Sheep Guarding Llama

We had a nice, relaxing morning today.  This is our first real weekend here in Panamá and so we got to sleep in and do almost nothing all morning.  We did a little cleaning but mostly did nothing.  We have been doing a little bit of research about where we are going to be going in the fall and Dominica and I have decided that we are going to hold off on our next trip to Europe because our next travel window is a relatively small one and the cost and effort of a trip over the pond will be too much for too little time there.  So instead we are planning to go to Nicaragua.

We have a few properties in Nicaragua that we are interested in. Mostly we are looking around the small city of Granada, which is also the oldest European city in the new world.

Bob and Paul drove out from Panama City this morning and went first to El Valle to have lunch.  So it was late afternoon, by the time that they had fought traffic all morning, had lunch and then did the drive down to Playa Blanca, by the time that they had gotten here.  They have a white, rented Toyota Yaris hatchback that, other than being a hatchback, was identical to the one that we had rented last weekend.

We spent a few hours out on the balcony talking and enjoying the ocean breeze.  Then they drove me out to Coronado to go to the Rey grocery store there as our food situation was getting pretty tough here at the condo.  We ended up shopping for an hour and buying nearly four hundred dollars in additional groceries – much of it in frozen food that will hopefully last us for a while.

It was a big shopping trip but I got a lot of really necessary stuff.  We are in much better shape to be “trapped” in our home in Playa Blanca now.  Tons of frozen fish and veggies.  Overall we are going to be eating very healthy this month because we truly have no other choices!

After getting back to the condo the guys dropped me off and then set out to drive back to El Valle.  We will see them again tomorrow morning when Paul comes back by himself to pick us all up so that we can spend the weekend up in the mountains.

This year is flying by, no question.  Already the end of July and the end of our first week out of our five that we are spending here in Panama!  How did we get to our seventh day so quickly.  It feels like we just got here, but we really did arrive on Saturday and it is already Friday.  That is just crazy.

We had had a slower day today.  Paul and Bob are going to El Valle today and we will see them tomorrow, we think.  Today is just a normal work day for us with nothing going on. In the morning Dominica took the girls down to the pool and they went swimming for a while, but it was pretty hot and the girls did not want to swim for all that long.

Liesl and Dominica worked on school today.  I had plenty of work to do so was focused on that.

This evening Dominica and I watched some Love Boat and kicked around the idea of ordering in some pizza but the effort to do so was enough to keep us from actually attempting to do it.

Our first Thursday in Panama.  Things are still going well.  The idea that we are still stranded here in the house has set in a bit.  We cannot really go out and go anywhere, not that we had had any plans to previously, but lacking the option is a bit limiting and the relative inability to do more or less normal things like go to a restaurant might wind up being annoying after some time.  This forced isolation is good for relaxing, though, and it is also good for our diets as there is really nothing to do except to eat the healthy food that we bought at the grocery store already and to eat it only in limited quantities because if we are not careful we will run out of it very quickly.  At this point we are more than halfway through all of our cereal already and almost two thirds of the way through our milk and we have made quite the dent in our first bag of Panamanian coffee.  The girls are rapidly depleting us of all of their favourite foods like white string cheese.  And they pick and choose things like just certain yoghurts which we are already out of.  For some reason the girls have been eating voraciously and we are going through their food items at a reckless pace.

It was overcast and mostly windy today.  I have been sitting way too much for way too long and decided to spend the day standing and working in the kitchen instead of going outside.  It is really loud outside too with the air conditioning units right there on the balcony.  When they are running, which is pretty much all of the time, it gets really loud.

Not much to say about today.  Still no rain came.  I did go outside to take out the trash, our first time doing that, and I felt a drop or two, like drizzly drops, while doing so but no actual raid or even a noticeable drizzle ever actually happened which continues to be a disappointment.  I love the rain in general and have been looking forward to experiencing the winter or rainy season here in Panama.  We can see rain happening all around us all of the time but right where we are gets bypassed time and again.

Paul and Bob flew in from the States today arriving in Panama City this evening.  They are spending tonight and tomorrow in Panama City and will be out here in Playa Blanca come Saturday morning.  I believe that we are heading up to El Valle at that point but am not sure of the plans.  It is going to be a busy week.

Not nearly as hot today.  Today was totally overcast but still quite warm.  Each day we keep looking at the weather report which tells us that there is going to be a day full of thunderstorms and every day not even a drop of rain comes our way.  Even actively during the day I check the weather and it says that it is currently raining and I look outside and still, nothing at all.

Dominica and I spent the whole morning and much of the afternoon sitting outside on the balcony.  I am pretty burnt all over from yesterday but there is no sun at all today.  I did get to see the sunrise coming up over the Pacific this morning which is very cool.

In the middle of the day today our water got turned off for some reason.  We heard a lot of banging noises around the same time so we assumed that there was some construction going on in the building that we had not been informed of and so tried not to worry about it too much even though we have no car here so having no water is potentially a pretty major issue for us.  Thankfully it was only off for about an hour and did not affect us too much.

In the afternoon I moved inside and worked while standing up in the kitchen which is nice for not needing to sit all of the time and keeps me moving around a lot more.  It is hard not to become heavily sedentary when you work on a computer all day, especially when it is a laptop and the only seats in the apartment are lounge style seats and not even good for eating at the dining room table let alone typing at it!  But standing works pretty well, even though the floors are super hard tile.  That’s how homes are in Panamá, tile floors everywhere to keep things cool.

Later this afternoon Dominica took the girls down to the pool behind the apartment so that they could go swimming, which they did for several hours.  I stayed in the apartment to work and found the time to be pretty productive.

The girls have started testing out Spanish television here today.  We have cable here and there are a number of channels for them.  We found Nick Jr. which has shows like Dora the Explorer and Dora Friends, all completely in Spanish.  They watched them anyway, which is good as maybe they will pick something up.

I got a lot of work while everyone was out at the pool.  And by the time that they came back it was rather dark already.  They love being able to swim anytime that they want.

Dominica’s ankle was really bothering her today and so she went to bed really early and just lay down and read for much of the later evening.  Luciana put herself to bed pretty early.  Liesl stayed up rather late watching her new show Mia and Me or something like that.

I ended up working until around two thirty in the morning but was very productive and got some great work done so I was really happy that I had stayed up.  We had a big thunderstorm up to the north near El Valle tonight that I got to watch which was pretty cool, but none of it made it close enough to us for us to even hear the thunder let alone get any drops of rain.

It is Tuesday and today I decided that this is Panama and I should attempt to spend some time outside enjoying all that Panama has to offer.  So I figured out how to move out to and work from the balcony.  There was a lot of sun coming down today, barely a cloud in the sky, which seems pretty crazy as not only the forecast was calling for it to be continuous thunderstorms but the weather app on my phone was telling me that it was thunderstorms currently all through the day even though there wasn’t the slightest hint of rain or a storm at any point.

Since the balcony is completely covered and everyone that we see is outside in bathing suits, I decided to just work without a shirt today and see if I could at least generate some Vitamin D or get a little colour from some reflected light or something.  I was not out in the sun the entire day so I figured that I would not actually end up getting a tan or anything.

The heat index for where we are today was 44 degrees Celsius which is just over 111 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was pretty warm out there.  I was at least smart enough to keep my hat on all day long.  In fact I was running it under water every time that I came inside so that I could keep my head cool, a trick that I learned while I was in Spain with all of the fuente everywhere.

By the end of the day, even though I never saw sunlight directly, I was pretty much completely burnt.  Not good planning on my part.

This evening, once it got dark, we all went out for a walk and took the girls down to the Pacific ocean.  It was a frustrating walk because there is no signage or obvious way to get to the beach and everything is owned by a hotel between us and the beach so we were unable to figure out where we were supposed to be going in order to get there.  We had to walk all over, get stopped by security and eventually get the right directions, then someone corrected them with wrong directions but we finally got there.  It is relatively easy if you know ahead of time where to go, but without any signs it is pretty much anyone’s guess.

Once we got to the beach it was pretty nice.  Most of the sand was black and the Pacific water was warm.  Both girls went out and played in the water.  I went down to watch them and Dominica sat high up on the sand bank.  The girls had a blast running down into the water and letting it chase them as they ran back.  Luciana ended up getting knocked down by a wave and was soaked and dirty but she was happy and played a lot longer getting knocked down several times and possibly ruining her clothes.

It was a long walk back to the condo with very wet children.  Liesl was only wet from the knees down but Ciana was soaked head to toe and covered in sand which made her very unhappy.

Once back to the condo we had to hose Luciana off.  She hates (or hated) taking showers and was very upset that she had to take one.  Both Liesl and I talked to her for a while trying to get her to relax about taking.  She claims that she is afraid to get water in her eyes.  Liesl tried to show her what to do in the shower but to no avail.

Finally I figured out to put a hand towel over Luciana’s head and she decided to just lay down in the shower.  The shower in the girls’ bathroom is a nice, large tile one, very modern.  Perfect for the girls.  The one in the master bath is kind of awful, we hate it.  But theirs is great.  Luciana ended up taking a very odd shower laying down with the water hitting her back and her head under a tower but she loved it.  She stayed in for a long time and is now demanding that she get to take a shower again tomorrow!  Where did this kid come from?  She is so funny.