Long way down

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We're definitely off the beaten track in panama now, a few hours out of the big city, on the carribean coast. It took a few days to sort things out, and tomorrow we set sail for Columbia aboard the 50 foot ketch Seeadler, captained by a guy named Guido. With the wind at our backs and a bit of luck we'll land in Cartagena after 5 days, probably red skinned and crusted in salt. It's been a while getting here, we stopped in a small mountain town on the way, that had some waterfalls and hot springs. Then we were in Panama city for 4 days.

Panama city is hands down the best capital city in central america. It's clean and modern, lots to see and do, and plus they have the most famous canal in the world. So many huge container ships pass through, and depending what container accidently "fell off the ship" that week you can find some realy cheap designer clothes and stuff in the tiny shops around the city.

To get here we rode the chicken bus for a few hours, I never mentioned them but they are old US school busses that are the backbone of transport in central america. They're loud, uncomftorable, and incredibly cheap, maybe 50 cents to a dollar an hour. They are privately run, so maybe a family buys one and decks it out with chrome and paint then the dad drives and the mom runs around collecting money and a kid handles everyones luggage. They carry all sorts of cargo too, need to take a sack of grain somewhere, you can do that, some chickens or livestock, not a problem!

We did a few dives on the coast here too, theres some good fish and coral and an old c-45 twin engine plane 70 feet down with its wing sticking into a reef. They took some photos of us and should email them sometime so that'll be good. Other than that not too much new, looking forward to shifting continents here in the next week and seeing whats down there.



Heres a few numbers:


*days in central america - 58
*money spent - $3150, 54 bucks a day
*best deals - street food, surfboard rental in costa rica for 10 bucks, touring ruins of tikal for 20 bucks.
*budget breakers - taking taxis during bus strike in Nicaragua. Diving, even cheap diving costs money.
*worth it? - every penny.

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Photos

boat we take to columbia
just joking mom

spanish fort
sacked by pirates many times