What can I say, there is wifi of a sort here.

Back to yesterday

This is the ring where Roberto Duran trained on his way up to the top of the boxing ring and below is a picture I took from within the ring. When I was in grade school my father thought I needed to learn boxing. I learned from Ozzie Sussman in his small gym behind the Monroe Theater Projection room. As a result I became an avid follower of the sport until Mohammed Ali left the scene. 

As we were guided through the El Chorrillo neighborhood we stopped to play dominoes where the old men come after lunch to spend their time remembering the invasion  by the US in 1989.

Today, Friday the 13th we started with making drum making and then moved on to masks for Dirty Devil Dancing.

That is Carol under that “frightening” mask made of papier mache on a clay mold. From there we moved on to “A Day in the Life” at the home of a couple that make very special dresses for festivals.  Here is the husband, William, working on making the edge that goes around the dress’s seven layers. MVI_0016 You will notice he keeps talking while he works at the very intricate braid. 

We are keeping up with the news. We are hand washing repeatedly and greeted with sanitizer where ever we turn. Already some of our itinerary has been changed as a result. So far we continue to live in a protected bubble in a country that has a few cases only in Panama City. We will be in the outskirts for the next three nights. Then on to our very small cruise through the Canal. We are only 14 of the original planned 21. As far as anyone can tell we are still going on to Colombia. There is one more OAT group in country running 3 days behind us. They may be the last for the near future. The impact on the people of the tourism industry is frightening.  For our Tour Leader and driver this is their only job.

Enough, back to our bubble while we can!