Colon, Panama

This is Elise. We started out at the Pacific Ocean this morning and now we on the Atlantic in Colon getting ready to ship the car tomorrow.  Colon is as ugly, dirty and poor as everyone said it is and quite a contrast from the area of Panama City we were in this afternoon.  The Radisson is nice though.  I feel safe here at the hotel and the girls and I will stay here while Mike puts the 4Runner in a shipping container tomorrow.  The whole process seems to be going much quicker and easier than I thought. We spent most of the day in Panama City getting paperwork for the car to be shipped.  We ate at a Ruby Tuesday in a beautiful, gigantic mall.  Panama City looks just like the U.S.
   We are flying to Cartagena from Panama City on Friday.  The car should be there by Monday.  We don't need a car in Cartagena anyway.  Mostly we are going to walk around the historical district.
We enjoyed meeting other travelers today while were all getting our vehicles inspected.  Some of the people have been all over South America and they say it is beautiful and much better than Central America.  There was a French couple that had traveled up and down the continents several times.  There is a Dutch man traveling on a motorcycle through the US, CA, and now we are sharing a container with him to South America.  It's amazing how much some people have traveled.