A Restful Stay at Shelter Bay

Location: Panama City, Panama

I meant to publish this in Shelter Bay, but the (purchased) wifi only works for two devices per account, and my cellphone was piggybacking off Jem's account so I couldn't use my laptop. The wifi, which was slightly expensive, was of the same consistency and quality as my sleep schedule at sea. (Bad.)

I've been getting eight hours of sleep! It's miraculous; I don't feel about to drop dead every second that I'm awake. Along with good sleep, I finally got a good shower, and we washed our sheets! Centuries of muck have been peeled off. I am a new woman, excluding the back pain and cracking joints and affinity for going to bed at 10pm. Jem refers to my age as "nineteen going on ninety."

Monday we took the bus to the nearby town of Colón, near the mouth of the Panama canal. On the shuttle bus to town, we met a lovely couple from Kingston. It was nice to hear Canadian accents again. (They nearly missed the bus back, because the lady was in line buying quiche.) We did some groceries and I bought some shampoo to replace the one that had fallen overboard. The supermarket was very nice, although there were some interestingly-shaped things in the meat section.

Other chores needing to be done were repairing sails and cleaning the boat, which had accumulated a thick coat of salt as well as various black and green splotches from lubricant for the pulleys. The salt was washed off by the heavy rain that falls several times a day, and we applied a vaguely acidic substance to the deck that removed both the grease spots and a few layers of skin from my feet. To repair the sails we went to go see the people at the local sail loft. Paul, who was in charge, had a very nice hat with a sailboat on it, and very kindly offered to make me one. As I like both boats and hats, a combination of the two seems very exciting.

In almost every marina, there is what is called a "cruisers' net," which is a VHF radio call done every morning with the marina news, things to buy and sell, and various other things such as jokes. Tuesday's jokes were "Why does a chicken coop only have two doors? If it had four, it would be a chicken sedan," "What do you call a pony with a sore throat? A little hoarse," and "What car does an egg drive? A yolkswagen." Wednesday's net had the news that four lions in a local zoo had covid, there was a curfew in Panama 9pm-5am because of covid, and three of the four showers at the marina are broken (one was broken a year ago, one two months ago, and one just now). 

Wednesday morning I went on a walk through the nearby jungle with a couple of other marina residents. After being delayed by a heavy rainstorm, we set out, led by an American couple called Grace and Bud, and accompanied by a man of ambiguous origins whose name I forgot. We'll call him Tim for now. Along for the ride was a girl my age and two ten-year-old girls who knew more about bird species than I ever will in my lifetime. While we didn't see many animals due to the rainstorm, Grace knew a lot about birds, Bud knew a lot about birds and monkeys, and Tim knew a lot about everything, but mostly leaves. Some things that I learned from them: a certain species of toucan makes frog-like sounds, if you smell a barnyard in the jungle it's probably monkeys, and there's a species of lizard called the Jesus lizard that runs on water by trapping air under its webbed feet. The young girls, meanwhile, told me all about capybara dung. We also went to the beach.

(I wanted to string the above and below pictures horizontally like I did with the Salt Whistle Bay pictures, but I got told off for doing that. Normally, I would very eloquently have told the hater "ur not my mom," but in this case, it was, so in this post there will be multiple pictures in columns (where you can zoom in on each one) instead of in a nicely convenient and aesthetically pleasing row.)

This is called a tourist tree because it's red and peeling.

The local restaurant is called The Dock. After a week of cooking on an unsteady boat, we very much appreciated restaurant food. Meals eaten there include: pancakes, penne pesto, an enormous salad, and sancocho, which is my new favourite type of chicken soup. I have no good-quality pictures. Everything was eaten too quickly. Next to The Dock is The Pool, capitalized because it is truly a capital place. I swam a lot of laps in there.

The night before we left, we made friends with Jesse, who flew in for a couple of days to check on his boat in the yard. Jesse is another Ontarian--there seem to be many in this part of the world. It was nice hearing again "about" and "sorry" pronounced the Can-eh-dian way.

Today we took a taxi to Panama City, on the other side of the country. It took only an hour. We're staying at Jem's friend Richard's apartment, which is yet another lovely residence full of plants and art. 

(Look at that terribly long line of pictures. Hope you're happy, MOM.)

Richard lives in the old city, and as we walked around there, I saw some lovely street art.

The apartment has a beautiful rooftop terrasse, with a beautiful view of downtown. We will eat dinner up there soon, hopefully right after I publish this as I am quite hungry, but Jem will probably tell you that that is my usual state of being.

Here's your sunset picture. Adiós.