Happy New Year!

We are back in Panama City, after having a really nice New Years in El Valle.  At least I had a really nice New Years, neither Dick nor Eric could stay awake long enough to hang out until midnight.  I spent midnight on the roof of the hotel with the hotel owners and several people who were staying at the hotel.  We shot off a bunch of fireworks and watched the rest of the town shoot off enormous amounts of pyrotechnics.  There was no organized display, people just took that into their own hands.  And it was really something, there was a place up the road that must have had 4 different people lighting off rockets almost continually for about 15 minutes.  The hotel next door to us was setting them off one at a time for at least an hour.  We had maybe a dozen different pieces on our roof.  The hotel owner, Enrique, asked me to light the big roman candles he had brought, cause otherwise he was going to have to let his daughter light them, and he figured it was best to let the foreigner hurt himself rather than his daughter!  After most of the fireworks were used up they tried to get me to help them with their feast, a roast pig (with head still on) but I had eaten too much already and had to decline.  I hope this wasn't interpreted as too rude, refusing food can be tricky.  I took a pear just to try to express my appreciation, which I had for breakfast.

Today it was a little hard to leave, since so many people took an interest in our adventures.  There are a ton of Canadians and Americans in this town, many interested in buying property, so it sort of reminded me of Boquete.  There was one guy, Bob from Memphis, who made an enormous amount of money buying and selling real estate who told me a few of his tricks, so watch out world - anyone want to sell me a warranted deed on a fixer upper?

We made it back to Panama City in only a couple hours, and are back in the expensive hotel near the airport.  Tomorrow at 8amwe bring the bikes to Girag, along with $652 in cash, and after giving them a ton of money and our motorcycles, we hope they pop out the other end of the system in Quito on Wednesday.  We are taking a morning flight to Quito on Tuesday. 

Sunday January 1, 2006 - 04:37pm (PST)