Feeling hot, hot, hot

Our first day of total, utter, melting heat!

After breakfast we went to confirm our booking for the Panama boat and book a boat tour for tomorrow. We found out that Panama only issues a 72 hour transit visa for those arriving by boat or else you have to pay $105!! It's not enforced everywhere but you are recommended to have proof of onward travel. Not sure why they are trying to scare tourists away, but we'll hurry through and spend our money elsewhere! Bit of a shame as we had fancied a few days at Bocas del Toro but the booking lady said it's not all that.

Anna was melting from the heat...the sun was out today in full force...so we took her back to the aircon'd hotel room. I went and paid the deposit and got some more money out - you have to pay the Panama captain in cash dollars so we need to stock up.

After a quick freeze under the room's aircon we walked the 15 mins to the Castillo de San Felipe, which we can see from our hotel room (17,000P). We were dripping by the time we got there and had a rip-off ice lolly and ice tea by the entrance - we refused to pay their quoted price, even though we were only arguing over 20p!

We wandered around the castle in the muggy, blazing heat. It is not on the sea shore but by a river, slightly inland, as pirate ships could sail up to this area. It's quite different from English castles - not very fancy, no inner courtyard and not much space for living. It seems to be solely for defensive purposes and looks mighty sturdy. There are also a vast network of tunnels through the castle with what appear to be dungeons - we walked through quite a few of them, but I didn't fancy venturing too far into the ones where the lights had broken!

After about an hour we couldn't take much more of the heat. We found a nice, breezy location at the top and then found a  much-needed aircon room showing a video on the history of the castle. It was in Spanish but had some great cheap graphics and English accents on Spanish words like 'Fuego!!' (Fire!). We got the jist of it - the mean English kept sailing over and attacking.

On our way back we picked up a bag of fresh mango slices for 60p which were amazing. We hopped into the shower - can see why they don't bother with hot water!

After cooling off we headed to the old town and wandered around looking for a couple of restaurants I'd marked down, failing to find either. We just caught the end of a beautiful sunset over the sea from the barricade wall. It was still hot out and we were still melting slightly.

We ended up at the same restaurant as last night as there are very few veggie options for me, especially now we've given up pizza for the Hondur Games (an effort to lose weight before Hannah, our photographer, joins us in Honduras!). We both had a falafel wrap and shared a lovely lime & coconut slush drink. Then we headed back to the room for another cool shower!Read more