Hiking and Exploring around the Marina (and Boat Chores)

During our week on the hard, and afterwards, we took several hikes around the marina. I also spent several days doing boat chores, building web pages, and so on.

The area around the marina was originally a U.S. army fort, Ft. Sherman, built to protect this entrance to the Canal. Now some of it is in use by the Panamanian Coast Guard as a base and training facility. Even so, there are many abandoned buildings and numerous roads that run through the area, which makes for fun explorations. The roads provide nice walkways through the otherwise impenetrable tropical jungle.

There was plenty of wildlife around. The area is teeming with birds, and although they are somewhat hard to photograph, you can always hear them chirping and singing in the trees. Also notable was the fact that the resident boatyard manager's wife had adopted an orphaned baby sloth and was often seen with it around the marina.

Apart from these explorations, and a few trips to Colon, mentioned below, we spent most of the week around the marina. We had dinner a few more times, went through the meager pickings of the book exchange library, and continued doing other boat chores, like laundry and provisioning, and properly washing the upper decks and helm.

An important event that took place during this time was that we received a shipment of spare parts from the US. We got some much needed things, like recharge kits for our life vests, extra macerators and rebuild kits for them, and fuel filters for the generator.

Hiking around the Marina