"A LADY TRIP" Sailing around the world and avoidind the recession, ( presently in Flemingo Marina , Panama)
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Mon 1 Feb 2010 02:42
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SATURDAY 30th January 2010
07.00hrs, Aileen shot out of bed and went for a
walk, mind you, shops and offices tend to open very early here,
Some interesting things about " Panama"
:-
At each corner on the Marina, and each Street
corner in the city and environ's , there is a large SKIP.
The result is very little rubbish thrown around ,
and the general public dont use the road side as a common dump.
07.45 hrs the rest of us slowely crawled out of the
scratchers and shook ourselves down,
" Thurah" was on the marina and we paid the
man for the great work he did yesterday . $110 for the topsides and cleaning the
hull
underwater, thats less than half the money for
twice the work than we paid in Rodney Bay..The Skipper was delighted with
himself.
10.30hrs We all took off on a tour organised
by " Grattan" of Panama City, starting with the " Old Colonial Spanish
City,
This was very run down with lots of Getto's and
plenty of rough diamond's walking around, so we were warned to be
carefull.
The first place we stopped was " San Jose " church
which has a solid gold Alter. ( or so they say)
The story is that when " Black Beard " the pirate
attacked the city in around 1700 AD , the locals painted the Alter black so
Black Beard wouldent notice the Gold, It must have
worked as the alter is still there in place and looks good too.
We then went to the new City, It looked more like
Singapore or Shanghai than our impression of what we were
anticipating.
Other things about here :-
Almost NO one ever heard of " Ireland " and we
found this strange and funny
Almost everyone thought that english originated in
America , and not England, in fact they only knew England as a country
in Europe.
Almost No one spoke english..... Typical bleedin
Spaniards.
The local currency is the mighty U.S.$
13.00 hrs We stopped and had a super lunch in
a restaurant called " Napoli ", This was after our invasion of some of the
luxury
residential tower blocks on the edge of the Sea, (
reminds me of Ireland a few years ago)
Mind you, a 5000sq.foot 5 bed appt on top of a
tower block would cost a mere $ 1,000,000 and annual service charges of approx
$1800.
these blocks, by the way include manned security
desks and 24hr supervision.and all the usual swimming pools, gym's, car parks,
etc.
NEED I SAY
ANYMORE.................?
15.00hrs We then paid a visit to the old ruined
town, which was the original Spanish settlement,
Kevin and Stephen found the energy to climb all the
way to the top of the ruined Cathedral, and take some good snap shots of "
Panama "
The history of the place was facinating and it was
almost totally sacked by " Black Beard" ( Henry Morgan, the Pirate and of
english extraction ?)
Its easy to see why they are loved so much by
everyone....xxxxxx
16.30hrs Back to the Boat,
17.00hrs, We went to a breifing at Bennigan's ,
given by the World Cruising Club, ( Andrew Bishop & Co.)
later the Skipper opened the mail to find an email
from " Marilyn" This was very nice and the Skip was delighted she ignored
the instructions from " Fats" suggesting no emails,
load of bollux,
WE LOVE TO GET
EMAILS, so long as they do not have photo's or attachments comming
with them...
19.30hrs Free drinks at the marina for the
World Arc Crowd.
21.00hrs The BUS
PARTY. ohhhhhhh, this was a party with a difference, A Party
on wheels,
The BUS, certainly from the first world war, ( If
not before) had no windows, ( not unusual here) and had a silver pole in the
center
of the bus, for the adventerous , and ropes
strapped along the roof for hanging onto when dancing while the BUS is
travelling along.
Of course the whole scene was fuelled with copious
quantities of free rum & cokes being served while the disc
jockey
rattled our ears with disco type music.
The Bus never exceeded 10mph and drove around
Panama for 3 hours , with a short stop for photo's of the newely arranged
lovers.
Sex never seemed far away, But the Skipper had put
Chastity belts on the crew before leaving, and dumped the keys overboard for
goob measure.
It was a friggin great and different party
and will be remembered for a long time. even those who had to be
carried off and stuffed into their sleeping bags.
There were lots of funny things about it, one being
the driver,,
HE was so small , he could barely see over the
steering wheel, which was so big that his arms could hardle reach across the
thing,
then add a friggin hat and you get the picture, !
oh and of course it was dark and we had
millions of coloured flashing lights, inside and
out............WOW
There were going to be lots of sick heads
tomorrow.. SERVES THEM RIGHT, right Marilyn
!
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