Up early for a run this morning! Barbs and I pushed ourselves nicely and ran for 8km's this time! Felt great!! So we were up and ready to start the day earlier today which was really nice... After we had breakfast at the hotel again, we took the walk to Avenue Centrale which is known for its super cheap shops and bargains... We had some fun sifting through funny clothes, trying to find nice things for cheap prices... It rained a lot so we often found ourselves stuck in a shop with no choice but to hang out there (most notably "Saks" haha not quite 5th Avenue NYC!)... Girls bought things here and there - I was most disappointed when no one wanted to buy the "I love Panama" floppy hats as a memory of our trip ;) We then headed to the fish market for some ceviche and fish cocktail (a traditional Central American dish of fish and vinaigrette) - really delicious stuff!! By now it was still raining so we just headed back to the hostel to chill and watch some French Open and other shows... We had all the intentions in the world to maybe go watch a movie but we were so comfortable on the couch that we stayed there for the afternoon... Absolute bliss after so much traveling!! Eventually when we were into movie number 2, we decided it was time to suck it up and get changed for a Friday night and go for dinner... We had to be at our shuttle for the boat at 5:30am the next morning so our intentions were honestly to go out for dinner, head up to this roof top bar we were told about and probably head home... Well! How wrong we were! We did indeed go for dinner and went up to the stunning stunning rooftop bar... But the night just absolutely escalated from there! We ended up back at the pizza and brewery place and then eventually to the hostel called Luna's which had a pumping bar and nightclub happening! We met so many people and honestly had the night of our lives!! Needless to say at 5am we were scrambling for our things in the hostel, being those annoying people that people hated, and raced to where our shuttle was due to pick us up! We made it well on time but sho what a bumpy ride! We had to stop to pay our customs fees etc (exiting Panama and entering Colombia) - pit stopped at the super market (I opted for pretzels and choc chip cookies haha) and finally after another lengthy shuttle ride, we got dropped off at Porvenir where a motor boat would pick us up to take us to our cat.. We waited for about an hour there and it was absolutely boiling!! Wow!! Finally we got onto this little boat and headed out to our big boat... It was actually quite a long ride but after we got out of the more protected area and we were in the open sea, we were so lucky to see an entire school of dolphins - it was incredible! They swam all around our boat and were proper doing tricks and flipping in the air and stuff... I loved it!!

We finally got to our boat - a stunning catamaran called Gypsy Moth - stoked! So basically what happens is people traveling through Central and South America and wanting to cross the Panama-Colombia border usually do so by boat as apparently it's basically impossible to to do so by land. So in turn people charter out their yachts to provide this service... Our boat, Gypsy Moth, was owned by a man called Sym (British) and his wife Amy (Welsh)... They live on this boat for most of the year with their 2 kids (Hallie - 2 years and a brat!! And Maddox - 1 year and so cute) and take people like us from Panama City, stopping at the gorgeous San Blas islands for a few days first, to Cartagena in Colombia. They organize our passports and stuff and on the boat, they provide us with food etc... Sym welcomed us warmly onto the boat! Brought back huge memories from our trips to the Caribbean back in the day... I will put our 5 day sailing adventure into its own post!

Lesson of the day: Always pack the night before in case of a big Friday night out!!

Moment of the day: Having the dolphins swim and flip all around us...