To Panama with love

Looking out from the balcony resto-bar at Los Secretos in Bocas del Toro.

This is our last week here in Panama. (Cross your fingers that the weather cooperates.)  All our friends are leaving, so it must be time for us to go too. We hope to set sail on Saturday for Providencia, Colombia.

Panama has been good to us.  We've learned a new language,or at least the important words, like zanahoria - carrot. We've learned to love Balboa Beer and Abuelo Rum, and we will most certainly miss the enourmous, ripe, sweet pineapples that we've found here. We've met a lot of really nice people on boats, some on motorcycles, and even a few on land. We've been on a plane, a train, a 4-wheel drive taxi and a pickup truck taxi, and even a couple of horses. We now know first hand the value of a good anchor winch.

With friends at Los Secretos, l-r: Susie, Stuart, the Captain, the Crew (in a new green dress!)

Panama, we've found your prettiest Caribbean-side islands, the anchorages with the best holding in sticky mud, and that your winds are fickle this time of year: sometimes too strong in the middle of the night, often none to keep the bugs away in the Bocas Marina, and almost always prevailing west-to-east, most likely dead on the bow when the boat is pointed in the direction we want to go.

From the Captain
Best memory: Eating fresh cheap lobsters night after night in the Kuna Yala.
Worst memory: Getting up at 3 am in 40 knots of wind to anchor watch. (We didn't drag though.)
Biggest surprise: Finally getting a chance to water ski off Starfish Beach.

From the Crew
Best memory: Waking up at dawn in the Rio Charges and hearing howler monkeys call and watching parrots fly by the boat.
Worst memory: Discovering in Portobello that one can have too much tropical paradise and not enough internet.
Biggest surprise: It is pretty wet in the wet season here, but the Panamanians have extra cool umbrellas. 

Our Panamanian umbrella!

Thanks Panama, we'll always have the memories.

More fun in Bocas, l-r: Stuart, Philip, Deborah, Susie and the Captain is sideways.