Where else can you find such tasteful artwork?
Panama is planning on taking over the busing business and take it away from the independent business man, that really breaks my heart, and will rob some very important culture from this amazing country.
An old American school bus is a families livelihood and they take extreme pride in their buses. I’m thinking to take a few weeks and just photograph theses wonderful busses before they are all gone, it would make a good coffee table 
book or documentary :) What do you think?
The music booms and at night and disco lights fill the interiors. The old and young people of Panama sit together listening to contemporary Panamanian music as they travel to and from work, school, or play.
Everyone seems so happy and riding these colorful goliaths and it is seems a healthy social activity.
I went to Colon today with my friend Paul. He decided to point me in the right direction and pull me out of the hopeless Kubota project. He re-designed the entire system and laid everything out in a compact and simple way. Its all going to work quite well and I’m going to stop beating myself in the head over it. I think I’m a decent mechanic but far from an engineer!
It looks as though I have a charter in a few weeks :), and another the last week of March into the first week of April. A few weeks after that I should be off to Miami where I will board a ship and go to sea for three weeks working as a carpenter. I should be able to pull myself out of the deep financial hole I’m in and put the finishing touches on Splendid.
I’ll do some backpacker runs and make some extra money and transit the canal in 6-8 months and gear myself up for another Pacific crossing. I only spent two days in the Galapagos last time I was there, what the hell was I thinking?
This time I will have a dive compressor, dive gear, and underwater camera.
I’m spending my evenings pouring over charts and pilot data trying to find the most interesting and secluded path across the Pacific. I want to explore off the beaten track and if I can afford to put a system together make my own charts as I travel so i can share it with others.
Kiribati and the Palmyra Atoll are on my list. The Nature Conservancy owns Palmyra and I’m trying to get permission to do some extensive filming there. If I can pull it off I’m going to get an underwater housing with my HD SLR camera package and do something special for my next film.
Anyway, I’m off to make some food.
Tomorrow evening I’ve been invited to a dinner party at my friend Binnies house and was instructed to wear a jacket & tie :) I’m in charge of making the bread, pretty easy for me.
I’ll be talking about boats in my next video and I’m going to teach you guys how to make bread.
The first step in autonomy is learning how to take care of yourself and take “personal responsibility”. I want to get lots of emails hearing about bread making. After that we will graduate to wine and beer making ;)
Cheers everyone.
Peace, Love, and coconuts
Sail far, dream large, and live slow!
Alex