The Reverend Machismo

Across the street and up a few houses from our little rental apartment lives.....The Reverend. The Reverend is in his late 70's and wears glasses and almost always a hat. Often times his hat is red to match his truck. His truck is a little red two door ride that can really make a statement when pushed.

After renting here for 6 months, we've learned The Reverend's morning ritual, yet it still makes us wonder, "what the hey?" He is not called The Reverend because he is a pious man but rather because he is a revvv-er. Each and every morning, without fail, he is up at 5:30 and gets into his little red ride, starts it and then revvs the gas. LOUD. Obnoxiously and ridiculously LOUDLY and for 15 to 20 seconds. Not 15-20 seconds and then he is done, 15-20 seconds per rev. He revs over and over. With the cost of gas being so high, we just don't know how he can afford it. The strange thing is that he only sometimes goes somewhere after all that revving. Other times he just sits inside the red ride, revs and stays right there in front of his casa. Guess he just wants the whole neighborhood to know that he is still very much alive and kicking and...revving. With each break-of-dawn growl of the little truck, you can almost hear his Machismo roar.
Ah Reverend, long may your revv reign supreme.

Mondongo & Boxing Match Box In

In Panama there is a house building tradition in which we recently took part. When the roof on your house goes up, your construction crew erect a bandera roja (red flag) and won't take it down until you throw them a Mondongo party to celebrate the milestone of being under roof. The fiesta gets its name from the meal traditionally served at the party. Mondongo is tripe, ie. cow stomach. Needless to say when the mondongo part of the celebration ended up not materializing, I wasn't exactly crushed.

In addition to the food and beer (they specifically requested Budweiser and Tecate) we gave the guys tickets to the 2nd Annual Panama Regional Boxing tournament that night. Randy used to box back in the day and I had never been to a boxing match live so we decided to splurge and get a Super VIP ringside table for $15/person. Before the bouts began, we got to hear the Panamanian anthem for the first time. Suitable timing as we recently became official card carrying Panamanian residents. YEAH! Though the fights were entertaining, by 10:30ish, I was ready to head home. We thought Rand would run me to the house and return to see a few more fights. But that was not to be. As we neared our vehicle in the parking lot we saw to our dismay that were securely boxed in by another car. Yes, boxed in at a boxing match.
Rand sent me home in a taxi and remained until the evening concluded at 2:30am when the offending boxer-inner came slowly sauntering out of the gym. Obviously, he hadn't heard the several announcements made over the loudspeaker about his license number asking him to move his ride. The very tired Randy was certainly glad to be finally free.

Don't Eliminate the Wrong Thing

Randy came home with this medicine for eliminating intestinal parasites.

Volcán Barú Ascension

The Volcán Barú is the tallest mountain/volcano in Panama peaking at 11,400 feet. Our town, Boquete is on the eastern side of it. It is possible to climb to the top and, on a clear day or at sunrise before the clouds move in, both the Pacific and the Caribbean coasts can be seen from the zenith. When our friends Gordon & Richelle said they were making the hike, I decided to join them (sans Rand since the only thing that would have motivated him to do the long, uphill climb would be a trout stream waiting for him at the top with tons of fish and that wasn't the case, alas).

We-there were 5 of us total-started walking at 1:15am with our headlamps on to guide us through the quiet dark. We thought it would take us 5 hours to get to the top. We'd arrive right around sunrise. Well....it ended up taking us 8 hours to reach our goal. The climb was very steep and very long. I'd even use the word grueling.

Upon reaching the summit we saw the Pacific coast for about 5 minutes. Then it was gone, claimed by the clouds as the Caribbean coast was even before we arrived at the top. We did some picture taking, some resting and some concurring about how sore we already were. As a group, we lamented about now having to go DOWN. The rains started to fall as we began our descent and accompanied us all the way back. The steep path going up was the same one we had to negotiate down and the rain made it extra slick. I was thankful for the coffee tree walking stick Rand made for me for the trip (he even sanded the handle) as it saved me from a twisted ankle several times.

We walked a total of 17 miles and it took us 13 hours. During the adventure, I swore I would NEVER do it again. It was TOUGH. Definitely the most physically demanding thing I've ever done. As time passes though, I think I'm in for another go 'round. How quickly the pain is forgotten!

Dead Rooster Bucks and Wrong Wedding Clothes Woes

Randy went to his first Panamanian cock fight and bet some bucks on the bladed birds. He ended up winning $40! He wants to take me with him next time, but it sounds pretty brutal to me. If he ever does manage to convince me to accompany him to a rooster brawl to the death you can be sure there'll be a blog update recounting it.

Also we received an invitation to attend [our first] Panamanian wedding. We were thrilled to be invited and looked forward to this special event. When we talked to Juan, the groom (our first mistake but we didn't know his bride to pose the question to her) we asked him what type of duds we should wear as the invitation did not give us any indication as to the appropriate attire. To our question he replied, "It's a free country, wear what you want."

Since it was a wedding, we got all spiffed up. We were looking good for our first Panamanian ceremony, or so we thought. When we got there though we realized that what Juan should have said was that the dress was "Black Tie". ALL the other guests were in full length sequin ball gowns and their most expensive suits. I mean dressed to the HILT. We felt very uncomfortable and obviously stood out as "the Gringos" who didn't get the memo.
THANKS A LOT JUAN!

Deposito Completo

A smiling Don Randy in front of his new deposito. Until today we have not had a place to house our tools. Our machetes, rake, wheelbarrow, weed eater etc. were all being stored under a bright blue tarp. However with the addition of a deposito door today our tools now have a roof over their heads and a locking door behind which to rest at night.

The Rainy Season Cometh

Because we originally arrived in Boquete in late July of 2007, we missed the beginning of the rainy season for last year. From what we understand, the rainy season usually begins between mid April and mid May. Sure enough, May 1st brought with it an obvious change in the weather. The afternoon rains seem to have begun, slowly now, but gradually as the months progress the rain volume will continually increase and the hour at which it begins to fall will gradually creep from 5pm to 12pm by October. For the sake of our house construction, we hope that the rains will stay away for the most part until we get under roof at Casa de Pigott. Our little garden and plantings however are smiling we're sure at the gift from above.
Here you can see our view of the volcano totally obscured by rain clouds.

The Wee Mule

With two suitcases full of surprises for her Panamanian pair, Mom Clem hopped a flight to visit us here in Boquete. It was a veritable Christmas morning opening her bags full of our special requests from "The States". This included Randy's oldie-but-goodie electric orange juicer (the oranges bordering our property are sensational but the juicers they have here are crap), our fly fishing wading boots (since we've now found the rivers in which to use them) and Hormel chili with Fritos. I miss Sonic Frito Chili Pies SO BADLY! Here is a picture of Mom and me enjoying a delicious chili pie together...

We affectionately called Mom our little mule. She hauled our goodies down to us and then after a wonderfully memorable visit, lugged 21 bags filled with coffee from our very own Mañana Madera (very exciting!) back to the US for friends and relatives to enjoy. Thanks for a wonderful visit Mom-we love you!

Dirt under our fingernails

Our terraza is completed at last! We are busy adding colorful plants and flowers around it to distract from the purple floor. We've planted and transplanted and gathered this and that from various tiendas and from the tropical plant laden roadsides. We've got a whole new little garden going for less than thirty bucks. One thing we learned though is not to start planting things during the dry season. The rainy season starts in May so hopefully we can soon rely on Mother Nature to quench our pequino jardin's thirst.

The Fish Find

Although the gorgeous and crystal clear Boquete rivers look like perfect trout streams, unfortunately they don't house fish. This is because of pesticides in the water that kill the bugs that the fish eat. However, the Rio Chiriqui Viejo, just an hour and a half road trip away turned out to be a different story.

During our excursion we (Randy) caught not one but TWO (very small) trout! The even better news is that though he didn't hook one THAT time he did see trout in the Rio as big as ten inches! Ah, the perfect appetite wetting adventure and reason to return and fish another day. Being able to catch fish on his fly rod regularly is a big contributor to Rand's happiness so needless to say, we are both thrilled about the fish find.

We'd planned our fish quest on the same day we were scheduled to pick up some new furniture we'd had built. The drive home took us past the wood workshop where two Adirondack rockers, one chair and small table made out of teak were supposedly built and waiting for us. Well, wonder of wonders, the local guy from whom we'd commissioned them actually had them ready ON TIME (such a rarity here in Panama). All we had to do was load up The Gopher with our new goodies. Hopefully our still unfinished terraza will be done someday so that we can actually put our new furniture to good use.