Fuerte Amandor ( or Panama City by any other name)

Fuerte Amador is a tender port. What does that mean you ask? It means they transfer you from the ship to the shore in a much smaller boat because there is no pier large enough to dock the ship. The smaller boat was fun, but we had absolutely no idea that Fuerte Amador was hotter than the 3rd ring of hell. Trust me! It really was hotter than hell.

We wandered around the port for awhile before connecting with our excursion group. Duty free is always fun. Sonja and I did an aerial tram ride through the rain forest. It was lots of fun. The vegetation was amazing but, sadly for us, we did not see any birds or monkeys. Oh well. We did, however, see termite nests. Like all nests, they were actually quite fascinating. We also met up again with Gina and Claudio, our Italian friends from San Francisco. We shared our tram with them. Deanna, our tour guide, was quite informative and gave us lots of info about the rain forest while we travelled up through the rain forest jungle. Sonja started to sing the Guns and Roses song about the jungle. Well, Deanna was very impressed. Turns out, G and R is a major deal in Panama. Next thing we knew, we were surrounded by tour guides who also reveled in G and R. Who knew?





Sonja swinging from a monkey vine - seriously!

We also got to see cashew nuts growing on trees. Did you know that the fruit of the cashew tree is edible but the actually nut (what we eat) is not. Cashews are actually highly toxic until they are roasted. I had a couple of raw ones in my pocket but I couldn’t bring them home. Too bad.

As an aside, I have discovered how to add the pictures in so you may want to go back through the earlier posts for some pics.