Panama City

We arrived into Panama City which is more like a city in the U.S. than Central America, with lots of high rise buildings and a metropolitan feel. Alan was waiting for us at our hostel, Emma having flown back to Ireland. It will be the 3 of us now for the next month or so.

We wandered around the old town, which is very different to the main part of the city with a very colonial feel, and visited the large fish market where we got ceviche. That night we had our meeting with the first mate of our boat that we'd be getting to Colombia along with the other people who'd be on it.

The next day we met Sam who had now arrived in Panama City for his flight home and the 3 of us went to the Panama Canal which Alan had already seen. The canal and lock system is incredibly impressive and the sheer magnitude of the operation and size of the boats is hard to believe. We saw everything from 2 small catamarans passing through together to huge container ships somehow fitting through the channels. That evening we grabbed Alan and the 4 of us headed to the cinema to see the new avengers movie.

After an emotional goodbye to Sam we're now back at our hostel because we've an early wake up call tomorrow morning to head to our boat and the adventure we're really looking forward to... 5 days on the sea and visiting the San Blas Islands en route to Colombia aboard the 'El Gitano Del Mar'.