Escape from Panama July 18th/2011

Hard as it was we left Shelter Bay with Seacycle sitting tucked away on the hard in the fenced security yard. We took the marina bus to Colon where we caught the express bus across the isthmus to the Albrook Mall in Panama city. Three fifty for the ride. A short taxi ride later and we were in The Costa Inn where we stayed for two nights before our flight on Monday night. The weekend was spent picking up odds and ends for the trip and some new shoes for myself. We are travelling light everything is in our 40 litre backpacks from Mountain Equipment Coop the same drill as on the camino and small enough for carry on. The jury is out on whether this will work for a three month trip. The reasoning is that we can always pick up a cheap bag for checkin if we end up with too many trip items. Not a big worry when you live on a sailboat. Roger pick us up on Monday morning for what turned out to be a futile hunt for an ac adapter for the Ereader and then it was off to the airport where we were early enough to be offered the 5pm flight to Lima instead of the 9:30pm. That was great except for the fact an arrangement was already made for a pickup at the Lima airport to take us to our hotel. That was fixed with a quick phone call back to Toronto where Nicole called straight through to the Lima hostel and rescheduled our pickup for the earlier flight. It was our first time on Copa airlines and it was short and very comfortable.On arrival in Lima I was stopped for the luggage scan which was a bit of worry since there are restrictions on electronics and I was carrying two of my IPods as well as Deb[s, plus my EReader. Anyways they didn´t seem interested and we breezed through found an ATM loaded up on Peruvian soles and found our taxi driver getting to the hostal at 12:20am and crashing a lot sooner than expected getting a great nights sleep.