A day in the life of sailors anchored off Panama City, Panamá

We motored 9 nautical miles from Isla Taboga to Panama City. The short passage is almost entirely through the hazardous cargo anchorage of sea-going ships, waiting their turn to transit the Panama Canal.

We dropped our anchor in a small-craft anchorage known by sailboat cruisers as Las Brisas, off an island named Isla Perico (Parakeet island).

The dinghy dock costs $1/day and is just a few minutes walk to a public bus stop. In Panama City, you pay the bus or subway fare using a card, which you recharge as needed. The fare is currently 35 cents per person.

The bus goes to the Albrook Station, which is a sprawling transit terminal connected to the Albrook shopping mall. From that station, we catch the subway to the Cinco de Mayo neighborhood.

Many Americans are familiar with Cinco de Mayo, which in Mexico celebrates the Mexican triumph over the French in the Battle of Puebla. In Panamá, however, Cinco de Mayo is a reminder of a 1914 explosion and fire that destroyed a big part of the city center, and remembers the heroic efforts of the firefighters and police that risked their lives to contain the fire and rescue people.

We walked through Cinco de Mayo to the Casco Antiguo neighborhood to pick up some packages, and enjoyed watching some Guna children perform a dance. The Guna are a tribe of indigenous people, whose women often wear distinctive and colorful clothing (you'll see a few in this video).

To return to Miette, we retraced our steps back to the subway, back to a bus, then back to Isla Perico.