Portobello, Panama

Just rocked up in Portobello, Panama, http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=es&tab=wl where our boat leaves from tomorrow. It was a pretty good journey from Panama City, 2 buses, the second of which played really cool Latin music. Portobello is a very, very quiet town, with literally nothing happening, hence straight into the internet cafe to try and update the mammoth backlog of photos i have from my travels. Of course I left my notebook containing Cuban diary at the hostel, which is run by a Canadian guy called Marco. The hostel has a tiny little pet monkey, which looks like it would sooner bite your finger off than perform cute tricks. I kept clear of it although Mike stroked it, yuk.

We did some tourist suff in Panama, although really it was a stop off to get to Cartagena, Colombia. We saw the canal, built in 1913 and only recently handed over to the Panamanian governement by the Americans. Luckily there was a boat going through the locks at the time, otherwise this would be one of the worlds most boring tourist attractions, unless you were really into engineering. We were given a tour of Panama City by one of my friends nieces, she kindly picked us up in her 4x4 and drove us round town, plus we went for a great fish lunch with patacones, double fried plaintain to you and me, followed by the worlds largest ice cream sundae. Have spent most of the past few days chilling in the hostel, meeting alot of people, mainly Europeans and `speaking a fair amount of Spanish, which is improving alot I am pleased to report.

Anyway, I am kind of jibbering here. Basically tomorrow we set off for what should be an AWESOME trip, 1 day sailing to the San Blas islands http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=es&tab=wl which is a collection of 400`pretty much unspoilt islands where we will spend 2 nights, then a 48 hour journey in the open sea to Cartagena on the Colombian Carribean coast, although I hear the crossing to Cartagena once we leave the San Blas islands is pretty rough and people get sea sick (we have bought anti nausea pills and wristbands to combat this, plus a bottle of rum to stave off the boredom). The boat is a 55 footer, we met the captains, they seemed decent and there will be 7 other passengers. Plus, they are happy to allow passengers to try out crewing the boat, should be interesting.......