Everyone was up early, I gained the galley about 6am, not before numerous others. Today will be a hurry up and wait day. Seas are rough. the boat is anchored in 5 foot swells and the captain is going to talk to the local Kuna chief to get permission for us to ride from El Porvenier along the road that is being repaired from damages caused in the fall rainy season, instead of putting our bikes on launches and taking them and us to the next community down the coast 25 miles on the open ocean. This could have been treacherous for us and the bikes. Instead he motored the Stahlratte to the local airfield where there is a dock and tried 3 times, but the water was too rough and ended up anchoring and using a launch to move the bikes to shore. Michael helped again and he ended up lifting 5 bikes out of the launch, up 4-5 feet onto the dock. This service of the launch cost $50 per bike. One condition of using the road was an escort by locals in a pickup truck ($10 per bike) to the Panamerican Highway. Not a kilometer from the dock, military at a checkpoint took an hour to extract another $11 per person. All of which should have been included in the price of the Stahlratte sailing as we were not informed of this until confirmation emails a few days prior to departure, at which point we had waited for 2 weeks for this boat. Riding through the jungle to the Panamerican Highway was great.. The road undulated like a roller coaster with some steep parts that would make the coaster look tame. Pavement conditions were poor, but fun, all the same. The Panamerican was straight and boring, but coming into Panama City was very impressive. Beautiful skyline, and buildings, roads great and GPS working well. Took a wrong turn and went across the "Bridge of the Americas" and back. Wow is it tall! Found the hostel with 4 other bikes in tow. What a day!
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