Panama City

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Having successfully negotiated our way through the Canal, we arrived in the bay at the edge of Panama City. Unfortunately there was no space for us in the marina so we spent the next 4 days at anchor.  There was a huge swell and getting in and out of the RIB was literally a leap of faith.  As the boat was going up the RIB was going down and away from the back of the boat. So you had to launch yourself off the back of Sapphireand hope the RIB was where you expected when you landed.  Thankfully, after weeks at sea, we all now have good balance and strength in our legs. The main problem we had was loading all the food and drink on board.  This had to be done with 3 people on board the RIB.- 2 to hold on to the side of Sapphire and 1 to hand up 38 bags of groceries to say nothing of the wine, spirits and cans of beer.  Since we needed 1,000 bottles of water we decided to leave that until we got a berth later in the week.  The reason for all this shopping is because once we leave Panama City we won’t see another supermarket for at least 10 weeks.

We had 4 trolley loads of goods stacked as high as this one

This is how it looked when we finally got the water on board. Where is it going to be stowed? And this wasn't even all of the drinking water.

By Thursday we were finally given a berth in the marina.  We celebrated by having the crew of Trompeta, our former rafting partners, on board for a night of merriment.  Stereo blaring, dancing on the deck, I did serious damage to a beautiful bottle of 12 year old rum and the others demolished countless bottles of wine.  The youngsters on board made themselves scarce, probably wondering if they were going to end up like us in 30 years time!!  They should be so lucky.

Patricia and Alison dancing a jig I believe.

On Friday, the 4 O’Connor’s booked into a really nice hotel in the city centre, for the weekend. It’s hard to know what to say about Panama City.  I wish I had more time so that I could put a bit more thought into describing it.  The population of Panama is 4 million, 2 million of whom live in the city.  The city itself is quite compact but is expanding rapidly.  There are many skyscrapers under construction, both for office space and apartments.  A subway is being built also. So parts of the city are like a building site with unfinished pavements and road works everywhere. In the middle of all this you still have a fruit market and fish market that haven’t moved over to progress – thankfully. There are beautiful middle-class looking streets neighbouring  streets where people live in the most extreme poverty.  I wonder (and hope) that the old adage “a rising tide lifts all boats” holds true for these people.

Panama City

 

With Patricia - in my "Panama hat". (I got the real thing for Dermot though.)

Casco Viejo

For me - the essense of the city. Nice apartments, skyscraper in the distance and building under construction.

An example of bad housing. People are jammed into concrete jungles in tropical heat.

 

Nice neighbourhood

Panama City is famous for the colourful public buses, converted from US school buses. However, these are being phased out and will be off the roads by the end of next year.  There are 2 old towns.  The first was razed by Henry Morgan the pirate.  Only the ruins remain.  The 2nd is called Casco Viejo and was built by the Spanish in the late 1600’s.  This old town is currently being restored on a public/private partnership basis.  I loved this part of the city.  It is full of tiny bars, really good restaurants and is safe to walk around – mainly due to the abundance of tourist police.

The buses are known and the Red Devils

We stayed in the city for 3 nights and could have easily stayed 3 more.  On Sunday, we hired an English speaking driver for 4 hours who gave us a fantastic tour of the city.

Goethals was the American who took over the canal construction and completed it. Each shelf represents the 3 locks. If you zoomk you might be able to read.

Interesting for us to see the Miraflores lock from land. Notice how the first ship is much lower than those still in the lock.

Overall, I’ll be sad to leave Panama. The people are friendly and helpful. The city has quite a cosmopolitan feel to it but I found the poverty hard to take, particularly in the rural areas. However, having described this to David today on Skype, he feels that the poor living conditions I’ve witnessed are nothing compared to how he sees people living in Cambodia.  I suppose I’ve just led a sheltered and privileged life.

Out for a fancy dinner in the city. Lots of great places to eat.

 

Vulcher

Tomorrow, Monday 7th Feb, we up anchor (yes, we are back at anchor) and head for the Las Perlas islands.  Tonight is my last night on land until we reach Tahiti, sometime around the end of April. We spent the evening in the Balboa Yacht Club watching the Superbowl. Thank God the Giants won!!.

There will be wifi on one or two of the Galapagos islands so I’ll probably get one more blog out.  In the meantime, you can always read John’s daily logs on the ARC website and you can track us through the ocean using the fleet viewer.  The viewer will start up again on 9th Feb when we leave Las Perlas for Galapagos.

For those of you who didn’t get my email about this I’m adding the details from that mail now.

The link you need is http://www.worldcruising.com/WORLDARC2012/index.aspx

To read the daily logs:-

In the red banner, near the top of the screen, click on Daily Logs. In the All Boats dropdown list, select Sapphire II.

To track the boat….

Click on Fleet Viewer Click Here on the righthand side of the screen.

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