Today both of us woke up feeling sick. Eric had a sore throat and felt like a cold was coming on. Christi had a sick tummy causing frequent trips to the restroom, no doubt the consequence of the pink hamburger the day before. This is the first time on our entire journey that either of us has ever become sick from something we ate. And it figures that it happened to be from an American style restaurant that almost assuredly uses American beef.

Neither of us felt like doing anything, but we absolutely had to go to the grocery store and get food for all the houseguests we would be having for the transit. Victor only has one day off a week from driving the bus, and today happens to be the day. So, there was no bus to town. The nice marina staff hunted down a private car for us. It appears they have sweet talked their husbands, boyfriends and friends into shuttling cruisers around in their spare time because even professional drivers don’t want to get stuck at the locks forever. On our way out of the base we saw several huge, and we mean really huge, buzzards hanging out on a cleared field on the base grounds.

And we did have to wait a full hour on the way out. This time the ships were going the other way. Two very large ships went in a row before they opened the gate for car traffic. We didn’t have a very good view, but we could see the locomotives pull one ship in, then the ship rose up out of our line of sight. Then the locomotives brought another ship in, and it rose up, too. We had an interesting chat with our driver while we waited. As has several people we have met, he lived in the US for a while and came back to Panama, and it was interesting to hear his perspective on life in Panama versus in the US.

Grocery shopping was incredibly disappointing. We had a hard time finding food Christi could eat, and with neither of us feeling good, reading label after label after label was tedious. We wound up buying food for the crew that she won’t be partaking in. Oh, and on a side note, we have mentioned the produce item christophene several times. We found out that they are a type of squash, and in Panama they are called chayotes. Here is a photo of a bin of them.

We lucked out and bumped into the couple on the Grand Banks. They have a car here in Panama, and they offered to give us a ride back. That saved us some money since we didn’t have to pay for the driver to wait and take us back.

Victor came by later in the afternoon to confirm we were definitely scheduled for Monday for an evening run, and we needed to leave the marina at 1530. Now that we have a set time, the transit suddenly seems very real and we are getting more excited about it. Eric equalized all the batteries. He is hoping that magically fixes the starter battery and prolongs its life, but it is doubtful. It was time to equalize the batteries, anyway.

Jeff Merrill, our salesperson from Nordhavn and now good friend, had wanted to do the canal crossing with us. A few days ago we had told him we had a sneaking suspicion it would be on Monday, so he booked a last minute ticket, knowing it was possible that we could go earlier or later and he may miss out on the canal transit. He arrived at 1700 today. It was great to see him. We wished we felt better. Jeff came completely loaded down with stuff for us. All the spare parts we had requested, all the cruising guides and Lonely Planets we requested, and then some. We felt like it was Christmas!