Sheep Guarding Llama

The original plan had been to work in Panama City all day today and have a dinner thing tonight until quite late and then to head back to Playa Blanca early tomorrow morning to deal with car logistics and get Bob back out to Panama City to deal with the airport.

But first thing this morning, Paul and Bob stopped by the DoubleTree and said that we were changing plans and all of the stuff for today had been called off and that we were going to head back to deal with the cars today instead. So pretty much first thing I got all of my stuff together, got checked out of the hotel and we drove Paul back to the east, which took quite some time, to drop him off with Bob’s in laws where Paul will be spending the night.

I navigated and Bob drove from eastern Panama City out to Playa Blanca.  That actually went pretty well.  The drive out was a bit slow as we had a lot of traffic on the way.  All day Friday you have the holiday weekend traffic going on between Panama City and the beaches to the west.  It makes for a very long drive.

It was very early in the afternoon when we arrived in Playa Blanca. Dominica had not told the girls that I was coming home this afternoon.  They were pretty excited when I came through the door.

Our first order of business was getting me working and caught up.  We did that right away and then over to National Car Rental and picked up another Toyota Yaris for me so that I could drive everyone back to Panama City tomorrow morning.

No problems getting the car.  That was easy and mostly cheap this time.  Then back to the condo working until evening.

Once it was late, Bob and I drove out to El Valle and dropped off his mother in law’s car and I drove him back to Playa Blanca where he had decided to spend the night to make things easier for tomorrow.

It was pretty late when we were finally back and everyone was pretty tired.  So more or less right off to sleep for us.  The girls are both sleeping in the bed with Dominica and me in the master suite and Bob is sleeping in the girls’ room tonight.

Considering that I was up until four thirty this morning I was pretty impressed with myself for waking up on my own at seven thirty!  Up and getting started on the day nice and early.

I have nothing scheduled during the day today.  We had a lunch set up today but sadly Bob’s friend that we were going to be lunching with had a heart attack yesterday and is in the hospital.  He had to have a bypass but seems to be doing okay at this point.  Bob and Paul ended up going to lunch without me across town with Bob’s cousin.

I just spent the day working from the hotel room.  This allowed me to get a bit done and to have some time to really relax as it was nice and quiet.

After lunch Bob and Paul stopped by to catch me up and to talk for about an hour.  Then they took off and decided to call it a day.  They had a busy day yesterday and wanted to get in early and spend the evening with Bob’s family with whom they were staying since our evening plans had all been cancelled anyway.

Maria came by in the late afternoon and gave me a ride to the Pacific Mall so that I could hit the MacStore (not to be confused with the Apple Store) in the hopes of finding a replacement power cable for my MacBook Pro and a Thunderbolt to HDMI cable so that we could hook up the laptop to the television in the house.

That took a bit of the day but I did manage to find the cables that I needed (and it only cost $130!!)  Argh.

After work this evening Brynne stopped by and we headed into Casco Viejo via taxi and just started walking to see what we could find.  We stumbled quickly on a roof top terrace where we found amazing food and the best vodkatinis ever.  Ginger pear vodka martinis.  So good.  And the best bruschetta I have ever had.

After dinner there we hit an art gallery and hung out there for a little bit just because it seemed interesting.  Then we walked all over the old town and settled on sitting outside on the water front where we ran into a group of Londoners, two of whom had moved to Panama and talked to us for a while about living in Panama and having moved from Columbia.

We thought, and were told, that everything was going to be closed by this point but before completely giving up on food (our earlier food had been very light because we thought that Maria and her friend were going to meet us later on but their evening meeting ended up being over five hours instead of one!!) we walked a little bit down the water front and discovered the Whisky Bar which turned out to be the best find of the night.

The drinks and the food at Whisky Bar were amazing and the kitchen was open incredibly late.  They did whisky-themed tapas and so we just kept sampling.  Everything was great.

I will be going back to the Whisky Bar for sure.  Best find in Casco Viejo.

This morning Bob picked me up bright and early.  We had to be on the road very early so that we could get all of the way up to Panama City while it was still morning.  Paul (and Brynne) and driven up to Panama City last night.

The drive went fine, no issues.  We ended up missing the Bridge of the Americas and got stuck taking the central bridge and coming down from the north side of Panama City which was pretty awesome and wasted all kinds of time.

Getting to the DoubleTree was an exercise in dealing with big city traffic.  That was no fun at all.  I was very glad that I was not the one that was driving and dealing with all of it.

Finally we got into the DoubleTree driveway and after waiting for a ridiculous about of “line problems” with the waiting line (they kept letting people line jump) I managed to get checked into the hotel and up to my room.  At least I was able to get into my room quite early.

The room was nice but not up to DoubleTree standards.  Comfortable for sleep, the bed and linens were great, but the office chair and overall furniture situation left something to be desired.  The Internet access was an unnecessary pain.  But the room was pretty good overall.

Pitty and Paul were there shortly after we got there and Maria arrived a few hours later. A little bit after noon we rode with Pitty up to the Colón Free Zone to meet with someone.  The Free Zone was super interesting.  It is part of the port up on the Caribbean side of the country and is a tax free zone.  We had to go through security to get into it.  Everything there has not passed through customs.  It is like a city within a city.  I’ve never seen anything like it before.  It was very educational.

After work, around seven thirty, Brynne met us at the DoubleTree and we all walked down to the Executive Hotel to eat at the Executive Cafe which Maria had told us about.  It is, apparently, a staple of Panama City and is much like a high end, Panamanian Denny’s.  It very much had a diner menu and was open long hours.

We all shared a bit order or Nachos Gringos which was perfect as we were nearly all gringos.  So it was Nachos Gringos con gringos!  They were delicious.  I also got huevos rancheros which were amazing.

Bob and Paul had to take off really eary, around eight thirty, to get back to the house.  So that left Maria, Brynne and I with nowhere to go.  So we want back up the street and ended up grabbing a few beers at an open air bar right across the street.  They had a nice selection of craft beers and we tried a few things.  Hardcore IPA for me.

Maria had to get going because she had a meeting to get to.  So Brynne and I decided that since it was early that we would just walk to a bar that Maria had been telling us about.  Before Maria could leave, though, she offered to give us a ride because that was where she was headed to pick someone up.

Maria’s friend ended up wanting to join us so the four of us ended up staying out until the bar closed down, sitting out on the upstairs balcony near the water front, but not close enough to see the water.

Once the bar closed down, Maria took her friend home and Brynne and I set off to walk back to the DoubleTree but we decided that we would attempt getting some food as it had been about seven hours since we had had dinner.  We tried going back to the Executive Cafe but they were closed even though everyone had been telling us that they were open twenty four hours a day.

There was another place just up the street called “something” Azul, but that place was closed too.  We asked some locals and were sent on to a place called El Prado, which later we were told is a staple of Panama City’s late night eating scene.

The walk proved to be really, really far and the directions that we were given were not good but some locals that we ran into on the street were headed that way and walked there with us to make sure that we made it.  We would never have found it on our own!

It was about three thirty when we got “dinner”.  Brynne got a cuban, I got shrimp fried rice.  It was a huge menu and quite varied.  Very obvious why they are a popular late night stop in Panama City.

I was up around seven thirty this morning.  Dominica was up not long after me.  Liesl had slept in our bed last night because she found an ant in her bed when she was trying to sleep last night and freaked out and needed to sleep with us.

Once the girls were up this morning we got them ready and right out the door, which was about nine thirty, to walk down to the beach and spend the morning in the ocean.  We actually did really well and put in probably two hours down on the beach!  It was pretty awesome.  That was a great way to start the day.  We got some exercise as the walk is pretty far and the girls had an awesome time playing out on the beach.

The tide was going out when we got there so we got to slowly move out with it. The girls had so much fun playing in the sand. Dominica sat on a chair and I spent my time walking the beach.  The girls did a lot of shell collecting.  I found the outlet of the Farollon River and we played in that too.  We discovered tons of crabs living in the rocks there too.  It was very interesting.  The girls got to see their first crabs.

I got a little bit of sun today.  Still don’t really have a tan, though.  I can’t believe how much sun I get and how little tan I pull off from it.

I worked all day standing at the kitchen counter.  I am trying to avoid sitting too much which is so easy to do.  The chairs in these rental places are terrible for trying to actually work.

Liesl managed to do a bit of school today.  Keeping in that habit with all of the moving is very hard.

This evening Dominica and I sat outside.  I had a lot of database documentation work that I needed to do this evening so I was working on that and wrapped it up around midnight.

Bob is coming to pick me up around seven thirty in the morning and we are driving out to Panama City.  I will be staying at the Hilton DoubleTree Panama City all week.  Going to be a long day.

We got up this morning in El Valle.  I was awake around seven thirty by my Ciana was so sweet and snugly, I stayed in bed for another hour.  Before getting out of bed I accidentally knocked my iPhone 5s off of the top of the bed and it hit the tile floor and the screen shattered.  My first every broken phone.  I knew that all of the tile floors in Panama were going to get me eventually.  It only took a week.

This made for a complicated morning as being in Panama without a working phone would be a disaster.  This has to be fixed right away.  All the more complicated because we do not have a car.

We had breakfast at the house, Bob’s mother in law cooked for us.  Then Paul and I went out for a walk to see if there was anywhere around the village that would be able to deal with the phone for us.  We walked all of the way down to the hostel that we were at last night but did not have any luck.  There was a MoviStar store and they said that no one in town could do it and that we would probably have to go to Panama City to get what we needed, which seems ridiculous that we would have to drive three hours to get a phone fixed.  This might be a rough day.

Paul and I stopped and got a coffee before returning to the house.  Dominica had the car all packed up and the girls ready to go.  We had to be home before noon because the Internet access out in El Valle was just not good enough for me to be able to work effectively.

The drive back was pretty tough on the girls.  All three of them were feeling pretty sick.  We took the detour back to Coronado and thankfully in the first plaza that we went to we found a phone repair place!  Half an hour and a hundred dollars later my phone was fixed (although I no longer have the cool finger print reader that I love so much) and all is well.  While we waited Dominica and the girls went shopping at the dollar store next door and we managed to get colouring books and sand toys so that they can play at the beach which we hope to go to in the morning.

We were back at Playa Blanca at a quarter after eleven.  The exterminators had come this morning while we were gone which was perfect timing.

Dominica and the girls sat outside for an hour or two to let the fumes dissipate in the condo before having the girls play inside again.

After the exciting morning we had a quiet evening and just outside while the girls watched Nick Jr. in Spanish.  We let them watch television more here than back home (which is basically none) because it is in Spanish and we are hoping that they are picking it up to some degree.  We have no idea if that theory works or not, though.  I should try watching it with them.

We spent some time tonight working on our plans for Nicaragua.  We think that we know which house we are going to attempt to rent while we are there.  We found a place that looks really nice, has an indoor pool and is very cost effective.