I was expecting this month’s budget to be much higher considering we were in the city. But we did pretty okay. A couple quick annotations…
- Gas & Fuel. We were preparing to motor most of the way to Puerto Mutis so we fueled up at Flamenco Marina at Panama City before we left the city. Their prices were actually not as inflated as I expected.
- Transportation. Public transportation was exceptionally cheap in the city (25 cents for public buses and the new metro was free), but taxis were so prolific and cheap (we could get most everywhere for $1-$4) that we took quite a few taxis. The biggest chunk of this category was the $45 I paid to take the ferry to pick up our friend Stephanie in the city.
- Entertainment. I’m amazed we stayed within budget for this particular category, especially given that we had a couple inflated bar tabs (order a beer, balk at the bill later). We ate at cheaper comedors whenever possible and were pretty low-key when it came to partying.
- Sailboat Maintenance. We dropped some dough at Abernathy’s on boat stuff that we hadn’t seen in awhile (a big tube of 5200, teak oil…and some other stuff).
- Adventure. Now I remember why the Entertainment category looks so reasonable. For the few days we stayed at a hostel I included those expenses in the Adventure category. This includes 2 nights at a hostel, eating out, partying and just generally trying to live it up in the city within a pretty tight budget. The result was pre-funking with homemade rum and cokes on the seawall and buying as few drinks as possible at the clubs. Basically we spent about $500 hanging out in the city.
