End of Gaby's vacation

Gaby’s last two days were spend in Panama City with shopping at Albrook Mall, the biggest mall I have ever seen; Gaby was dumbfound to see the prices, a pair of jeans $5.99, blouses and T-Shirts $ 2.99, shoes as low as 1.99 and not to mention the low liquor prices.

We enjoyed a bottle of bubbly in the pool on the top floor of the Costa Inn hotel with a magnificent view over all the high rise buildings of down town Panama and all the freighters anchored out in the bay awaiting their transit through the canal, enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Casa Blanco in the new-old town “Casco Viejo” which reminds me of Cartagena. Of course you haven’t seen Panama if you haven’t seen the Panama Canal so we went to the Miraflores Lock and spent almost all day visiting the museum and watching the big ships go through while having lunch at the restaurant, best buffet I have had in a long time. It’s fascinating watching the boats come through the locks and brought memories back from our Panama crossings. It’s definitely a different view from the visitor’s center than being on the canal itself.

We ended her visit to Panama with a Swiss cheese Fondue at the Rincon Suiza recapturing Gaby’s vacation. Gaby was a wonderful guest and we enjoyed having her with us and hope she will come visit us again. She truly enjoyed her vacation as she satisfied her curiosity what we do all day living on a boat.

A couple days later we invited Cindy and Reed over for dinner to catch up with them. 

Cindy and Reed

Bob and Jeannie

Then we rented a car together with Jeannie and Bob on Island Dreamin’ and drove all over Panama City. Manuela did all the driving and luckily Bob knowing the city somewhat did and incredible job navigating her through the busy streets of Panama. We dropped our Radar off and a week later we found out that it was not hit by lightening there is nothing wrong with the radar it’s our ground plane that needs to be fixed which will keep Sid busy for a while. We hit so many stores in Panama and are just fascinated how low the prices are in pretty much everything and you can find pretty much anything here. Two days of just shopping around finding parts and this and that we decided we needed a fun day and extended our car rental for an extra day driving to the Panama Canal where Manuela played tour guide and managed to get into the Miraflores visitor center for free while Jeannie, Bob and Sid paid half price for being old farts.

They enjoyed the museum and we all agreed how incredible it is to watch the boats come through. Our fun trip ended having a gourmet pick-nick in Gamboa along the Canal and visiting the Gamboa Resort, wow what an incredible hotel.



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Gamboa Resort

 




While girls were watching view

Boys watched TV !!

Oops caught!!!

Not a boring moment in and on Paradise. If I thought that we would have some relaxing days after the driving stress in Panama I was wrong. Cindy and Reed picked us up for a pizza lunch and then to their friend Binnie’s house where they all meet every Sunday for ping-pong. The coolest thing about this visit was getting a tour of her beautiful house to find she has 3 sloths. Where is the camera when you need it? They truly are cute, 2 of them are 2 toed and the little one is a 3 toed sloth. The 3 toed are very mellow and friendly the 2 you have to be careful they have some nice K9 teeth that can do some harm not to mention the claws on their toes.

We managed to rest for two days before heading to the Free Zone in Colon for one day, wow that is like a city in itself. No wonder they give you a 3 day pass as one day is definitely not enough to see everything. Early the following day Manuela headed into Panama City with Cindy and Reed while Sid worked in the bilge redoing the ground plane and bonding wires under the floor and anywhere where it is hard to get to. Poor guy had cut up hands and nicks and bruises all over when I came home. But that didn’t keep him from joining us again for a Free Zone day.

And boom the week is over again and we will be heading out to Linton for ping-pong and to pet the sloths.

The weather has been grumpy all this time, around 4 pm a nasty swell comes in from the west and rolls all the boats around and of course it rains at least once a day and we’re getting pretty good with the rain shuffle.

We are still waiting for the mail and a few parts. We will start moving around soon we hope.



We are just  having fun!