The sunrise on Sunday February 9 almost looked like there was a fire in the sky that was giving off a lot of smoke. 

Sunday was another quiet day. In the morning, Eric got dinghy down. He went for a ride around the marina, looking for crocodiles, but didn’t see any. He wanted to go out to the anchorage, but it was too windy. With the dinghy down, he turned on the wind generator to make sure it was still working properly. He ran it all day on Sunday and Monday and was pleased that it was working fine.

Some of the cruisers had talked about a secret beach behind the boat yard. On Sunday, Christi decided to look for it. She saw a trail along one of the fences. 

The trail continued even after the fencing ended, letting out at a mangrove swamp. She suspected this must not be the right place.  

In the evening, there was a cruiser’s potluck that Eric attended. The moon was full and glowing brightly even before the sun had set.

On Monday, we took the 0800 shuttle bus into (the outskirts of) town. It was a 14-minute drive from marina entrance to the end of the bridge on the Colon side. The marina was really remote! 

Eric was dropped off at the commercial building closest to the bridge, which had a dentist.

He had an appointment 0930 for a cleaning. He wandered around the area until his appointment. There was a pizza place and Chinese restaurant, three bakeries, a gelateria, a yoga studio, a small Asian market… the businesses in this center were definitely geared at a higher end demographic. Behind it was a nice looking sports center behind it. The housing developments surrounding it looked like relatively new, high-end homes, and there was another commercial building under construction. 

Christi and Keith stayed on the bus. The next stop on the route was a blocky commercial building that had a marine chandlery and a grocery store. The third stop was another blocky commercial building called 4 Altos that had many kinds of stores, including clothing/shoes, home goods, electronics, appliances, a grocery store, several restaurants, beauty salons, etc. Christi and Keith opted to get off at 4 Altos. 

While the bus offered multiple drop off locations, 4 Altos was the only pick up location. It was up to the cruisers to find their own way to 4 Altos by 1100 for the ride back to the marina. Christi and Keith chose 4 Altos because it was the easiest stop. 

4 Altos was a big shopping center. There was a Payless Shoe Source, Popeye’s Chicken, Pizza Hut and Domino’s Pizza. There were a lot of other stores, too, but this center was clearly a lot lower on the socio-economic totem pole than where Eric was dropped off. 

The grocery store was called Rey. Grocery shopping was uneventful and didn’t take long. Unfortunately, not much that interested Christi or Keith had yet opened for the day, so it was a long, boring wait for pickup. Eric took a taxi to 4 Altos and made it just in time for the bus back. The first shot is of Colon as we were entering the bridge, the second is of the west side of the bridge. The marina is at the northern tip.

In the afternoon, a fellow cruiser named Dorien offered to take Christi to the real secret beach. They followed a well-trodden trail behind the storage building.

Which led to an abandoned battery. Christi recognized it right away as the one Susan and Tom had taken Christi and Eric to 15 years ago.

Instead of continuing on the trail to the next battery, Dorien climbed the stairs to the top of this battery and found another trail through the foliage that had grown over the concrete. The trail came to the top of a sharply sloping hill. There was a line tied to a tree that Dorien and Christi used for leverage to get down to the bottom of the hill (and back up again).

The beach was only steps away from there. And it was indeed a small beach with sand.

The tide was lower, so they were able to walk into a little cove that was underwater at higher tide. 

They returned to the main trail and continued on to the next battery. On the way, they saw monkeys in the trees.

Like last time, they climbed the battery stairs and found another trail on top which supposedly led to another beach.

However, this one didn’t have a line to help with getting up/down, so when it got dangerously steep, they turned around and headed back to the marina. 

While Christi was in the jungle, Eric and Keith went to the pool. Keith played with his friends while Eric tested all our SCUBA gear to make sure that everything was working properly. He was disappointed to find two broken items: one of the octopus emergency regulators and one sea scooter control.