Wandering with Tedder and Tamara

5/28: Colon to Portobelo

We took our trip out to the Colon Free Zone (zona libre) first thing in the morning. It's a city-in-a-city, walled off and secured from the rest of the city. That's because of the lack of tariffs and such. It was kind of a weird place- not really set up for retail. Basically it was probably 60% clothing, 20% electronics (most was the really cheap Asian stuff), and the rest was a mix of various things- small motorbikes, jewelry, etc. We probably spent about 90 minutes in there, just wandering around.

Next, we went back, packed up, then went to an Internet cafe for a while. We then called Captain Steve and headed out to Portobelo. I'm tired of that trip- it's twisty and scenic, but too much risk to have a lot of fun, and it was really warm. There was too much wind to take the sailboat in to the dock, so we figured we'd wait until the next day and load it on a panga.

There's really only one place to stay in Portobelo, a very run-down hospitaje. Real small rooms, bugs and such everywhere. Thankfully they had one room with air conditioning- that made things a little easier to handle.

5/29: Portobelo bike loading

After a quick breakfast, we rounded up some workers and loaded the bike onto the sailboat. It was much sketchier than I'd initially imagined.

I rode the bike out onto the concrete dock, then basically off the dock into a small panga (about 4 feet below the dock). From there, we motored out to the sailboat, then used the main line on the mast to raise it up onto the sailboat. Again, that meant lifting the bike maybe 8 feet, up and over the edge of the sailboat. We then flopped the bike on its side and secured it onto the deck. It was relatively straightforward to set down.

The workers are used to hauling material across the bay- there is an island or peninsula on the far side, and all the building materials come from this side. The workers were putting wheelbarrows of sand and aggregate in the pangas, loading them until the boat was barely above water. They'd ride across the bay and then unload it again. Seems like a lot of work.

We leave very early in the morning, so we'll spend the night on the sailboat so we don't have to wake up when it's time to leave.