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We had a quick breakfast, packed and refueled and were
in the air by 9am. Once again, we were treated with incredible hospitality and generosity. It seems a little crazy to accept offers from our new friends to feed and
accomodate us and even fill our fuel tanks,
but Olivier and I know that we are able to share our adventure this way ... and also, these genereous, hospitable people know that it was their help that allowed us to complete
our journey. I guess, in a way
they can live their dreams too, through us. We take with us great memories and a whole new view of Colombia. Anyone wanting to fly in Colombia .... it's a pilotīs paradise.
At first we had just low cloud to
contend with, but after a while we started to fly into rain. And then the clouds got lower. All the little peninsulas that we intended flying over, we now had to skirt around, keeping our over the sea away from the
heaviest rain and darkest clouds.
After a few hours the clouds and rain stopped and we had patches of sunlight. At 11 30 am we flew over the border into Panama ... SOUTH AMERICA WAS COMPLETED.... we
celebrated with a trike dance in the air.
After 4 hours and our longest sea crossing to date (18km) we landed on a wide and flat beach to transfer some fuel from the auxillary tanks.
I took out the
video camera and was doing some filming, when a wave hit our trikes .... the tide was coming in. Action for the film! But then we saw that Oliviers trike was sinking into the sand. He fought to free it while I
filmed ... them another wave hit and I realised we better get the hell out of there. I dropped the camera and helped .. we can never film our most desperate times!
The last hour to Panama City was in good
weather. Panama City has huge buildings and looked very modern from above. We landed at the secondary airport which is right next to the famous Panama Canal.
Rogelio (Roger to us) Enriquez, a local businessman and
pilot accomodated our trikes in his hangar with his new Robinson R44 helicopter. We met some other pilots and later had dinner with Roger's son-in-law, Fernando and his wife. Roger then took us to a flat he owns in
town where we had a reasonably early night.
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