Water, water everywhere. Down pours at 1:00 pm are the norm now and with no way to properly dry our clothes because of the humidity we can barely stand each other. Riding from David to Panama saw us go thru 3 major rain storms, with us pouring out half a litre of water out of our boots. We finally got a respit in the morning and did a tour of the Canal and area around it, formally owned by the U.S military. They are now working on two more lock areas to keep up with the world demand for more products. We found a hotel (Euro Hotel) downtown with locked parking and the next day took a tour of the old part of Panama City. Seems progress does not work for everyone. The people that are the most poor are being forced out of the older areas to make way for boutiques and 50 story highrise condos. Some are now literally living on the streets. Carol was drooling in the emerald stores that line many of the streets in this historic part of town.
Major construction is happenning in downtown Panama City, fueled by it's rating for 6 yrs. in a row as the best place to retire in the world. There is a very strong presense of Middle Eastern money in Panama, and there are replicas of building styles similar to those in Dubai; the building that looks like a sail and another that has floors that a stationary but move out from its center creating a spiral of sorts.
We waited for a couple more days before heading down to Carti-San blas and met up with the ship "Stahlratte" and 18 other motorcycle enthusiasts from 14 different countries.Ludwig and his crew treated us to the best time imaginable. We had a super BBQ on a small island after an afternoon of swimming and snorkeling.The next day was spent just relaxing on the boat anchored in between several tiny islands while others went to explore a reef futher out that had a scuttled ship on it. The next day we took off for Colombia(30hrs. sail time) and were met with some wet weather, seeing as how it's the rainy season.
Clearing customs for both the bikes and us was a very long process even with handlers in place taking care of the paper work. Seeing as how we had no berth to dis-embark we had to shuttle from the ship to shore and find accomodations. The next day we retrieved our bikes and had to spend most of the day importing and getting insurance. Once again it poured so hard that large sections of Cartegena were under several inches of rain. We had to wait at the importation terminal for 4.5 hrs before being allowed to leave to get insurance. After getting insurance we shuttled back to the ship to get all our gear(saddlebags, duffelbags) all while it's raining. Our bikes had to be lowered onto a motorized dinghy and then hauled off by hand at the pier, very unnerving but it all ran smoothly. We stayed at the CasaMara hotel for three days , seeing the sites of Cartegena and trying to dry out cothes. Hopefully the road to Medellin finds us on dry roads because it's getting embarrassing explaining the new folds of skin between my toes.