Last day in Panama - June 6

This was a rather lazy day as I had nothing scheduled for the morning so I spent most of it in my cabin puttering around and doing a few chores - washing clothes mainly since I have a cabin steward to handle most everything else (sweet!).

At noon, I motored in to the harbor with a few others who had signed up for a cooking class.  We weren't quite sure what to expect but it started off well, if not a little oddly, when our tour guide for the day turned out to be a British man who was the director of the cooking school we were visiting.  Instead of talking about the school or cooking, we discussed the canal during the entire trip to the school.  Fascinating but not what I expected.

Once at the school, we were escorted into a small auditorium with a demonstration kitchen in front of us.  The chef, Francisco Castro, soon joined us and started talking about Panamanian foods and ingredients.  The two that caught my attention and inspired a desire to locate them in the US are: culantro and passion fruit.  Culantro is rather similar to cilantro but a little more intense in flavor and also spicier.  Passion fruit is just plain yummy!

Chef Castro called up a couple of our students who then mixed together some ceviche (chopped-up raw fish marinated with lime juice) with various ingredients.  One was served with the passion fruit and it was excellent!  Go figure.  The next dish was fresh corn sent through a grinder and fried in a pan and served with a herb sauce.  Also totally yummy.

After these demonstrations, we were led into a conference room where a mid-afternoon lunch had been set up for us with all sorts of Panamanian deliciosities prepared by a group of students at the school - fried plantains, tamales, passion fruit bars, etc.  It was wonderful but since we had already had lunch on the ship none of us did total justice to it.  After lunch we were asked to go back into the auditorium because the bar tending class wanted to give us a demonstration and taste of their concoctions.  Well, okey dokey.  If you insist!

The students were rather shy but determined to be professional about this demonstration and soon were handing out some of the best cocktails I have ever tried.  The absolute favorite of everybody was the passion fruit mojito.  I don't know how I'm going to get my hands on passion fruit in Virginia but I'm determined to hunt some down and recreate this drink at home.  We were all very happy by the time the demonstration was over and gave the students a big round of applause.  The director later told us on the way back to the ship how much it meant to the students to be able to show off their skills to international visitors.  Apparently, we really made their day.  They made mine too!

Back at the ship, we made one last lunge from the life boat to the ship platform and landed safely on board.  The remainder of the day was spent socializing in the faculty lounge and, later on, working in the library.  Definitely not as fun as the cocktail demonstration! 

Tomorrow, we go through the Panama Canal.  We start at 7:00 and go through the first lock at 8:30 so I'm thinking there won't be many people sleeping in tomorrow.  So exciting!