Friday evening, I took my bike apart in front of the hotel and removed the fan motor. I tested it and only black smoke fizzled from it. Ok, now I knew for sure that the motor was shot.

On Saturday morning, I went to the Kawasaki dealership and they told me that the $500 assembly would take a month to get there. Way too long. I’d rather have a friend ship the part from the States to somewhere in Colombia so that we wouldn’t lose too much time. A bit dejected I went to a motorcycle shop that was recommended on the Adventure Rider website. I located it by GPS which was a fun way to navigate. I had no idea about what roads to take or where exactly I would end up but I always knew distance and direction. It was a fun game.

The mechanic there was very helpful and we took the assembly to a refrigerator shop. Unfortunately, it was closing but outside he talked to a guy who worked there and he said that they had a refrigerator motor that would fit and that it would cost $90. The shop would reopen on Monday so I will head to the shop tomorrow and (fingers crossed) hopefully we can replace just the motor and fix the problem.

We also located an American captain of a 63 foot sailboat (with motor) that could take us and our bikes to Cartagena. The plan is to meet up with him Monday or Tuesday in Portobello, load the bikes and ourselves onto the boat with about 10 other travellers, and sail off into the Caribbean. We will stop at the San Blas islands in Panama, which are supposed to be incredible, before heading off to Cartagena where we will arrive in four to five days.

Hopefully, all will go as planned and we will be in Colombia by the end of the week with two healthy bikes. South America, woohoo!!!

Panama City has been a lot of fun. A lot of fun, active nightlife. It’s a very cosmopolitan city and if you stick to the good areas you should have no problems. Unfortunately, there are some sketchy areas but we’ve avoided those by asking people before we head off somewhere.

Last night, I lost $200 at the casino playing no limit Texas Hold ’Em. I was card dead and missed just about every flop. The table was interesting, though, I heard guys speaking french and chinese guys speaking Spanish. I was the only American on the table but poker has its own formalities that are universal and it was easy to jump into the game. I had great luck at blackjack and ended up plus twenty bucks for the whole night. I’m gonna try and get my money back from those Chinese dudes tonight.

During the day we rode out to the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal. We watched some ships pass through the locks and I was just amazed at how incredible the whole process was. And the Canal was built a hundred years ago. Simply amazing what mankind is capable of doing.

In the parking lot of the visitor’s center we met a Canadian couple from Montreal that are riding a BMW 1100 (or 1150) GS around the world over the next two years. It seems that there must be hundreds of us doing this same “unique” adventure since we keep running into foreigners on bikes everywhere. They were interested in the boat trip so we might see them in the next couple of days.