¡Hola! Panama City was to be the answer to all of our woes: for weeks lots of little practical tasks had been piling up on our 'to do' list, and we were forever saying, 'oh let's leave that until we get to Panama City'.As the only truly metropolitan city in Central America, we had been relying on it as a source of cheap toiletries and electronics.We weren't disappointed in this respect as there was a massive US-style super-mall just outside of town that boast...

¡Hola! The border crossing into Panama at Sixaola was quite neat - an old iron railway bridge across the Rio Sixaola, which had been crudely pedestrianised with planks of wood nailed to the tracks, separated the two countries and made for a memorable walk.Things on the other side of the border were predictably hectic, but we managed to get on a local bus and headed to Almirante to catch a boat to Bocas del Toro. Bocas consists of a group of pristine islands ...