Shopping for Mattresses in Panama. Yikes, lol

Ok, so our day starts like any other, getting up, having our coffee, checking the tide schedule and heading out to the beach for our walk.

Yesterday was an amazing beautiful day here weatherwise.

We walked for an hour and a half and saw 6 or 8 whales jumping. One cannot EVER tire of seeing this. Don and Sadie had a swim in the Ocean (You will never catch me in there. There are all kinds of creepy things in there as well as Sharks, and if I ever did go in, good chance that there would be one lurking right there, lol. Pools are good for me!), and all of this before 10:30 am.

We decide to then go for a drive into Las Tablas as one resident had told us that you can buy mattresses there and also wanted to get a copier/scanner as well.

So off we go!

The first place we went was to the computer store, which I wish I had a pic of, was this tiny little hole in the wall of a store that one would never think of going into, but were told this was the place to buy the printer. It was an old rundown place and beside it was some kind of an apartment that had it's door open with numerous chickens running rampant and at least six people that I could count inside. It truly is amazing how people live here and how content and happy they all seem.

Anyway we go in and of course noone speaks English, but eventually we got out the name of the guy we were supposed to meet and one of the men gave him a call and said would be there in five minutes.

Well it's Panama don't forget.

Half a hour later in he saunters. This place also is no bigger than 300 square feet if that.

He speaks broken English and turns out to be a great guy who fixes computers as well and has Internet service that he sells to the public and does a lot of things that we may need in the future.

The person who recommended this fella had called him prior to us going there and said he had the copier/printer there. Well it's Panama dont' forget, lol

He tells us he has to call and order it and it will be here tomorrow, which is today.

We can't go today so will go on Monday, Lunes, to pick it up. (note my Spanish..it's improving)

It's a great Canon product too and we expected it to be at least $100, but turns out to be $56 and his cartridges are also cheap.

$5.00 for black and white and $9.00 for color. 

We walked out, Sadie in tow, and gave him my most favourite phrase, 'Hasta Luego', (see you later) and he smiled and said your Spanish is good...LOL

This is about all I know yet, except for 'dos cervezas, por favor' :)

All is well!!

Off we go to one of the mattress stores that was recommended to us.

We get to the first one, and we see that there is a lock on it. The lock is not latched tight, but we didn't dare just take it off and go in, so we went into the neighbouring store, looked kind of stupid, (ok, I can here the snickers),  and finally got a man who understood through some fancy maneuvering what we were looking for, took us outside and then into the store.

Once again, no English spoken here, but he did understand 'King' and 'Queen', so we at least got though enough 'kind of' Spanish so at least we could look at the mattresses that we were  looking for.

The mattresses looked like something you would buy at Wal-Mart and I was really not interested, besides it was at least 150 degrees in the store, but Don being the thrifty one, has to look at ALL of them and see if they are ok for us to sleep on.

It may have been the one salesgirl also (turns out to be the owner), who wore 4" high heels, skin tight blue jeans, tight sweater and a figure to kill for, pouty Angelina lips,  hair that looks good no-matter what the temperature or wind may be, perfect makeup, that kept his attention. 
God only knows, but all I know is that I wanted to get the hell out of there.

I want a 'Stearns and Foster' mattress and box spring , 'wha-wha-wha'.

Not Don!

He needs to 'lay down on them'. BOTH of them, as there are two different brands. Wow! What a selection.

Now this store is just slightly bigger than the computer store, so maybe 400 square feet if that, and all of the mattresses were wrapped in plastic and standing on their sides.

Remember it's hot enough to fry a freakin' egg in there and Don NEEDS to try out these things.

My God!

Anyway going through a lot of 'charades' trying to get this guy and 'Miss Latin America' to understand,  he finally understands that he needs him to put them on the floor so Don can lay on them.

Of course the ones, the King ones, are not on the front. No Way! They are way at the back so he has to move four or five out of the way to get to the right one.

At this point I wouldn't care if I slept on a bed of nails.

Finally on the floor it goes.

Don flops down on the first one and I stand there looking at him in disgust knowing full well that there was NO WAY in hell I was buying either of these, but he insists I try it too as he says they are really comfortable.

So down I lay, looking now like some old sweaty hag, with Don lying beside me and of course Sadie right in the middle as she always is in our bed licking our faces.

The 'gorgeous' one of course is looking down at us, and ladies we all know what we look like lying down with gravity as our enemy don't we?

I get up and since we are wearing shorts, and of course are lying on plastic with bare legs, the sound it makes as we get up sounds very close to you know, farting!

This is just great. I have not learned how to say 'excuse me' in Spanish, but at this point I really could care less what they think, especially what the 'man stealer' thinks who of course NEVER SWEATS!!   

'Let's go' I say, and he says, 'No, I really want to try the other one".

Lord help me!

After all of this Don has to go into the other place beside where we first went into to get a 'quote' and walking by he saw a headboard that he liked.

HE liked, not ME liked.

It was an ungodly looking thing, made out of teak, I think they were saying, with some ugly scribing on it and in a shiny paint.

GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!

Nope, Don had to go through his negotiating skills although he knows less Spanish than I do which also means that he knows only 'Cerveza' which is I don't think is going to help him much in a mattress store unless they indeed do sell beer here, which wouldn't totally surprise me as here in Panama you can buy beer in almost any kind of store here, and at any hour. 

Honestly I really don't understand men sometimes. He knows that there isn't a hope in hell of us buying these poor excuses for mattress here, but he needs to put me through all of this for what? It HAD to have been the 'sales beauty/model/hubby thief'.

Anyway off we go with me almost foaming at the mouth and into our airconditioned car.

Sadie almost dying from thirst and myself looking more and more like someone or something that just crawled out of a dumpster!

Off we go and have another store to supposedly go to. 

We get close to where the next store is, and Don asks me if I really want to go to another, and I say NO, I have seen enough. I want my 'Stearns and Foster'!  Wha-Wha-Wha.

This store does look better though and did look like it may be air conditioned so I thought what the hell, let's give it a try.

We walk in, and I was wrong, no air conditioning again, but at least I think is a little less that 150 degrees, perhaps 140.

Then who walks towards us to help us out, none other than, I am positive, "Miss Latin America's" twin sister, only wearing 5" stilletto's and perhaps, if possible, even prettier than the other 'man stealer' at the other store, lol

I now look even worse than I did five minutes ago...And yes, that IS possible,VERY possible, lol.

Ok, Miss Panama number two speaks absolutely NO English at all. You think she would at least know how to say 'beer' in English wouldn't you?

So after about 15 minutes of utter frustration with our blackberry translator trying to ask pricing, brands etc, we decided just to leave. It was getting scary:)

Then low and behold the 'gorgeous one' brings this guy down towards us who SPEAKS ENGLISH and who lived in Toronto for 10 years.

Hallelujah!!!!

Don dropped to the guys feet, grabbed him by his legs and started sobbing uncontrollably.

(Ok, OK, this really didn't happen, but I  thought it sounded good, lol)

So our new friend for life 'Miguel' translated for us and it turns out he is the salesperson for the store and tells us that he has his own place in Panama City where he is now going to be selling the new 'Foam Mattresses' but doesn't have them ready for sale to the public yet.

We begged and begged, and he finally agreed that he would actually sell them to us but we would have to have a look at a similar one that was at the store next door so that we would have some idea of what his mattresses would look like. 

Ok, so we trudged on over to the store right next door, Don, I and Sadie, and this store was like an old dilapidated overcrowed mixture of wal-mart/Zellers/k-mart, and $5 and $10 store all rolled into one, without a mattess department.

What the?????

Where is the mattress we were going to look at? 

Finally Miguel came in and after speaking Spanish to the owner or whatever he was, for 15 minutes or so came to us and said that someone was going to bring the mattress into the store for us to look at.

Bring in from where? God knows.

We stood there, and I mean, 'stood there', as the aisles in this store were so narrow that noone but those 'skinny Panamanian mattress floggers' could ever get down.
After about half an hour this man who could hardly walk or breath, brings this mattress in to the store, literally on his back.

It was of course wrapped in plastic and looked like it had been around for a while, but it did look like the ones we have seen in North America and we were ok with this and I was so thankful now for the the narrow aisles as they could never lay it down on the floor for Don to try it out.

Anyway it turns out this Miguel is a really nice guy and he is going to give us his best quality foam mattress for his cost, as Don and he spoke at great lengths, and knows that he is selling all of the lots in Costa Pedasi and with over 130 families moving in, he has the potential to make a few, if not a lot of sales if his mattresses are indeed good.

He gave us his website and we looked at them on our blackberry and the mattresses really look great and his price is only $400 for King Size including a box spring.

Even if we end up not liking them in a year or so, we can always buy better, but it's going to be good enough at least for our guest room, lol.

We get into our car and drive away feeling pretty good about our mattress situation.

I did have to make one stop at Super store though, as it was now 3:30 in the afternoon, and seeing as Don was driving home, I thought it only appropriate that I have myself one of those$.50 cerveza's for the half hour trip home.

After all, the image of those two salesgirls were still firmly implanted in my brain and I needed something to 'ease that pain' lol.

Anyway today is another day and it's a beauty too. It's 28 degrees, beautiful breeze and no humidity.

I think there may be one of those nice cold cerveza's in my future today too:)

Enjoy your day my friends, and remember to 'Stay in the Light'

 

 

You really have to marvel!!!

Living in Panama sure is an eye opener in some ways.

For example, on Saturday there was a tractor trailer delivering 1000 cases of beer to the local beer/liquor store, which I must add is two houses down from where we are living, and seeing as the roads here are mostly gravel (side streets) and quite narrow, the truck had to do some maneuvering to back into the front of the store where he was making his delivery.    He had the traffic blocked for 10 minutes or so and when we went out to have a look, there was a guy who was obviously working for the town and who was directing the driver, helping him maneuver, all while drinking a BEER!!

Can you just imagine? There are just no rules, lol. Today I am hunting that guy down and finding out if there are any openings at his place of employment:)

There are local cantina's everywhere here, and sometimes when you drive by on your way to the beach in the mornings, you can find the locals sitting in them drinking beer, and I mean at 8:30 am.

This can't be good for the liver.

Our house is coming along great. They have almost finished the roof, and then the windows will be installed.

They have begun putting the reclaimed tiles on the roof too, and once that is done, it will really start looking like a house.

They have given us an October 12th date for possession, but for some reason I don't believe them.

We are in Panama I need to keep telling myself, and things just don't happen overnight and we need to learn to just go with the flow.



Our home with the underlying room installed. Now just the tiles and we are good to go!



If you have read my previous blog, you will remember that we went to Panama City to pick out our tiles/kitchen/bathroom etc.

When I think of this and while I am wondering if I got the right colour for the kitchen cabinets and whether or not the floor tiles will match the walls, and if my wall oven or dishwasher, or stove top will look just perfect, I think of these people in the pictures below who live on the beach in this lean-to and would kill just for a set of pots and pans to cook on, if they were lucky enough to have caught a fish that morning to have for dinner. If not, I guess they go hungry.



Their home. Notice the toilet just sitting there in the front





A table made out of a piece of wood probably brought up from the beach





I am not sure what this is for.





This is their sitting area!









This is their view from their humble abode..It's breathtaking

There are six people living in this place. Three adults and three children. They are such nice people too. When we walk by they always give us the biggest waves.

I think my floor tiles will be just fine!

On a lighter note, I just want to say that this town is getting too congested with all of the traffic that is accumulating on the streets. Just this morning on our way to the beach, we had to stop for 3 or 4 minutes to wait for this long traffic jam.

See below:)

Our Traffic Jam this morning:)

I think I will have to move back to Toronto and start using the 401 again. It's a lot less stressful, lol.

Well we are on our way to Chitre now as we need to find a paint store as they need the colours for our home inside and outside.

I am remembering the family on the beach.

Have a nice day friends, and remember to 'Stay in the Light'

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' 



  

Just skipping along:)

Hi everyone.
Well all is well here. Don is out with a couple of his buddies deep sea fishing, so since I haven't written in a bit, I thought I would write a short blog to keep you up to date with a few little things that had happened with a few pics as well
Friday and Saturday we had a really nice couple, Karissa and Trav rent a room here from where we are staying. They were from California and had been here for a month and were just working their way back home so stopped in here to stay for two days before heading to Panama City for their flight on Monday.
They were the nicest young couple and we spent the two days with them chatting, laughing (a lot) and of course indulging in some of our $2.50 wine.



Karissa and Trav and their Beer:) 

 They were telling us about a place near Playa Venao where they stayed and when they left on Sunday we decided to take a drive.
We had been to Venao Beach many times but hadn't gone past it. The drive was nice and when we got about an hour past we came to this most amazing place. It is called Sambutal (pronounced "Samboota) and had the most amazing beach and hotels/restaurants.



The incredible Beach




Hotel Pool and Sadie of course




Hubby at Hotel Lobby having a Cerveza

 We stayed at the beach for a half hour or so and had been driving for a couple of hours so decided to work our way home. Don had driven down so I kindly said the I would take the wheel for the remainder of the trip.
I was driving in my usual wonderful manner, when I took a left turn. Don immediately says, "Why would you turn left there when we are supposed to go straight?".

I did not know we were supposed to go straight so not wanting to appear kinda stupid, lol, I just said, "No sweetie pie, you wonderful man you, we needed to turn here, so is it ok if we continue on this nice road my love?", (Ok, maybe I didn't say it in those exact words, but you catch my drift, right? LOL)

I forgot to mention that on our trip down the roads were awful and full of potholes and the road that I took was just freshly paved. Ahhh. What a relief.
Anyway Don reluctantly went along with me with my new found 'chartered course' and we found it to be a very nice drive.
We started ascending and ascending and realized that we were now going up the mountain behind Las Tablas that we had wanted to see since we had been here.
The scenery was getting beautiful and as we got higher up the temperature was falling too. By the time we got to the top of the mountain it had dropped 6 degrees.
Wow!! What a view!!


Sadie and I at the Edge...Incredible




Wow!!

 This scenery was something that I had never seen before anywhere. If you are on my Facebook you can see more pic's that we took while climbing the mountain.
Panama is such an incredible place with so many beautiful places to explore. And we have only started.
Sometimes I have to pinch myself to be sure this is not a dream!
Anyway we kept driving and finally got near home and got this torrential downpour. It had been just gorgeous all day but of course when I take the wheel I have to drive through the hardest rain one has ever seen.
All is well though and all three of us got home in one piece.

I hear that there is 'Dangerous Heat is invading Ontario and Quebec' and I just want to say that I hope all of my friends and family are ok and stay cool.
I have been following the weather back home of course and its been cooler here than there in the past week or so.
The weather here has been beautiful and even though it is the rainy season we really haven't had too much and when it does rain it usually rains and thunders at night. I must admit that I just LOVE so see a good storm though and can't wait until we get into our  home on the Ocean to see them there.



Keeping it real!

 I like to put these kinds of pic's in once in a while to 'keep it real' and to make me realize how incredibly lucky I am to be able to not only write these blogs on a computer that most here don't even own, but also to be able to live here and see with my own eyes the absolute beauty that this place affords us!
I totally am in love with Panama and the beautiful natives that live here.
Life is good!

Well I  need to go now and hopefully the U-Haul rental place will have a big enough truck for me to rent to pick up Don's 'catch' of the day, lol

Have a great day my friends, and remember to 'Stay in the Light'

NEWSFLASH!!!
I just found out when going to the beer store which is within walking distance, that if you buy 'warm' beer then it's CHEAPER than cold beer.  What the?
Now the $.35 beer is only $.32. I hope I live to be 150 years old, lol

Easing into the life of Relaxation:)

Well I haven't written in a bit but thought I would write a short one today.
The last time I blogged we had just bought our X Trail and had the accident and I have to report that our truck is still in tact and we are enjoying having a great new vehicle although Don did lean on the front fender talking on his cell phone the other day and almost fell right through it.
He then learnt after talking to others that both front fenders on the cars here, (most cars) are made of flexible plastic like the bumpers are in Canada. Not sure why but they are!
You remember me telling you about how inexpensive the beer and wine is here. Well I have to share with you what my friend Ian in England said to me after getting the truck. Quote "But will your blood alcolol level ever be low enough for you to drive it?" LOL
He breaks me up!!

Speaking of a little drinky poo now and then, we found a really nice little beach bar within 5 minutes of where we are staying and the other day we met our new friends Christine and Wayne there and enjoyed 12 beers and the total bill was $7.80. Yup, no typo here..... $7.80!!!



View from the Beach Bar



At this bar you can bring your own beer/wine and whatever you want to eat or drink. They don't care at all, so the other night we and our new friends Christine and Wayne went to the bar and Christine and I brought our own wine with us (they only sell beer), and we sat for a couple of hours chatting and laughing overlooking the Pacific Ocean while the guys drank their $.60 cervezas. Life is good in Panama, lol And as you can see Sadie is also welcome:)

Hubby and Sadie at our Beach Bar

The other day we went exploring the nice quaint town of Pedasi where we live. It is a small town with a population of about 3500 people with many nice restaurants/hotels and gift shops etc. We were driving down the streets just trying to get our bearings when we spotted this gravel road kind of going a bit out of town. Seeing as we now have a 4 X 4 and of course Don needs to try it out we venture down this road. I wasn't happy as the gravel was loose and hitting the undercarriage of our truck, but Don says not to worry..things are ok.

We travel down this old gravel road for about 15 minutes and then look ahead and see this brand new building on the left and a brand spanking newly paved highway ahead, so we thought.

We got onto this beautiful highway and drove for for a few seconds and I said, "Wow this is a big beautiful new highway...I wonder where it goes?"

Then we noticed that the middle lines were about three car lengths long and also very wide. We then both looked at each other and said...."This is a  RUNWAY!!" We both looked up in the sky to make sure we were not going to be "landed on" and Don thought, what the hell, we have never driven a runway before so let's go, lol

What a hoot that was, and the one end of the runway there were a few cows grazing. I don't know what happens when planes begin to land.



The next day we went touring the Azueros Peninsula where the rich and famous live, or at least have homes there. Apparently rumour has it that Brad Pitt/Mick Jagger/Mel Gibson all have homes there as well. Pictured below is Michael Jordan's house.



Michael Jordan's House





The not so rich and Famous house

The Panamanian people are such nice friendly people who would give you the shirt off of their back if they even had a shirt.

Yesterday we went into Chitre to buy a charcoal bbq as Don has been dying for a filet mignon as we have heard from so many people are very cheap to buy here.

I need to learn Spanish!!

I go into the back of the store where they have all of the meat and I ask the butcher for some filet. He had no clue what I was talking about but eventually got a piece of beef from him that didn't look like filet but did look ok.

I also brought two nice chicken breasts for myself as I really don't like steak.

We cooked the chicken and whatever the 'red meat' was and was so tough the Don could not eat it so he ended up eating one of the chicken breasts instead. I REALLY need to learn Spanish.

Today we are having beef stew, lol.

Well the rain/lightning/thunder has stopped and there is now a nice breeze blowing so we are sitting under Kevin's porch enjoying the gardens as seen above.

Thanks for reading and remember to 'Stay in the Light'









You wouldn't believe our day!

Well our day started out leaving for Las Tablas at 7:45 am to make an appointment for 8:30 to open our bank account which we had started on Tuesday. Seeing as Don had forgotten to bring two pieces of necessary documents we needed to go back today which she said would be no more than half an hour.
This is why we made the appointment for 8:30 as we needed to be in Chitre (which is half hour away) for our appointment to pick up our new truck at 10 am.
It was just Don who went into the bank as we had Sadie with us and couldn't leave her in the car as the temp was too high without the car running.
Now keep in mind the girl at the bank took all of Don and I's information as we were opening a joint bank account. She photocopied passports/reference letters for both of us/personal references, etc etc.
Now the time is now 9:45 and still no Don. He finally comes back out and says we both have to go back to the bank again as she didnt realize that it was supposed to be a 'joint' account...Oh, sigh, Oh sigh.
Don did manage to get one account open so that we can wire money down here as we NEED IT BADLY, lol
We are only allowed to bring $20K cash with us into the country, and we had spent some and needed to buy the car.
We maxed out our new US Visa that we had opened and had to use most of our cash so time is of the essense regarding money, lol
Ok, so off we trudge to Chitre to pick up our brand new sparkling clean Nissan XTrail.
We went to buy the car on Tuesday and we could have taken it with us at that time but they said it would take two days for the plates so we said we would wait until today then so we didn't have to come back for the plates.
So we get there, and they had not sent the forms in for the plates....Sigh, Sigh, Sigh.
(but we are in Panama, remember)
Ok so we sign all of the papers...payed our money and everything of course is in Spanish, so hopefully we have bought it and not leased it, lol. We also took our insurance out with the dealership as it was convenient and the nice guy who sold it to us was so kind and tried so hard to explain everything in English for us. 
We have our insurance!
Little did we know that in a few minutes we would need it!!
We needed to wait a few minutes (Panamanian Time) to get a piece of paper to replace the plates if stopped by the police so we thought we would go up to a local market to buy some fresh fish/veggies etc while we were waiting.
We got into Kevin's truck that he is renting us to go to the store, and as we were pulling out a senior in a big truck BACKED RIGHT INTO THE SIDE OF OUR TRUCK!  Yup..I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach.....
Here we are in a place that barely speak English with damage to our friends truck.
Oh my!! Hysteria is setting in.
The guy t-boned us and the whole side was dented in.
So now we have to go back into the dealership to fill out one of the forms that the insurance broker told us we would have to fill out if we ever needed it, and again all in Spanish.
Sigh again!
Again with the  passports and drivers licenses being photocopied again. We then have to wait for the  insurance adjuster to come from God knows where to  fill out yet ANOTHER form and to take pic's etc.
By the way the guy who hit us said it wasn't his fault and so if that was his story we would have had to go to court, but the adjuster talked to him in Spanish and explained that YES it was his fault he then decided to take responsibility.
That took about 45 minutes.
Now after having filled out MORE forms we had to go to the body shop down the street to get a quote to fix the car/truck.
It didn't take long there, thank God, and the guy took a quote on a writing pad and said it would be $150.00 (took 4 guys to arrive at this number), and then we went back to the dealership to hopefully pick up our  new truck which by this time seemed so very old!!! lol
So off we go to get our fish.
Easy three right turns and we are there...piece of cake.
Not so easy coming home.
I was following Don who professes to be the best driver in the world and I find myself going down a one way street in Chitre with people honking and waving and shouting stuff that made no sense to me. I thought they were just being friendly.
Oh Boy!
So I had to back up (in a very busy street) as I was following Don to turn into another street so we could get out of that mess we were in.
Ok, so we got ourselves out of that mess and continued on on our quest to get out of this God Forbidden town and back to our quiet little house in Pedasi.
All seemed good!
I was driving our brand spanking new truck on a highway that we had become acquainted with. 
All is good! I was even listening to a Spanish radio station just rocking to the music whose words I didn't understand when all of a sudden the lightning and thunder start.
Oh No. I don't even know how to turn the wipers on the new truck.
It started raining SO hard I could barely see.
Don had turned on his 'flashers' and in turn so did I. It was harrowing for about 10 minutes. Honesly it was very scary, but then the rains subsided. (this seems like a story from the Bible), lol
Finally we got home where I immediately kissed the soggy wet grass.
All is well though now. 
I just finished cooking our 'baby shark' fish for dinner. If you have never tasted this you must. It was so delicious.
Don and I, and of course Sadie are sitting outside now enjoying a nice glass of $2.75 wine taking in all of the days adventures.
Thank God for wine.
I can only imagine what will be in store for us tomorrow.



After the Day from Hell, this is what we got....:) 


Thanks for reading, and remember please to "Stay in the Light"
P.S.
Thank you Kevin for understanding about your truck. Even though it was not our fault when things like this happen it always seems like it is.