The Solution

As I mentioned in my previous post, we decided not to go to Portobelo to pick up our brothers but instead to meet them in Carti, an island that is across from the only mainland road in the San Blas. But that still leaves us in a bit of a gastronomical pickle. How do we get enough food to feed five people and replenish our badly depleted stores? Answer: we take the jeep through the jungle to Panama City.

At first, we were going to tell our brothers that they had to pack in all the food via the same jeep, but because we are out of almost every staple, I felt kind of uncomfortable burdening our brothers with all of the food purchasing. (This is the conversation I had with my little brother. Aleks: So let me get this straight. You’re out of food. You’re stuck at an island in the middle of nowhere because of the weather, and you want me to haul in all of your supplies on a jeep through the rainforest. Me: Well, when you put it like that ….) 

Then, my mom suggested that we go. And as luck would have it, we also have a little visa issue that can be solved in Panama City. In Panama, you get a six-month visa, but your cruising permit is for a year. Generally, cruisers do what is termed a “visa run” and head to Costa Rica for a few days, coming back to a new six-month visa. We don’t want to go that route. It’s expensive, not to mention the fact that we can’t leave the hedgehog alone for that long, and we certainly can’t take him to Costa Rica. So here’s the solution. Evidently, for about $20 we can tie our visas to our cruising permit, meaning that we only have to leave the country when the cruising permit expires.

So off we go to PC where we will be able to buy huge amounts of food from Pricemart, the Central American Costco, and we will hopefully be able to solve our visa dilemma at the same time. The cost is a little bit pricey upfront, but it should save us bundles on travel and food in the end. Plus, we get to haul all our supplies on a jeep through the rainforest. Awesomeness.