Saturday, February 16, 2013, Bogota, Columbia.

We learned that Carnival is serious business in Panama. In my last post we hoped that on Wednesday, with the festivities over, we could make arrangements to ship the bikes to Columbia and find a battery at the dealer for Deby’s bike. Wrong and wrong. Evidently the day after Carnival is an official holiday to let the hangovers wear off so we found ourselves with another day of hanging around the Country Inn next to the Panama Canal. With nothing to do Tuesday night we went back to the Carnival fiesta, this time with camera in hand.

Into the madness. 

Crazy decorated floats. 

A gazillion people and kids everywhere. 

Drum lines of congas! Wow! 

More kids. 

Big watermelon hats. 

Super elaborate floats – more racy than we would see in the US. 

Checking out the main stage from off to the side. 

Needed a good shot of the bass player. 

Half of the fun for the kids was to run around and spray people with a kind of soapy spray stuff. Even though we all were hit at least once, Michael seemed to be a prime target. 

The next day, Wednesday, we got up and rode to the other end of town to the BMW dealer in search of a battery for Deby’s bike. Nope, closed for what I now call “hangover day”. Dejected we turned around and fought traffic and heat on the crowded roads back to the hotel. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a sign for “Casa de las Baterias”. Even I knew enough Spanish to recognize it meant “The House of Batteries”. After a quick U-Turn we stopped and negotiated with sign language a new battery that was an exact fit with only a $50.00 price tag. Done deal.

I had the battery in the bike and verified it was working by noon, with another free day ahead of us we decided to ride back to the locks and see if any ships were going through. This time luck was with us so we revisited the museum with much lighter crowds and watched a few ships go through the locks.

I saw this sign, seems like good advice for any boat. 

Typical freighter and tug boats in the locks. 

Here’s Michael!

They had a really cool virtual reality mock up of the bridge of a ship going through the locks, we went through at least three times. 

Deby took a turn at the controls.

While I sent some commands from the Master Control room.

Here is one place where the really big yachts look pretty small. 

On the way out of the visitor center who should come walking in but our friends Tad and Gaila who we last saw in Nicaragua. What a blast!

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Thursday morning we finally contacted Girag about shipping our motorcycles to Bogota. They could get them shipped out Saturday and they recommended we drop them off at their location Friday “before 4:00 PM”. Ok, we had a plan but that meant we also had another day of just hanging around in Panama City. Deby spent most of the day near the pool reading, Michael and I rode to a nearby shopping mall to kill some time and do a little shopping. In the evening Deby and I took a cab to Tad and Gaila’s hotel to meet them for a valentine’s day dinner at a nearby brew pub. It was great catching up with their travels and getting to see them at their furthest point south in their yearlong motorcycle trip. Here is the link to their blog http://www.overlandnow.com

Deby and Gaila, true adventure motorcycle riders. 

I’m going to get this posted and save our jump into Colombia for the next entry. If you want to see more Panama and Carnival pictures click HERE.

More soon… I promise.

Donn and Deby 🙂 🙂