We are tanked up, fueled up, provisioned up, boat projected out and more than ready to get on our way- which we did today. We & Slick are headed 40 miles out into the Bay of Panama to the Las Perlas islands to stop for a day and clean up the hull before leaving for the Galapagos. Panama City rivals Cartagena, Columbia for dirty air and barnacle growth on the hull. We haven't gotten in the water yet but we can see a few hundred barnacles along the waterline, surely there are more below. The Las Perlas islands are supposed to be nice and the water cleaner so it's a popular place to stop; plus it's on the way. We were surprised at how many fish were in the anchorage- looked to be schools of baby tuna and the phosphorescence at night was some of the brightest we've ever seen. Even the wet dinghy painter, once in the cockpit for the night, sparkled every time you touched it. So the water looked good but we weren't sure we should get into it.

During the past week, we did one last canal transit to help Tim & Nathan get their boat through- if anyone has any questions about the Panama canal, we are all official gurus at this point! We spent a day wandering around Casco Viejo, the historical, old part of the city that is actively being restored and it was really quite nice. We also went into the more modern high-rise part of the city one night to meet Tim & his friend Luisa (who came from Boston for a short visit to transit the canal) for dinner and while it is a big city, it didn't feel like Miami to me, as our cruising guide suggested. It still feels very Central American. There are cabs everywhere, street food on every corner, little tiendas, uneven sidewalks, fumes & noise- the whole package! We had a nice dinner at a Brazilian place- figuring we'd load up on meat while we can!

The cruising boat anchorage is at La Playita in Panama City which sits at the end of a 2 mile causeway so anytime you need to go into the city to do anything, you need to get a taxi there & back. So, over the past few days we shared taxis to get into town and buy whatever we needed since this is the last good place to get stuff before New Zealand. Luisa arrived with our newest autopilot pump and a tiller pilot as well since we can put that on the windvane for another method of self steering, and a few other odds & ends. We spent time fixing the autopilot, doing engine maintenance, replacing the membranes in the watermaker, final provisioning, etc. Since the trip to the Galapagos is often a windless passage, most people buy extra fuel jugs, so we did this too. The most recent thing to bust was our Weems & Plath brass nautical clock. One morning we woke up & it was still midnight, changed the battery and still nothing! We look at that clock all the time and definitely needed something there! Being down here requires some ingenuity in that you can't get just anything so we bought a cheap clock that had similar guts and Jon went to work with his tools, black magic marker and the glue gun (Dad would approve!) and before I knew it the clock was back up on the wall and telling time! The black marker was to color the white hands.

And the past 2 days, we did the grocery shopping which is sort of overwhelming. Both local grocery store chains are large and carry a great variety. I found it really interesting that some things are markedly cheaper than the US. Pepperidge Farm cookies, Carrs Crackers, olives & Guinness beer are just a few of my favorite bargain items! A 12 pack of Guinness is $8 which is a nice break from rum, which of course is also cheap. We won't buy much of anything except what fresh produce, dairy & meat we can find until New Zealand so what we bring with us is what we've got- and we've got plenty!

Yesterday was the produce market trip- another taxi which dropped us off in what looked like an abandoned dirt parking lot but inside the cement walls a whole other “city” appeared rich with smells of produce and other smells too! There is the watermelon area, the pineapple area, the banana area, the squash area, and on like that. Then there were covered areas filled with assorted veggies- beautiful baby bok choy, napa cabbage, colored peppers, leeks, leaf lettuce, beets- all sorts of nice looking stuff at modest prices. There were loads of vendors eager to help you. Everyone was really nice to us as we fumbled along with our Spanish; it was actually fun to shop at each of the stalls and converse with people, many have a great sense of humor and are trying to learn English as we are trying to learn their language. The man we bought the pineapples from cut one up for us so we could taste it- these are the pineapples we remember from the last trip- absolutely delicious, 50 cents apiece. What they don't have in cucumbers they certainly make up for in pineapples! Then it was back to the boat to put it all away.

We've met some great people and look forward to getting to know them more as we move through the islands in the coming months. We joined the “Pacific Puddle Jumpers” Rally which is a rally in the loosest sense in that it just pulls together the cruisers headed across the Pacific for camaraderie and information sharing but there is no specific itinerary. They have a website where you join and a roster of the boats of which several were in our anchorage, so it makes it easy for introductions. Plus there's an email forum for questions.

Today has been a motor trip and it's hot & hazy. We look forward to getting into clearer water & horizons. We've seen a turtle & a whale and lots of pelicans but no fish have jumped onto our lines yet. We're sort of in a competition with Slick on who's going to get the most fish this trip and even though we drove over to an area where pelicans were crash diving for fish, there's been no action on Evergreen.

The passage to the Galapagos should be about 7-8 days or so and hopefully will be uneventful. We recently found out that in order to be able to get permission to move among more than 1 anchorage, the latest requirements involve an additional $700 fee for a 30 day stay and a 6 week minimum advance notice. So…. we'll only be able to take our boat to one anchorage, Academy Bay for up to 20 days, and if we want to do a tour to another island, we'll have to leave our boat at anchor & board a tour boat. It's unlikely that we'll do this. Seems a bit over the top, even if you consider that you'll never pass this way again- where do you stop the hemorrhaging of the bank account? There are things you can do on Santa Cruz island where we'll be based, including the Darwin Research Center so we should be able to get a peek at the Galapagos wildlife there. But between there and here are 800 ocean miles to cover, so we'll tackle that first!