fishing a couple of nights ago, caught a fish which promptly bit him when he got it aboard – he bled like a stuck pig unfortunately. Long and short of it is - he has bought himself padded fishing gloves as most things caught here either bite or are poisonous.

My final piece of news is that we are no longer a crew of 4. Last night our new crew member was asked to remove himself from the boat. The long and short of it was he had done nothing to endear himself to us, he couldn’t sail and had made no effort to even learn anything about the boat, he drank like a fish and when he wasn’t drinking he was either eating or sleeping. We were all working hard and he was quite happy to sit and watch us, while we were shopping for stores and equipment yesterday he took himself off into Panama quoting ‘I’ll eat anything you buy!’ So Ted asked him to leave the boat – he promptly got steaming drunk and came back to the boat a very mean drunk. He couldn’t understand that we were not happy to put our lives in his hand’s, I don’t think the enormity of a Pacific crossing had even crossed his mind.


Got lots of Photo's but can't upload them until tommorrow.