Saturday, January 18 — We forgot to mention that this week, we’d had the bottom cleaned. The bottom cleaning guy had approached us as soon as we’d pulled into the slip the previous Saturday, and was insistent about doing our bottom. He kept coming back again and again. He didn’t speak any English. When Eric finally asked him the price, Eric thought the guy had said $40, which was an amazingly good deal, so Eric said yes.

The bill he presented us with was $400. We have found out the hard way that in order for a boat to go to the Galapagos, you have to have a super bottom cleaning done, accompanied with a certification. The guy apparently thought we were going to the Galapagos and gave us the uber cleaning, and thanks to the language barrier, Eric didn’t understand what the guy’s intentions were. Eric was able to negotiate him down to $350, but that was an expensive lesson to learn. On the bright side, Kosmos’s bottom is probably the cleanest it’s ever been.

On to today… This morning, Eric spent the morning getting the fenders and lines situated for the canal transit while Christi and Keith did school.

One of the other cruisers had told us that they’d hired a gentleman with a mini-van, named Gustavo, to take them on a sightseeing tour and then to the grocery store. They said he was really good and reasonably priced, so we booked him for this morning. Gustavo picked us up from the marina at 1100, then drove downtown to pick up our crew from their hotel. 

From there, he drove us to the Centennial Bridge, which was about 10 miles north. Gustavo explained that up until 1979, the Americans controlled not only the canal, but also a several mile wide strip of land on both sides of the canal. Most of the drive was through the former American territory called the Canal Zone. He pointed out former military bases that had been repurposed for other uses. One was now a small plane airport, another housed a collection of different facilities. We passed the Pedro Miguel lock, along with a couple of small towns, one on each side of the Pedro Miguel locks, that had been purpose built for the canal workers. But the majority of the land was undeveloped.

The Centennial Bridge was built in 2004 to help ease the traffic congestion on the Bridge of the Americas, which at the time was the only bridge across the canal into Panama City. Gustavo drove us across the Centennial Bridge, which had beautiful views of the canal below.