Sheep Guarding Llama

It is Wednesday today and we are nearly done with our time in Panamá.  Only tomorrow left to go and then we head for Panama City and the airport and we are on our way back to the U.S.A. for a few weeks.  We are sad to be leaving Panamá, we do not feel at all that we got enough time here either to relax and just soak it in or to get out and explore the region but we knew going into it that this was our first trip to Central America and that it was going to be a quick one just fitting in between other things that we had scheduled.  It is what it is and we are very glad that we at least had the chance to check out Panamá and Central America and we are quite excited that we are heading to Nicaragua in a month and will get to be spending at least twice as long there as we got to be here (arriving in September and staying until December.)

We are attempting to eat all of the food that we have stockpiled in the house.  Dominica has been making breakfast burritos many mornings.  They are great, especially with the local Panamanian habañero sauce.

Dominica took the girls down to the pool today.  They had a nice, long swim today.  Liesl is getting so good at swimming.  She has not used her floatation devices in a while and is getting to the point that she can swim all over on her own.

Today ended up being a super busy one at work and I worked until around midnight.  It was an exhausting day but we got a lot accomplished.

Our time in Panamá is rapidly coming to a close.  Today is Tuesday and we only have two more days here in Playa Blanca and one more day in Panama City before we fly back to Texas (and I fly on to New York.)  It feels like we just got here but we have already been here for a month.

Today is Liesl’s first day of controlling her scheduling for home school.  Yesterday she spoke to Dominica about how she hates being surprised with school suddenly at random times of the day (I have been saying that I felt that this was the case for a long time.)

It was actually really nice outside today.  Cool enough that I was able to sit out and work outside the entire day without sweating, this might be the first day like this since we came to Panamá.  Overcast, coolish and not so oppressively humid.  It was very nice.  It also meant that the loud air conditioning units were not running non-stop all day which makes working outside far nicer as well.

Dominica and I were up early this morning.  We are still in Panama City enjoying our time at the DoubleTree downtown.  We got up around six so that we could get all ready and get back out to Playa Blanca before it was time for me to work.

We drove right out west to Rio Hato after breakfast.  No issues on the drive, it was quick and easy.  Plenty of time to get there before work started.

This afternoon, before returning the rental car, we ran out to Anton and went grocery shopping for the last time.  This is it, just the final “top up” of the most critical groceries to get us through the home stretch in Panamá.

At four I returned the rental car.  No more driving for us until it is time to leave the country.

Today’s adventure in Panama City was to go visit the hot new museum in the city, the BioMuseo – the Panamanian museum of biodiversity.  We started our day, as we have since Friday, by having a huge breakfast in the DoubleTree’s restaurant.  They have a pretty good breakfast and we are very thankful that, for some reason, we were given breakfast for the weekend.

The trip out to the BioMuseo was nice.  We found our way there pretty easily.  The museum is out on the peninsula sticking out into the ocean on the west side of the city hear the Bridge of the Americas and just before the causeway going out to the islands that were the primary offloading point for the ships coming from Peru in the old days when the Spanish Empire was shipping gold through Panamá.

The museum was very nice.  It was quite modern and well done.  It was really focused on exploring biodiversity in Panamá and the isthmus’ key role in the dispersion of species going from South America to North America and vice versa.  It was not very big, however, and so we went through it relatively quickly.  The girls had a good time.

We got coffee and then ice cream at the museum.  While we were there a big rainstorm came which was really neat.  The outdoor seating at the cafe was wonderful and we had great views of the ocean, islands the bridge as well as the other direction to the city which we got to see the storm come over as it headed towards us.

The girls did a little shopping in the gift shop.  We took a quick drive out the causeway and went to the islands just to see them.  They were pretty neat.  They are all restaurants, marinas and hotels these days.  Nothing like what they used to be centuries ago.

On the way back to the hotel we saw a restaurant that really looked good along the way not far from the BioMuseo.  We mentioned it as we went past and thought that it would be a nice place to go for dinner but it was far too early to be eating at this point.

We went to the hotel and relaxed for a while in the afternoon.  These hot days are exhausting and the kids can only do so much before they want to go back and just play with their toys.

We took the girls up to the rooftop pool and did some swimming for quite some time.  Dominica spent the evening in the hot tub while I swam in the big pool with the girls.  This is one of the first times that I really got to swim with Liesl now that she is actually swimming.  She had a lot of fun.

In the evening, when it was dark, we drove out to the peninsula again to go to the Italian restaurant that we had seen there.  We ended up having a wonderful dinner that we were so happy with sitting out on the ocean front.  There was a great breeze and the sound of the ocean and we were in an all outdoor restaurant with good food and service.  It was not busy at all.  A great decision.

It is our weekend in Panama City and we are going sight seeing today. Our first thing to do was to go out for a drive to the east and explore Panama Viejo, the archæological site of the first settlement of Panama City settled by the Spanish in 1519 and served as the key point through which the gold of the new world flowed to Spain during the sixteenth century.

It was insanely hot today and we seriously considered just driving past Panama Viejo and not stopping because it was just too hot to stop.  But we ended up right at the parking lot and took the opportunity to check it out.  We were drenched in sweat in no time.  The heat was oppressive.  It was easily in the high nineties and the humidity was so thick that the water was pretty much running down everything.

Seeing the Panama Viejo site was very cool and while the family waited down on the ground I climbed the old tower there which was really awesome.  They had a neat setup showing what the shoreline would have been like in each direction back when the tower was built and the views were really great too sitting right between Panama City proper and Costa Este.

We had a good time in Panama Viejo but had to cut it short from the heat.  We just could not stand it any longer.  Had it been cooler and not so humid we would have spent a lot more time there.

From Panama Viejo we drove up to the Miraflores Lock on the Panama Canal.  Driving up there was quite a challenge.  The highway going up to the Miraflores was extremely complicated to follow and we had some real struggles.  But we finally managed to get up there and we had a good time.  Parking was pretty confusing.  Once we got parked and got up to the lock museum we spent some time watching ships going through the locks, which was neat.  It was too hot to do that for long, though.

Luciana was really hungry so we hit the cafe and got some snacks and coffee and watched some more ships go through.  Then we went in and spent a lot of time in the museum exhibit inside which the girls both really liked.  It was a nice museum with exhibits on water, the locks, the country, the wildlife there and more.  It was well done and we all were quite happy with it.

After the museum we watched the 3D movie about the Panama Canal which the girls also really liked.  It was a nice day.

After visiting the locks we went back to the hotel and ordered room service and just hung out in the hotel relaxing and watching shows on the laptop all evening.