Island Girls

Well the weather did hold out for our island trip, in fact it was fabulous! We woke up pretty early again this morning and managed to leave the hotel by a little after 7am and the sun was shining already at that time! We think it must have been about 27 to 30 degrees already!

We caught a taxi to the port for the ferry to Taboga...we only got a little lost on the way because the ferry has changed docks from when our travel guide was written, but we made it on the ferry in time to get a seat on the second level with a great view of the scenery. There were barely any clouds in the sky and we had a great view of the little islands sticking up out of the water on the way to Taboga as well as many boats, mostly freightliners, lining up to pass through the Panama Canal. Some of them were huge!

We arrived on the island at around 9am and spent the first hour wandering the island. The houses there were all painted with bright pastel colours and were all named with cute little cottage names. Some were very impressive! The town was very clean and all of the local people were very friendly. One boy even stopped to tell us a little about the town....but we decided not to take his suggestion to do an ´´easy´´ hike up the side of a mountain...he said it would only take us half an hour, but we didn´t believe him...it probably would have taken us at least 2...and we don´t want heat stroke on our first full day here!

After a thourough exploration of the town (it consisted of about 4 rows of houses along the bay and a big white church) we hit the beach where we camped out for the rest of our time on the island. We rented an umbrella for 5 dollars from a man who called himself Orlando Florida and by alternating between the shade of the ´para sol´ and the water all day we managed to get only mildly sunburned. As we sat on the beautiful tropical beach we couldn´t help but look back at the stormcloud pouring rain on Panama City with a smile because we were happy to be missing it. The rain reached the island just as we were preparing to leave and though the trip back to the city was a little slow, and wet, by the time we reached land the rain had almost stopped.

Once the boat docked we walked over to a really cute open air restaurant with a thatched roof overlooking the bay named ´Mi Ranchito´. Mommy Shelley had a plate of jumbo garlic shimp (with the heads still on!!!) and I had a plate of calamari..but not the battered and fried kind we get at home, this was fresh and very tender. It was really good and we are quite enjoying our seafood diet.

After dinner the rain had stopped so we went for a walk along ´The Causeway´which is home to a few shops, restaurants and bars on a little island separated from the mainland by only two lane road and promenade. We ended up walking for close to two hours to get back to the mainland because all of the taxi drivers were trying to charge us a fortune to get back....more than 4 times what we paid to get there! It was a really nice walk down the promenade though so we didn´t mind too much...and Mom´s knee isn´t even all that sore! She been a trooper so far, but we´ll have to make sure we don´t wear out that knee because the trip is just beginning!

Once we finally found a taxi to take us ´home´we were a little relieved, because it was still quite a long walk back! We had him drop us off one block from our hotel filled with shops and restaraunts and stopped in at a pharmacy suprisingly similar to Shoppers where we bought some snacks to go with our beers tongiht. Robin, you´ll be interested to know that the bag of peanuts and rasins we got is named Manitoba!

So after a full day we are back at the hostel and two beers and a few hands of rummy later we are ready for bed!

Tomorrow its off to ´Casco Viejo´ an older part of the city to explore the sights of Panama City and then we will hit the Miraflores Locks (any amazing race watchers will be familiar with this place!) to check out the Panama Canal.