Casco Viejo and the Panama Canal Museum

This morning, Christi finally started on antibiotics. She realized that if it hadn’t passed by now, it wasn’t going to go away on its own. She also made some meals to freeze with the leftovers from our transit. At around lunch time we headed out. Our goal for today was to go to the restaurant the cab driver couldn’t find the other day. Today’s cab driver had never heard of the place, which we took as a bad sign, but managed to find it with no problem. Unfortunately, it was closed for remodeling.

We walked to another restaurant a few blocks away that was also recommended by Lonely Planet. They serve French/international fusion type of food and our lunch was awesome. We ordered three appetizers: jumbo shrimp spring rolls in a yummy tropical fruit sauce; pan carmelized octopus in a sweet soy based marinade and served with a delicious avocado cream sauce; and shitake mushrooms stuffed with pork confit, vegetable, and panko persillade.

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We shared one main course, grouper in a rich, creamy coconut milk and curry sauce with broccoli on the side. For dessert we got passionfruit mousse. Everything was so good. We had been craving a really, really good meal like that ever since we left Bonaire. We even asked to thank the chef in person for such a great meal.

After lunch, we went to Casco Viejo to go sightseeing. The taxi took us through a neighborhood of all high rises, then turned into a very third world part of town. This area was Continue reading

Looking Around La Playita Anchorage Area

Today Christi woke up feeling better. Thank goodness. Fortunately, antibiotics didn’t seem like they would be necessary now. Jeff was leaving today, so this morning he packed up and got ready to go. When he was ready, we went to shore and had lunch at the closest restaurant to the dinghy dock, just on the backside of the shopping center we mentioned. As we were walking in, we saw the strangest thing. A car was towing a small airplane!

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The restaurant is a cute place — a round hut made of bamboo and palm fronds with a very high ceiling. We got ceviche for an appetizer. Ceviche is a dip made of small pieces of raw fish or other seafood marinated in lime juice and flavored with things like onion, tomato, cilantro, and chili peppers. It is a Mexican staple and we all like ceviche. Usually, you can’t taste the fish at all. Everyone makes ceviche a little differently. Some are amazingly good and you can’t stop eating them. Others are just OK. This one was pretty good, but not great. Christi didn’t have any, worried that raw fish might be too much for her digestive system right now.

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We all ordered fish, and the dishes came with Continue reading

Exploring Panama City

Christi was once again up very early with a sick tummy. She was worse than ever. She contemplated starting on antibiotics, but decided to give it one more day to pass on its own. The nice thing about being up so early the last few days is that she has seen some nice sunrises. Here is today’s.

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From where we sat, we could see four of the islands. They all seem to be Continue reading

Final Canal Preparations

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 Continue reading

Preparing to Transit the Canal – Paperwork Started

Eric let Victor know we would use him as our agent as soon Victor’s work day started and gave him all the necessary paperwork. In the afternoon Victor showed up at the boat with 4 super long lines and 20 tires. The tires are used and cost $3.00 USD each to buy. The lines cost $100 USD each to rent, which we thought was a lot of money for a rental.

Victor said our measuring appointment was Continue reading