Saturday 10th December – Watching England’s defeat with Luke & George

Luke and George had spend the night in Panama City having flown in last night on Air France. They had an early taxi of about two and a half hours driving through the jungle to get to the coast closest to us. They think they were on the Pan American highway for a while, they saw very little traffic just rather amazing scenery, almost in the Darien Gap. A water taxi brought them over to the bar near us on Banedup. It all went very smoothly, and they even caught us out by being half an hour early! They were both in good form, George is a friend from Bath university, he’s an engineer working for Dyson, he still lives in Bath.

Luke and George on board

Great fun to have them on board. We were soon out in the dinghy going for a snorkel, where we saw some impressive coral, not much fish life and what there was, was very small. Except for the enormous shark (6ft at least!- Nurse shark we think) that we saw swimming around the jetty before we got in. Thankfully we didn’t see it once we were in the water.

We had tied up at the bar and ordered lunch as we discovered they had a TV and said they would be watching the football. The only other guests were a young university Dutch couple, both extremely good looking, she was a little distracting with her teeny weeny bikini! Luckily they ensured us after they borrowed some snorkels that they were both supporting England. They joined us watching with about 4 local staff, only once we were into the game did she admit that she was half French! We had a very rowdy beer filled afternoon.

In the bar about to watch the football

I just love the local’s boats – view from the bar

Late afternoon we were back on PolePole, a brief sobering up with a cup of tea and then Luke got us playing a card game he brought out, called Crimes Against Humanity – very funny and not very PC at all!

Luke and George made us a delicious prawn curry for supper, goodness knows where they get their stamina from, alcohol I assume! So wonderful to have them on board.