Feliz Navidad y Feliz Año Nuevo

January 12, 2015

I want to begin by saying thank you to everyone who sent us a Christmas Card.  We received quite a few and loved every one of them.  We did hear that some were returned as un-deliverable for some crazy reason; all I can say is try again!  We are really learning to take things in stride.

One would think that as a retired person with nothing to do I would have plenty of time to write a silly little blog, so I don't know what to say except that I am the busiest retired person I know :).  We made it through the holidays and have a few more adventures under our belt.  This is going to be a long one.

We finally made it back down to the Pedasi area to visit our friend Karen.  We had yet to see her new digs and we wanted to see our Spanish teacher Dania, and our friends Robert and Lolita who had just returned from a long trip to the US.  Karen has a great apartment that sits on the beach and overlooks the ocean in a quiet town just outside Playa Venao.  We spent one morning at the nearby La Playita Resort a great place with red macaws, monkeys, emus, and giant iguanas roaming about and a beautiful beach with pristine water.  We soaked up the sun and salt air and even shared a lunch with a local who was determined to share his fried chicken with us!  We then had lunch with Robert and Lolita and took a trip to their new house which is nearly completed.  They are behind schedule mainly due to not being able to get their electricity hooked up, a common problem in these parts, but they are making great progress and should be able to move in soon.  It was a great couple of days.

Red macaws at La Playita

Lots of baby monkeys 

Beautiful private beach with no people 

A friendly emu looking for a handout 

Janet organized another outing to a great spot on the river for a group of us including our new neighbors Kim and Denny for Denny's big birthday.  We swam and relaxed and had a great day concluded with a spur of the moment feast supplied by Janet and Julie of delicious soup, salad and of course birthday cake.  We were joined by some new friends one of which is a hair stylist in Aspen, CO and she volunteered to do haircuts the next day which we took her up on of course.  It turned into a fun girl's day with a few of us sitting around waiting our turn and getting to know one another better with a glass of wine in hand.  Who knew getting your hair cut could be so fun?

A perfect birthday swim for all.  That is Peg swimming freestyle with Calcite by her side.

Calcite and Peg loved it 

Impromptu birthday dinner - Peg, Janet, Kim, Denny, Julie and Leo 

Zoe makes herself at home wherever she wants!  She made her own nest using their Christmas tree skirt.

New Do's for Peg, April and Janet... thanks Rae

We spent Christmas Day cooking, talking to family on the phone, missing our friends back in the states and hoping you were all having a wonderful time celebrating the birth of our Savior.  We got together with a group of friends to share another feast and had a wonderful time.  It is fun being with new people with new stories and yummy food.

Christmas Feast.  This was at Kim and Denny's house which is in our backyard.  There are two houses on our lot.

What comes between Christmas and New Year's every year you ask?  Peg's birthday!  Peg's favorite thing is to spend her birthday doing some new outdoor adventure and since it is now summer here in Panama that made it really easy.  We hired a local guide (read Spanish speaking) to take us to the Alto de Piedra Falls. This hike is up in the cloud forest so it was pretty rainy and wet still, but boy was it beautiful.  We also did pretty well with our Spanish which was a nice reward after seven months of practicing.  It is a long slow battle we are determined to win eventually.  It was a really good day if I do say so myself.

Thank you Denny for the birthday Machete and sharpening lesson, Peg is putting quite the edge in that Machete.

Ariel our guide for the day

Waterfall number one!

Walls of green surround us

They don't call it a cloud forest for nothing

Waterfall number two much more majestic than this shows, about 50 feet tall

The day after Peg's birthday our friends Cole and Katelin Rador (aka Frey) came into town for a visit. Katelin is an ex-student of Peg's a really, really, really long time ago (she is almost 30) and newly married to Cole.  They spent one day in Panama City seeing the sights and then took the bus to Santiago where we picked them up.  We spent the first day touring Santa Fe and getting caught up on life's happenings.  The next day we drove down to Playa Uverito where we were staying for two nights in a little B&B on the beach.  This is just outside Las Tablas which is known as one of the biggest party cities in Panama.... think Time Square South American style.  So we spent New Year's Eve day on the beach, had dinner at the B&B and then headed into town for the festivities.  We arrived in the town square at about 9:00 pm to find it almost deserted.  It turns out the entire city goes to mass in the town church before the celebration.  As midnight approached we found a good spot and waited for a count down which never came.  All of sudden these two huge floats come into the square, light up like a jumbo tron, music blares and then..... we were under attack!  Men on both sides of us start lighting fire works and fire crackers and when I say fire crackers I mean the whole brick at a time gets thrown into the street one after another without stopping for 30 minutes - not exaggerating!  People were running back out of the flames and plugging their ears.  We carefully watched each other and extinguished embers landing on our hair and clothes.  The smoke got so bad that the pretty girls on the floats were covering their faces with handkerchiefs.  Something tells me they have been here before.  It was crazy!  Once the explosions and mushroom clouds stopped, the floats, dancers and musicians made their way around the square.  It was so fun and very memorable.

Posada Inn at Playa Uverito with Cole and Katelin

Delicious paella for dinner!  YUM

Beautiful church for New Year's Eve mass

Have box wine will travel!

Let the festivities begin! That is Karen in the middle.

We could feel the heat from the wall of fire! 

Good thing Cole is a fire fighter!  We could have needed him - that's not confetti!  

I should have been covering my ears - I still can't hear

Were we too close...... NAH  Peg kept her ears covered for 30 minutes!

I'm not sure what to say about this

The floats were beautiful 

A great way to start another year!

On New's Day we hired a boat captain to take us to Isla Iguana for a day of snorkeling and laying in the sun.  When we arrived at Playa Arenal to pick up the boat we looked at the substantial surf and evaluated if this was a good idea.  Katelin came running back to the car saying "this is gonna be so much fun!" Karen on the other hand said NO WAY, I'm not going out there, even though she had taken Dramamine 30 minutes earlier.  She said later as she watched the boat going up a wave and then ducking out of sight that she had made the right decision.  So without Karen we headed out into the pounding surf for the 30 minute boat ride out to the island.  We were flying through the air with the greatest of ease thanks to our magnificent captain.  We had a great day on the island and although the surf looked milder for the return trip, it was trickier than on the way out.  Our captain had to time his driving with the in coming tide waves speeding up and slowing down to perfection so that we weren't swamped.  It was like watching a beautiful ballet dancer.  I just kept thinking if you go overboard just hold onto your glasses!

A beautiful beach!  That is the kind of boat we were on.

Isla Iguana

Katelin thinking......To snorkel or not to snorkel, that is the question.... NOT

We finished off our fantastic visit with a trip out to Los Islotes so we could show them where our house will eventually be built.  It was such a great few days with a great couple who know how to have fun, relax, site-see and cook!  Can't wait for our next visitors!

Hopefully next blog we will have some house news... stay tuned.

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

Anybody Out There?

November 5, 2014  Santa Fe, Panama

Hello friends!  It has been a really long time since I have written as there isn't a lot to say these days.  We are still enjoying our new life here in Panama.  It is hard to believe that we have lived here for seven  months now.  In some ways it feels like we arrived yesterday - when we try to speak Spanish, but in others it feels like forever - since we have seen our loved ones.  I am homesick for my kids and friends, but other than that we love it here.  I know some of you are wondering what we do all day. Well Peg likes to joke that it takes all day to live here in Panama - sweeping, shopping, cooking etc.

We have been fighting a war on ticks which has become a full time job for two.  We sweep the floors, pick them off the dogs, pick them off the furniture, pick them off the dogs, bathe the dogs, pick them off the dogs.  They were covered!  In the ears, between the toes, on their tails.  It is crazy.  We finally bought some really strong poison to spray the yard.  After two sprayings and two doses of Advantix I think we finally have it under control.

Peg's professional poison control

Tick before attachment to dog

Tick after filled with blood - GROSS

We are still waiting on our house plans.  They have been submitted to a structural engineer who requested an extensive soil report done on our lot.  Between the structural engineer, soil engineer, a local civil engineer, architect and builder we have been going around and around to determine what tests are really necessary.  We think it has been sorted out now and we just have to wait for the tests to be performed.  This is the first of many Panamanian delays so we are trying to take it in stride.  We should still be on track to break ground in January as planned.  We love our little rental house here in Santa Fe, but after more than two years we are ready to be in a home of our own.

We have taken a couple of day trips to see some sights, but it is not the best time of year for them as the rainy season is in full swing.  It rains pretty much every day usually starting around 2 pm, but sometimes all day.  We enjoy the rain and we had been in a drought so it is much needed as well.  One day we drove through Calobre and up to the Yeguada National Forest the home to a caldera lake.  We were looking for some hot springs, but never found those.  The drive was beautiful and we made several wrong turns.  We vowed to go back when the rains let up.

Another day we drove to Caloveborita which is the farthest point north you can drive to with a road to drive on that is.  There is a hiking trail from there to get to the Caribbean side but it is a 50 mile walk and takes most folks 6 days to walk it.  You travel through jungle and as the story goes you usually run out of your own food and end up begging for banana's and fish from the indigenous Indians.  Of course we would make the journey if all our camping gear were not in our storage shed in Austin....Yeah...NO, JK. :)

We were sort of invited to a fellow ex-pats house for his birthday on Halloween.  I say sort of because the friend that invited us didn't know the guy either.  Since we are one of the few ex-pats that own a car, we piled seven us into the cab of the truck and headed out a crazy windy, steep and slippery dirt road in the rain.  Jeff built a house completely off the grid and uses solar mostly with a generator back up.  He has planted 4000 coffee bushes.  They pick, dry and roast the beans and then sell their own coffee as a hobby.  We met a whole new group of expats at his party.  It was really fun and great to meet kindred spirits.

Their garden and palapalala

New friends Stephanie, Sinnett and Orca

Our oldest friend in Santa Fe Leo from Oregon

Friends Scott and Marie Munger from California

Rainy shot of the coffee plants

We haven't actually been out to Los Islotes in quite a while, but will be heading there next week for a tour group.  Looking forward to seeing the place again.

November and December are big holiday months here in Panama.  It starts out with Independence Day which is a five day celebration of their independence from Columbia.  There are parades and parties for days.  We have been listening to the drums practice for a month.  The kids are really cute.

Thanks again to our dear friend Greg for taking the reins, selling our previous home Suni and the BAT (big ass truck)  It was a happy- sad day.  We have a lot of great memories from our RV trip across the states and she was a good home.  Now we move on unencumbered except for that pesky storage unit!

Love to all.  Would love to hear from each and every one of you.

Back in the USA

August 26 - Sept 7, 2014 Nashville, TN and Martha's Vineyard, MA

Lief and Kathleen of Live and Invest Overseas and the developers of our new home in Los Islotes offered us a chance to work at their Retire Overseas Conference in Nashville, TN.  They hold conferences all over the world to help people learn about how to become an expat as well as how to diversify assets overseas.  Once a year they hold a conference in the states where they present sessions on their top retirement havens around the world.  This year there were 21 countries represented and we were there to promote Los Islotes and talk about our new expat life.  It was great fun.  Nashville is a great city and we met so many fantastic people now considering a new life abroad.  We also participated in a panel called "What to Expect when you're Expating" where we got to tell funny stories about our first six months in Panama.

We got to wear grown up clothes and everything

What to Expect When You Are Expating

Since the trip to Nashville was paid for; we decided to add on a few days and head up to Martha's Vineyard to see Peg's mom for a few days.  We hadn't seen her in over a year and weren't sure when the next opportunity would come up.  We had a great visit with perfect MA weather, plenty of trips to the beach and lots of time catching up with the family.  Mom treated to us to our favorite lobster dinner surrounded by family and friends.  It was a great visit.

Martha's Vineyard - no place like it

A cute visitor to the porch - so glad Zoe and Calcite were not here

Thanks Uncle Richard!

Bathing Beauties - Too Cold for me

Like mother like daughter - two beautiful women

On our way through Panama City we met with our architect again to finalize the preliminary house plans.  It was a great meeting, and the now the plans are ready for the engineering department.

The rear elevation of our house.  Your guest quarters are in the bottom right hand corner.

We were a little worried that our time in the states would make us question our move to Central America, but it didn't happen.  While it was nice having the creature comforts of the states: television in English; no chickens anywhere, ever;  being able to ask for directions and understand the answer etc.  we were ready to come home at the end of the trip.  Glorys and family took great care of the fur-kids and they didn't seem to miss us at all.  Hopefully next trip will be to Austin to see the non-fur-kids.