Life in Panama City

The weather is great here.  Afternoon temps are in the 80's, with an occasional squall.  We look forward to rain as we are using our awning as a water catcher.  One good downpour can replenish our 175 gallon water tanks.

There's a busy shipping canal that passes close to downtown.  Its fun to watch the ships squeeze through.  The Panamanians are building new and bigger locks to handle even larger ships then these.

There is good shopping.  You can find almost anything needed.  All it takes is a bunch of time and a bunch of money for taxi fares.

It has a thoroughly modern infrastructure.

Getting to town is the biggest adventure of all.  Most cruisers are at anchor and dingy ashore.  Dingys are nosed in to the steps that provide access to land, passengers alight carrying garbage, computers, tools and an occasional acetylene bottle.

The concrete steps are awash at high tide and exposed during low.  They are covered with sea slime, making them extremely slippery.  Almost everyone takes a fall at some time.  After dropping off passengers the dingy driver takes the dingy out to the floating dock, often scrambling over other dingys, and ties it to bollards or exposed rebar.  All that remains is to jump into the very little, very unstable shuttle boat and pull one's self to shore using the rope.

It's really quite simple if you can climb like a mountain goat and are not a little dyslexic.

There has got to be an easier way.