Sunrise on Monday, January 20, taken from Mike and Kim’s hotel room:

Shelter Marina Bay is situated on the western side of the Panama Canal in what used to be an American military base called Fort Sherman. The City of Colon is on the eastern side of the canal. 

Fort Sherman was constructed in 1911 to be the primary defensive base for the Caribbean sector of the Canal. It was 23,100 acres (93 km²). Only about half of the land was developed; the other half remained jungle. Ft. Sherman was one of the primary military training centers for jungle combat training, particularly during the Vietnam era. It was abandoned in December 1999 along with all the other American military bases in Panama. The Panamanian government turned it into the San Lorenzo National Park. 

On Monday morning we were all up early to go for a walk in the jungle to see some of the ruins from the Ft. Sherman days, and hopefully, some jungle animals. As we were getting ready to go, our friend Teal stopped by to welcome us to the marina. It was wonderful to see him again!

Just outside the entrance to the marina, there was a fork with three roads. We took the road to the right, which we knew would lead us to what used to be the officer’s housing. 

The marina cat followed us. 

Within a few hundred yards, we passed an abandoned church, located on what was once a corner intersection. Eric and Christi couldn’t remember where the other road led, and we all stayed on the main road.

The road stretched on a ways and eventually became a loop. In our post from fifteen-years ago, we’d written that the growth along the side of the road was kept short so the foundations of the homes that had been razed were clearly visible. Not anymore. Now, only the road was kept clear, and the only sign that homes used to be there were steps to nowhere spaced at regular intervals.

As we walked along, we saw a lot of coatis foraging for food. 

Brianna and Mike were walking with the cat, at a slower pace than the rest of the group. They saw capuchin monkeys. They called out to the rest of the group to come look, but the others were too far ahead to hear.

In that post from fifteen-years ago, we’d written about a side street off the loop that had abandoned apartment buildings which hadn’t been razed, but we hadn’t posted any photos of them. We saw that the buildings were still there. We turned down the street that led into the housing complex and wandered around the abandoned neighborhood.

The buildings looked pretty much the same as we’d remembered.

There were several streets within the neighborhood, all of them lined with these identical buildings in various states of disrepair. Kim peeked through some of the broken windows to see what was inside. She reported that most of the rooms were empty, and the bathroom she saw had a broken sink, toilet, and mirror. She also said it was very dirty with some broken bottles.

It looked like it used to be a nice neighborhood. Eric waited for the bus at the stop by the basketball court, but it never came.

And it looked like it had good infrastructure, too.

After exploring the ruins, we headed back to the marina and had breakfast in the restaurant.

Christi and Mike tried a local Panamanian breakfast, which consisted of a steak and tomato stew topped with an egg. The stew was reminiscent of a very mild chili. It was supposed to be served with hojaldras, Panamanian tortillas and carimañolas, but they were out of two of the three, so they tripled up on the one they had.

We were served Panamanian tortillas, which you can see from the photo, are nothing like Mexican tortillas. They were basically a hunk of deep-fried cornmeal batter. They tasted like hush puppies and were dry. According to the inter-tubes, carimañolas were dumplings made of mashed cassava and stuffed with a meat or cheese filling, and hojaldras were a savory bread with a texture similar to donuts. We were bummed to have missed out on trying those.

After breakfast, we went swimming. Here is a photo taken when the crew went up to change into their swimwear.

The pool was nice.

After swimming, our crew took showers, checked out of the hotel, and caught a cab back to Panama City. It was sad to see them go.

One of the cruisers who had welcomed us yesterday had told us there were a lot of kids around, and that they hung out in the lounge upstairs above the restaurant. Eric and Keith went up there to check it out. The kids there had a Dungeons and Dragons manual out, and  said they were going to play. Eric asked them how much experience they had, and they said it was the first time they’d tried playing. Eric offered to be the Dungeon Master and they had an impromptu D&D session. The kids had a blast and they arranged to play again the next day.

Whenever we do a passage where our normal sleep routine is interrupted, it takes us a solid three days for our body clocks to go back to normal. Because we’d gotten up at 0200 on Sunday and had had a long day, we felt like we’d come in from a passage. Even though we’d gotten plenty of sleep last night, we were all still tired and draggy today. We had a quiet evening and went to bed early.   

Note: Thank you Mike, Kim and Brianna the photos and video that you contributed to this post!