My apologies for dropping of on the blog updates for a couple of days, but the internet seems to have disappeared.
Oh it’s still there I am sure, I can see it on my phone that I finally coughed up for a data plan last month. But an iPhone keyboard lacks a bit as an interface for writing anything more than two sentences long. The internet seems to have disappeared from our anchorage.
When we dropped the hook here there was a nice strong signal provided by the Panamanian government. The government has made a strong effort to connect all but it’s most remote citizens to the internet with free Wifi, and largely succeeded by creating almost 500 government sponsored access points all over Panama City and in other towns. You can sit in pretty much any public park in the city and get a nice signal courtesy of the Panamanian government.
The connection, “Internet Para Todos” (or “Internet for everyone”), is almost ubiquitous and our connection here in the Las Brisas anchorage was no exception. For all the work we’ve had to get done and all the broken things we’ve come across in the last weeks at least we had the consolation that the kids could make good progress at school while we sat here. Until last Friday.
Last Friday the government connection disappeared and hasn’t come back. There have been a few other weak signals that come and go that we’ve been able to pick up but even they have seemed to disappear. There are still signals but they are all locked and private and we don’t have the key.
So here I am sending in a “Hello World, we’re still alive” post via the Single Sideband message sent through a mail access point far away (probably on St. Eustatius, 1,000 miles away from here). I’ll try and keep up some updates but we’re not going to see a lot of pictures until it gets sorted out.
