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Sunday, August 7, 2011

Panama City and Stuff!!

Well going to Panama City. Now this is a chore and an experience in it's own.
They say if you can drive in Panama City you can drive anywhere. This is a fact for sure. What a madhouse this city is. Geez, you take your life in your hands every time you hop into a car.
Anyway, we had to go to meet our builder and the Architect to pick out all of our fixtures/flooring/wall tiles, etc, etc.
So we got up at 4 am on Tuesday morning for the 'so called' 4 hour trip to the City. We also had Sadie with us as there is noone here to look after her, and I was not about to leave her here with the vet who butchered her. Goodness knows what she would be like upon our return.
So off we go. 
We had only driven to the City once before and when we did we got instructions as to where we turn when we get to a town called Divisa. We were told to turn right there and NOT to go over the bridge. 
Well the first time we did NOT turn right and we DID go over the bridge.
This time we were told again and when we got to Divisa I said to Don, we need to turn right here. He of course being a 'man' said, No, I think we go over this bridge...What the????
So I said nothing. We had Erick the Architect with us (a really nice guy who speaks pretty good English and gave me Spanish lessions along the way) and I asked him and he said no, we are going in the right direction, I think! I think? Ha Ha. I still said nothing.

About a half  hour later, Erick looked around and got on his cell phone speaking to a friend of his gibbering in some foreign language, (Spanish I think, lol) and then got off the phone and guess what?...Yupper, we are going in the wrong direction. I still said nothing, but they both knew. I was right! I am not a 'gloater', but one day, one day!! :)
So we had to turn around and drive back another half hour so this brings as I said before, our so called 'four' hour drive not up to five hours. We are supposed to meet the builder at 9, and now it will be 10.

Men...Sometimes I just don't know. Are they programmed not to listen? Are they programmed to just tune out all sensibilty and reason and just go with their 'gut instinct'?
When we got home and spoke to the guy who told us the first time to NOT go over the bridge, all he said was, why did you not turn right? LOL

Anyway we got there, Sadie in tow and started the beginning of our 20 hour stint of going store to store, store to store, taking our lives in our hands in the truck and not eating or drinking for all of that time.
Poor Sadie. She was a trooper though. All she did was follow us around and lie on the cold floors. She was actually no trouble at all.
We finally finished at around 7:30 and got quite a bit accomplished. We got our kitchen cupboards picked, our flooring, and all bathroom tiles.
What really took long was that we would look through all of the samples, and after arguing and hitting each other, lol, finally came up with something we both liked and told the girl, ok, we will take this. Then she toddles away and comes back in a few minutes and says, 'We are sorry we don't have that anymore'. What the again? Why wouldn't they tell us that at the beginning?
So back to square one with the bickering and hitting, lol.
Ok, I know this pic below doesn't really have too much relevance, but the guy in the middle is the guy who owns the kitchen place. Now who, I ask any woman who, would NOT buy a kitchen from this guy? lol I just looked at him and said, ok, whatever you think is best:)
I just hope he comes to install!

Don, Sadie, Lalo(the kichen designer) and the cute kitchen guy:)
So we begin the drive home and God bless Don, I feel so sorry for him. The traffic in this God forsaken City is brutal and he has to maneuver his way out of there. It was pitch black and when you get out of the city there are virtually no street lights. We finally get to the Pan American highway that we were told to stay on and then come to a fork in the road with a sign that you cannot even see until you are right up on it that says, Pan American highway to the right. So Don starts to go left and I say "No", we need to stay on the right as we were told to do. So ok, he gets to the right and we end up practically in the ditch. My Gosh!
We were terrified. There was traffic left, right and on top of us honking horns, waving, and saying something that I don't think was complimentary to us and poor Don was trying to get out of this ditch of sorts that we were in. All we could hear was the bottom of the truck scraping on cement or something of that nature.
He put in in 4 X 4 and finally got out and then had to wait for the traffic to break to get back into the right lane. 
We then travel for 15 minutes or so and then come into this rather large town and then knew that we were not on the right road. We stopped and asked a man who barely spoke how to get to Chitre, and he just pointed thankfully in the direction we were going. We then realized that we should have stayed on the other road as it was a 'bypass' through this town.
Sheesh!! Ok, it's Panama!!
Then it started a torrential downpour and lasted for about an hour.This place has virtually NO street signs. You really just have to 'guess' where you going. Maybe I will run for office, lol.
But we got home safe and sound thanks to my great Hubby.

Yesterday Kevin, the man whom we are renting our home from asked us to go deep sea fishing with him. I am not interested in fishing at all, but I just LOVE being on the water. I could spend day after day after day in a boat. 
Yesterday morning it was raining cats and dogs, but around 10 it stopped and by the time we left at 11am, the sun was shining and it was an absolutely beautiful day.
We were on the Ocean for about 4 hours and we saw so many whales. It is the season of Whale Watching here and you can see them a lot from August to October when they then migrate up North to feed. They are here now in the warm waters of the Pacific to breed.
We also saw a lot of porpoises and they were swimming along with our boat, jumping out of the water. What a sight this was! The pictures I have are not the greatest as I had only our small camera and it's difficult to snap as they are fast.

Isla Iguana, a protected wildlife preserve off of our coast



Hubby reeling in the big one, :)

Me doing what I do best....observe and navigate:)
Porpoises swimming alongside our boat..so beautiful!

So that was our day fishing! Was just fantastic. I could be out on the water every day, I just love it so much. We ended catching 4 Dorado's and we split the catch and had enough for two dinners which we had last night. There is absolutely nothing better than fresh fish caught fresh right from the Ocean.

One of the great things here is that you can buy fresh fish just steps down the road from the local fishermen, and then take it to one of the local Panamanian's who will filet it for you free if he can keep the heads and tail. Now tell me, what the hell would I want with the head and tail anyway? 
Does it get any better than this?

Here is a picture of this beautiful crab we found yesterday on our walk. I think they call them the 'Hallowe'en' crab, for obvious reasons.

Crab we found on the beach
Washed ashore piece of wood with some kind of crabs attached to it. Pretty amazing! 




Pic taken yesterday in high tide

The boys who are working on our home drinking beer which Don brought down to them after a long hot day at work! 
Well I guess I hd better go now. I have lots of 'not much to do' today, lol
Goodbye for now friends, and remember to 'Stay in the Light'