Off to San Blas

After one week in Panama City, some relaxing and sight seeeing, we are embarking on our sailing boat to Colombia today. We already met our sailing group. 3 crew members, 5 people from Australia, one couple from Scotland, one German girl and we! Seems like a good group, everyone is the same age and seems nice!

Exciting times...

Internet, Skype and Mall incl. Cineday

After sleeping quite long (yesterday we went out to Casco Viejo, had a nice Aperetif on a rooftop bar, good dinner and a "Absacker" Drink in a nice bar ), today we called some people and will now after updating the blog go to a Mall. It is so damn hot here in town, that we are really looking forward to hanging around there with Aircondition!;-) In the evening we will watch the new movie of the American Pie series.

Welcome to Panama City

Welcome to Panama City! As we heard and read lots of good things about the capital of Panama, we decided to spend almost a week here. It is really impressive, they have skyskrapers alla New York and also lots of traffic as it is in big cities, but we really like it. After travelling around beaches, forests and mountains we are happy to join again a big city life, at least for a while...haha.

old and new in one picture

Look for some news and pictures at http://volunteertravellatinamerica.blogspot.com/p/panama.html

Celebrating my 26th birthday in Panama

Lots of people must think, wow, celebrating your birthday in panama...how special. In fact, it is not that different, actually i am missing my friends and family bit but Michael makes up for it all....after a  nice breakfast with a little present from Michael we did a little hike in the morning to a waterfall and got back right when it started to rain. In the afternoon I called my parents and sister so they can congratulate me...:) I even got a birthday cake from Michael, baked by the woman at the hostel. Unfortunately, it wasnt 100% done, so we just ate little parts of it! And tonight, Michael will invite me to a nice pizzeria.....cant wait!

Magdalena

Flight back home...

We did not book a flight back from Germany as we were not sure from where to fly back... now, as we finally will go to Colombia, we had to look for a flight. It was very strange to think and discuss about the date when we should fly back, as we are at the moment just in the middle of our whole trip... In the end it was all about the price of the flight ticket - so we booked a flight departing from Bogota, Colombia, on the 31st of july and arriving in Frankfurt, Germany, the 1st of August 22h local time.
But enough of thinking about home...;-)

Our search for a sailing boat to colombia...

The first time we heard about crossing the boarder from Panama to Colombia with a sailing boat, passing 2 days on the magic caribbean islands of San Blas, we decided: this is a must on our trip! There are several boats and captains offering this, some with great, some with bad reputation in the web... There is a nice hostel, called mamallena, in Panama City which provides all backpackers with the information, departures and descriptions of all boats, which is very useful.
Well, we have the option between 3 boats, which leave around the date we want. One of them, Ave maria, was out from the beginning because of bad things in the web. The next, Fritz the Cat, with an austrian captain, seemed nice and we booked it also because of the quite cheap price of 480USD, but then we read also some strange things about him. And as we really want it to be THE perfect trip, we discussed again and decided to take the even more expensive boat called One World, departing on the 4th of may. Now we are happy, hopefully chosen the right boat ! ;-)

Panamaaaaaa, here we come!

We arrived safe and sound in Panama! Our first stop in Panama is Bocas del Toro, a group of islands in the Carribbean see. We haven`t had time to write any articles but check out the pictures under the tab "Panama". Oh yeah, and we had a really interesting taxi ride with a guy who usually works as a soldier on the Panama-Colombia-border! For the ones who dont know anything about that border....you cant cross the Panama-Colombia border by foot, it is pure jungle! The area is dangerous due to drug trafficking and people who try to cross the border illegally.


     

Here is the direct link to the Panama tab: http://www.volunteertravellatinamerica.blogspot.com/p/panama.html