James & Clare, Coddiwomplers Inc: Ah Panama ..... Part 2

Panama is a wealthy country compared to the rest of Central America. Most of the wealth can be directly attributed to the Panama Canal. It costs around US$500,000 to take a cargo laden ship through the canal! This means that the infrastructure of the country is far superior to that of say Costa Rica. You notice it straight from the border in the quality of roads and housing. Apparently, the people living around us and on the way to the beach are all quite well off. You don't notice it in a western sense, the houses are all fairly similar, nothing particularly flash.

Life is fairly simple ... in a good way. We did take a trip up to Boquete, in the mountains east of David, and noticed the difference in this mainly US expat community. Some mighty big and flash houses. They don't even speak Spanish up there anymore :-( Places like that are not why we travel the world but is was interesting to see how the "other half" live.

Market day in Bouqete

The Panamerican Highway from our place to David has been undergoing reconstruction for the past three years and still has a year to go. They are making it into a four lane highway which will improve the trip markedly when it is finally finished. At the moment though, there is a lot of messing about, getting stopped and being moved onto the other side of the road with little or no warning. This can be a little disconcerting as you just live in hope that the traffic coming the other way has remembered that they can only have one lane. Panamanians drive like maniacs, passing on blind stretches of road and scaring the pants off us regularly. But hey ho, here we still are. It is best to plan your trip with a very early start and return during the lunch hour - Panamanians still stop for lunch breaks so the road is fairly free of stop/go guys.

So the jewel in the crown of the area is La Playa ... The Beach, about a 10min drive from home.

Road to the beach, green season

We have spent many an hour fishing, swimming, foraging for fruit and coconuts and generally exploring the vast length of white, sandy palm lined beach with the warmest water we have swum in for a long time. As it is winter season, there are few tourists and we generally only have a couple of local dogs for company. The beach didn't offer much up in the way of fish, lacking any land features for the fish to come to. The locals net the river mouth at low tide but we never saw them catch anything there either. We caught a few pompano, snapper, jacks, a stingray, snook and puffer fish. All except the one snapper was returned to continue on life's adventure.

Mr Puffer fish not very happy!

We also enjoyed the odd beer at Sunset Beach Bar, recently set up by Michelle and Fulvio who have settled here from Italy.

For a week in June we enjoyed a visit from Clare's (81yo) Aunt from New Zealand. Aunty Bev called in at the beginning of a 6 week adventure around Europe. We had secured a housesitter for her gorgeous puss, Lexus, from one of the NZ housesitting sites to give her piece of mind while she was away. It was a long journey for her to get here but she coped admirably with the dramatic change in climate suffering only with a mild dose of jetlag. She also brought some "supplies" from home .... a jar of marmite, some Whitaker's chocolate and fishing and knitting gear. It is very difficult to have stuff sent to Central America. For a start, no-one has an address as such and there is no postal service outside the major cities. You have to organise a carrier to drop off as someone's business or similar.

Didn't take long to get into the local swing of things

Bev also enjoyed the company of Reno and Dandy

We suffered a minor disaster leading up to Bev's visit when two weeks beforehand the car broke down on the Panamerican highway.

Fortunately the insurance that comes with the vehicle includes a tow to wherever you require so we sat for a few hours in the heat of the midday sun and waited for a tow truck from David to rescue us. And what a fine and helpful gentleman he was! We had the car towed to the mechanic in San Felix as per instruction. We were confident that two weeks was plenty of time to get it fixed in order to collect Bev from David and show her the sights. Wrong!!! There is one lesson you learn when trying to conduct business in this country. No one can ever give you a straight answer about what is going on - seems the country is full of politicians!!! To cut a very long and story short, the vehicle was out of action for nearly three weeks, taking the whole first week to try to get someone to even look at it. In the end we had to go to David ourselves to collect the parts. James would have torn his hair out over the whole saga if he had any!

The car broke down twice more during our time with it but fortunately James was able to diagnose and fix both problems himself, with a bit of help from this guy ......

The local auto-electrician rebuilding the starter motor

It was unfortunate that during this period we also suffered a modem malfunction and had to get a new one installed. Free of cost, but nevertheless, because of the convoluted way business is done here, this too dragged out way longer than necessary. All of this business must also be conducted in Spanish. We can both get by, James relying on his French (another Latin based language) and Clare from her time in Bolivia as well as having done a bit of Spanish study. So together we can make ourselves understood - sign language is a wonderous thing - and follow the general jist of a conversation. Such is life ... it is all a learning process and we get lots of opportunity to use our problem solving skills :-)

We were fortunate enough to have made contact with an English/Swiss couple who have lived here for six plus years. Peter has a dive business coibadreamdivers.com/about.html and Astrid sells delicious Indian take out meals from home - look for Hot and Spicy to Go on Facebook

They were a great help to us during these trying times, not least of all for offering an insight into the "local" way of doing business. We shared a few meals together, James helped Peter with maintenance on his boat and they took us fishing and snorkeling. In fact James was able to tick this beautiful rooster fish off his global fishing bucket list on the first day out! There was plenty of fish to feed us all for a while, and Astrid made a beautiful fish curry out of the last few pieces of it.