We've been knocking off our chore list: Monday was a trip to PriceSmart, Tuesday was Mega Depot, and yesterday was Machetazo, the Wal-Mart of Panama. We take a bus to each store, fill up our shopping cart to overflowing, and take a taxi back to the anchorage. There we carry all the boxes and bags down to the dinghy dock, load it all into the dinghy (amazingly it fits!), slowly cruise out to Nakia trying to keep everything dry, heft it all on deck, open up the boat, and carry it all below where the real fun begins. We unpack the items and break them out of their packaging. This includes taking things like cake mix out of the box, cutting out the directions, and putting it all in a ziploc bag for storage. The idea is twofold: to get rid of as much garbage as possible, while eliminating all possible hiding places for critters we don't want ending up in our food (or eating our food). So we label all our canned goods and remove the paper labels from them. We also number them (e.g., 1-10) to keep track of how many are left. This doesn't always work if we're not careful to eat #10 before #9, but it gives us some idea. The goal of all this provisioning is to have enough to get us to Hawaii without having to buy anything else other than fresh produce and bread along the way. Unfortunately the immediate result is a rapidly disappearing boot stripe at our water line which will get even worse when we take on fuel and water. But we got to the dingy dock after yesterday's shopping to find a friend's (much bigger) sail boat tied up to the dock to take on CASES of wine, rum, Coke, vodka, and gallons of bottled water. Now we know who to visit when our measly supply runs out!
Linda and John