Days 14, 15, 16, 17 - Isla Grande

Day 14 & 15 - We spent these two days relaxing on Isla Grande. This island is about 4 hours away from Panama city and a very bumpy four hours at that! :) After taking a boat taxi out there, we dropped our stuff off at our hotel room (where we felt like giants because the ceiling was really low and you couldn't sit on the pot and have the bathroom door shut at the same time) and went on a walk to find dinner. The island is beautiful! There are no cars, no internet, very few Tv's, the island shuts down at sunset unless you're at one of the 6 restaurants, and there are no stores. What a perfect way to relax the last two days! The next day we slept in, found breakfast, and then headed to the beach where we read, swam, slept, baked in the sun (then hid in the shade). We then found dinner and fell asleep. How great!

Day 16 - LAST DAY OF VACATION! We woke up and went for a hike around the island. Unfortunately there isn't a trail that goes all the way around it - but we went as far as we could both ways and then up a few trails into the middle of the island. We found an awesome old Lighthouse that is no longer in use, but it was unlocked so we made it up to the top and ... wow...so pretty. We also walked up and over the middle to another restaurant on the other side for breakfast - we were staying on the village side and the other was like a timeshare - very nice. After that we reversed our route through the boat taxi and then onto the bus. In building the Panama Canal, they built a railroad right along side it to aid in the building, well now that Railroad is for tourists. So, we took that the rest of the way back to Panama. It was really neat because for most of the time, it was directly by the canal and the lake and we were able to see lots of boats and some other locks.

After finding out hotel in Panama City, we went to dinner and counted the pennies we had left for airport tax the next day ($40). If the airport didn't accept credit cards, we were going to have to beg off about $6.00. We got up at 2:45am the next morning to catch our 5:30 flight because the airport is at least a 30min from the city (at 3:30am you have to pay an arm AND a leg for taxis). So, nothing unexpected, we made it to the plane as planned and somehow... didn't have to pay our dreded airport tax! Yippee! We're not sure what happened but nobody said anything about it, and neither did we. :) Our great friend Joel picked us up at the airport and we spend the day washing clothes and sleeping.