A rush and a push and Panama is ours

Travel tip no. 3
If you find yourself in a hotel with the first bathtub you've seen in months, only to discover that the hotel has no plugs, you may feel a heart-wrenching disappointment, particuarly if you spent the previous night sleeping fitfully on a bus. But do not despair - simply fill a balloon with water, to a size slightly larger than the plug-hole, and you'll find it makes a surprisingly effective seal.

So we bit off more than we could chew. San Diego to Bolivia overground, in four and a half months, cannot be done if you keep blowing the timetable - one week over in Mexico, two weeks over in Guatemala, one week over the revised timetable in Honduras. This left us with about 3 days each in Nicaragua and Panama, not counting the several 18-hour travel slogs we needed to get there, and about 20 knackered hours in San Jose, Costa Rica. And we are now down to only 3 weeks in South America.
Have I captured your pity yet? Doth your heart bleed for us? Perhaps not, but it has been a tiring week. Fortunately for us, the budgetish hotel our taxi driver led us to in Panama City has a small rooftop swimming pool, and we have whiled away the impossibly hot afternoons playing Underwater Hunt with a scuba mask and leftover Costa Rican change - Lizzie usually wins.
We did manage to catch a little of this city. And it's been a while since we've seen a skyline like this one.

Our paltry remaining budget would not stretch to cruising the canal, or diving in it - which we would have loved to do. But on today, our last day here, we did manage to venture out to see the mammoth locks at Miraflores, where Atlantic bounds cargo ships take an hour or so to raise up about 80ft in three stages, to meet the elevated water level of the canal itself. This process results in the loss of around 50 million gallons of freshwater into the sea - for every single ship that comes through. That's more than enough to slake the daily thirst of the entire UK population.

The ships we saw were Panamax - the biggest size the canal can accommodate - 294.1m by 32.3m, no more than 57.91m high and with a draft of no more than 12m. Bet you didn't know that. And trust me, that's plenty big.

We also went for a walk in the local Panama City woods. Except, this being South America, it's a slice of full-on rainforest inside city limits. We're relatively old hands at jungle walking by now, but I am still always astonished by the amount of moisture I am capable of unleashing in the course of a gentle stroll.

My favourite jungle creature is the humble ant, who maintains his own pristine six-inch wide highways and spends the days transporting bits of leaf to and fro. Theirs paths intertwined continually with the tourist walkways, but this didn't seem to bother them much.

I'm still shooting for Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year. But this time Lizzie has an entry too.

Tomorrow we fly for the first time since we got to San Diego - all the way to Lima. A whirlwind tour of Peru and Bolivia will follow, and 21 days later we fly again - this time, we're coming home.

Postscript

Despite the great times we've been having, it has often been hard to be so far away from home, missing births and engagements, the cat and of course just seeing and talking to all you great folks. But it is has never been harder than the last few weeks. Ben, we miss you and we love you, and you're in our thoughts constantly. Say the word and we're on a plane tomorrow, but you knew that. We hear all signs are good, which is fantastic, but we won't feel like we're home until we see you again. Take care of yourself.