Holidays in Santa Fe

Feliz Día de las Madres!  December 8, 2014

Happy Mother's Day!  Today is Mother's Day in Panama.  Here it is a national holiday.  Everything shuts down and the weekend before is the biggest shopping weekend of the year.  Every mother gets presents galore and every home is filled with love and laughter.  Another example of how important family is here.

We have had some adventures since my last post.  We were part of a group tour in November which we love to do as we get to share our love and passion for Los Islotes.  We also made a trip into Panama City to have some meetings with a new client for some accounting work I have picked up.  Each trip to the city gets easier and easier and this time we did some shopping in Coronado on the way back where we were able to buy some much needed Thanksgiving supplies (a turkey!).

A Los Islotes neighborhood howler monkey.  Sorry Scheppy, we do have monkey's

We were invited to a Thanksgiving celebration attended by a fantastic group of expats from around the globe; South Africa, Cambodia, England, Switzerland, Canada and the U.S.  It was a pot luck and since we are one of the few people with a full-size oven and a car we volunteered to bring one of two turkeys.  This was great for me as I love to make a turkey, stuffing and gravy.  I quickly discovered that although we found a turkey just fine, there were no boxed bread crumbs.  So I bought a loaf of white bread to cut up and toast to make my own!  I think it was the best stuffing I have ever made.  We invited our friend Karen from Pedasi to join us so she came up on Wednesday and we had the added bonus of a weekend with our fun friend.  All of the food was delicious.  All of the stand bys and a lot of fun new dishes; smashed bananas, carmelized carrots, shrimp noodle salad and desserts as far as the eyes could see.  All in all a great day and we ended with thankful hearts for our new friends and Panamanian home.

Homemade bread crumbs - so easy and delicious who knew?

An uninvited Thanksgiving visitor

Glorys our Thanksgiving hostess and landlady

Feast and festivities

A new friend we have made here in Santa Fe is Janet.  She has lived here for ten years built two houses, remodeled several and knows everyone and every fun thing to do here.  We were very excited to see her newly completed house to get ideas and helpful hints and we were not disappointed.  Janet and her husband John are a wealth of information on the do's and don'ts of Panamanian building.  We then spent the afternoon driving around Santa Fe so that Janet could show us all of the great river spots available for Labrador swimming and Beagle sniffing.  The spot we had been taking Calcite to was now off limits after a close encounter with a couple of chickens.  She all of sudden got the taste for live chickens and on our last outing caught two which we thankfully were able to rescue from her jaws without loss of life.  But at the point where Peg had to throw rocks at her to get her to stop chasing one in front of it's owner we decided that this spot was too stressful to return to.  We finished the day at Janet's "girl fort" a great little house on a hill with a glass of wine.  A great day.

Janet's big house

Kitchen island with all native woods

Lots of windows everywhere to enjoy the fabulous views

Janet, Leo and Peg hiking into beautiful river spots

Water is everywhere

Our new favorite swimming hole

View from the porch of the girl fort

The next challenge in front of us was to find another rental house closer to our build site.  Although we love our friends here in Santa Fe the three hour drive down to our property is daunting for a day trip.  Thanks to Gary and Karen Moseley we finally found a Realtor down in the area that spoke English and who was willing to help us.  We didn't have many options.  The first house was unfurnished meaning no stove, no lights, no fridge, no furniture, no dishes, no no no....  The second was on the beach and had a shared kitchen with the occupants of the other half a house.  Then he found a house that the current renters were vacating.  They had two dogs and two cats so the fenced yard was perfect.  The house has three bedrooms and two baths, bigger than we need and the rent is more than we wanted to spend, but with so few options in the right area with cell / internet service we decided to take it.  So we will be moving again at the end of January - a bittersweet moment.

New home in Palo Seco

Our new outdoor living space surrounded by green

The last of our grand adventures was yesterday.  Janet invited a group of us out to her cabin above El Salto Falls.  We drove out a rough road over the hills and creeks to a point where we hiked in about 40 minutes.  Her little cabin is fabulous.  Built above the river nestled in the trees with all of the comforts of home.  We then hiked to the falls about 20 minutes further up on a great trail along the river, over boulders and up the falls.  We then all sat around and shared our lunch food; roasted chicken from Leo, watermelon from Stephanie, cheese from Janet, chaote salad from Francois, and brownies from us.  It  was so delicious and beautiful and fun!  We finished the day back at her house with wine and stories all around.

Leo and Janet road horses in - I was in the back of a pickup

Francois and Stephanie hiking in

Janet on her treehouse cabin porch 

New friends Mike and Julia at the cabin

Picture of a picture!

Me at the lower falls

Starting the climb to the upper falls

Wow!  Can't ask for a better lunch spot

When we drove into Torio to sign our next rental agreement we also met with our builder.  Our house plans have been delayed due to a frustrating soil test required for the design of our foundation.  Our lot is sloped so all concerned want to make sure our house does not end up at the bottom of the hill. The tests were finally completed, all we are waiting on now are the results.  Mike, our builder said that if we can get the plans done within the next month he hopes to have us in by next Christmas.  He wants to start building by the end of January.  It was fun to meet with him and discuss things like what kind of windows do you want, what do you want your floors to look like, do you want stained concrete or tile on the outside patio spaces?  He gave us a list of things we needed to start thinking about.  It will be so great to get going!

We still expect to get Christmas cards from all of you.  Our new address is:
April Hess PTY 19112
2250 NW 114th Ave Unit 1P
Miami, FL 33172