Everyone had told Val she’d never be able to get me up at 6, so that we could catch the early train to Panama, but she made it, + once I’d thrown up. I felt… well, still pretty awful, but human, anyway. A cup of coffee, then out for our train. When we arrived, our next task was to make our way safely from the station safely to the city centre. We set off in what we thought was the right direction, but were immediately turned back, by someone warning us off our chosen route. Luckily, a kindly American chanced along, and gave us directions for a safe way.
Primary objective in the big city, for me certainly, was breakfast, but in this we were at first foiled, since McDonalds, our chosen venue, didn’t open till 10. Despite my pangs, I was determined to have a last Big Mac, so we got on with shopping in the meantime. And things went remarkably well. The main object of the exercise was to purchase my birthday present, a Sony Walkman 2, and straightaway we found the shop where Scott had bought his, + where we paid the same price he had – $115. (He said $125 at first.) Then, with some walking back + forth, we were able to satisfy pur shopping needs – as well as my craving for McDonalds. Our final tally was 3 shirts, 2 watch straps, a swimming costume, a pair of plimsolls, a bottle of alcohol (to clean the tape recorders), a pair of socks, + 2 apples. Plus an extra set of headphones back in Colon.
We returned by bus, missing a 3 hour wait for the train. M was a bit shirty, saying there was much to do (+ implying we’d been skiving off – a bit of bleeding cheek, we thought.) As it was, there wasn’t so very much to do, a couple of silly little jobs, which we quickly got out of the way (while Dave didn’t get on with his, blocking the hole round the mast.) I carried on taping in the evening, finally finishing at about 12, then a hot shower, + bed. Not the relaxing evening we’d hoped for, which rather annoyed is… but still.
I am assuming we had permission to go off on our shopping trip – I can’t imagine us going off without it – so Monika’s reaction was a little uncalled for. And not so much to do either.
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