2RetireesInPanama: INTO THE INTERIOR WE HAVE ARRIVED

I am sitting on the back porch watching yellow butterflies fly by with Ray swinging in the blue hammock. Oh, he just got up to check the empanadas we are attempting to bake in the oven. Soon we will try making them by hand, but in the store we were a bit overwhelmed (and hungry). I was concerned that this house having a solid wall in the back yard might not get a cross breeze, but what wonderful breezes we are having right now. Panama has just two seasons: dry and rainy. We are in the rainy season, and of course, yesterday it rained all day. (Breaking news about the empanadas--blech. They should have been fried in a skillet.)
Yesterday, after a delicious breakfast of omelettes, waffles, fresh fruit and anything else I could scarf down in the hotel restaurant (buffet, but a pretty good one with nachos, meats, chicken fajitas, arepas, sausage, bacon, hash browns, pastries, breads, bagels, muffins, cereals, yogurt and more), we started the drive out of Panama City and to Chame (one hour and fifteen minutes west). I was also determined to actually eat two meals yesterday, because I knew Clyde and Terry were going to feed us dinner. A rare occurrence the past three days. Ray has driven into and out of the city just a few times, but we pretty much have it down pat now. There are now two ways to make the trip. We have always gone over the Bridge of the Americas, and this is how we went yesterday. When we go back into the city to get our car, we hope to drive the new Cinta Costera 3. It still takes you over the Bridge of Americas but swings you around the old city of Panama. Just looks like an awesome road to travel haha

Cinta Costera 3

Our rental car didn't have the best wipers, the most smudge free window or a really great defroster, so we saw a lot of haze on our drive to Chame. Sometimes it rained, and other times it poured. It would have been perfectly acceptable in another car. We arrived to the gate of our new home for the next six months at close to noon. Gustavo, the next door neighbor of our home's owner, made the guard aware that we were arriving soon. The community has 75 homes, but not all of them are completely built. Once on our street, we saw Gus walking up the drive. He unlocked the doors for us and showed us a little bit of the place. We also had some written instructions. It looked just like the pictures the homeowner sent us, and also those that our friend Clyde had taken for us. We brought in our 250 pounds of luggage and dirty laundry, and first we opened up all the doors and sat on the couch. In Panama, the doors and windows (most) have bars and gates. In this house, the front door is a solid, double door with metal gates in front. In the family room, there are two sliding glass doors and then there are metal gates that can stay locked or slid open. The idea is that when we are home, we open it all up. We leave the two extra bedroom doors and bathroom door shut without any air conditioning turned on, and we leave our bedroom door shut with the air conditioning running at times. When we want to get some really cold blasts, we go into the bedroom (right now it is barely running). The electricity bills runner high here in low elevations unlike in the mountains where homes usually don't even have an air conditioner installed in any room. And when home, we open all the gates except the front one stays locked (since we are in back of house) just like I would at my house in Stafford, VA. We have been told that when we leave for the day we can lock all the gates up and leave the glass doors open, but we haven't gotten that far yet.

Once we unpacked and figured out where to put all of our clothes and the needs for the next six months, we ran to the store for some baskets. We have high cabinets in the closet area with some dead unused space that we thought baskets would be perfect for, and any other time I would have bought Panamanian "pretty" baskets. Since we wanted them quickly and we also needed shampoo and laundry detergent (there was some here, but it was powder), we drove to El Machetazo for the supplies. El Machetazo is ten minutes from the house, and it is a three story store. It is a Super Walmart, Marshalls, grocery store, Home Goods, appliance store and Home Depot type store all in one. The shopping carts have there own escalators. We paid $60 for a laundry basket (also here but it is mesh and top heavy), eight baskets, hair essentials, laundry detergent, shower soap, but not hangars. Hangars cost $3.50 for six. We decided to wait on those. We had plenty of hangars and then could also use the dreaded wire hangars until we found plastic one's elsewhere. I knew of a story called Fantasy but didn't see it in the shopping center and couldn't remember what name to look for, so we called it a day. We returned home and set up the bathroom with all the supplies (only to find today that I picked up two conditioners and no shampoo--yes, I can read the bottles, but I accidentally grabbed the wrong one). Oh well, we had body wash for our hair. At 4:30 we had dinner date with Clyde and Terry. They live five minutes away. We saw the fantastic things they have done to their home such as kitchen cabinets, new appliances, new air conditioner in the spare room, granite counters, a new bathroom for Terry with double sinks, more painting, and a lot more that Ray and I thought looked amazing. They bought their house six or so months after moving to Panama. They had a lot of demo to do on their thirty year old home, and they certainly have made it a beautiful and comfortable home to live. We sat on the covered porch for four hours talking about what Ray and I had accomplished in the past four days, Panama, some of our past and a lot of what was happening in the coming days. Clyde grilled delicious chicken, and they had made a wonderfully yummy yam and onion side dish (of all vegetables, yams!) along with a salad. Terry made oatmeal, banana, raisin cookies without sugar to top it all off! They were really good! Crunchy and chewy at the same time. And then the day was done. Ray and I headed back to Casa 40, watched tv and stayed up too late. No problem. I could sleep in, right? NOT. This morning I was awake at 4:15 and started that thing called "thinking". Oh brother. At 6:00, I heard a bird. One specific bird that Ray could hear, and then he could hear a few more. They were out of my hearing range. At 6:30, I decided it was time to wake up. I put my "ears on" (hearing aids), and then I heard all the ruckus outside! And Gus has four very pretty and talkative birds next door. One day, I want to look at the pretty red and yellow one up closely. After Ray got off the phone to his old co-worker and friend (using MagicJack which is so amazing), we walked the neighborhood. We will have to walk it three times to walk three miles. We chatted with Gus who is Cuban, but he lived in Miami most of his life. He has lived here for seven years and has a beautiful front porch. He and his wife sit on the front porch mostly. We walked over to the pool, but we still aren't sure how to get in behind the gate. It is a keypad, and all we have is an electronic card. We will ask Gus or go over when it is open during the day. We invited Clyde and Terry over on Sunday to swim and for lunch (pending weather it could be lunch and sitting on the porch).

Water pressure in the house is super! (Knock on wood). We did fill up ten or so jugs with water that were under the kitchen sink. Terry also said that if at night the pressure seems low, fill up sinks so we will always have some water to wash face with or brush teeth. Loving having a Clyde and Terry here. So instead of "Google That" or as some call it "Allison That" (since I always look it up to find the answer), it will be "Clyde and Terry that" for a while. Once we showered, we went to MultiBank to try and open up a bank account. We really didn't think it would happen today or even tomorrow. The hours are definitely different here. They open at 8am and close by 3pm.

There was a gringo ahead of us speaking English (whew) opening a business account. He will have to wait three weeks for his account. Once called we were with a woman that spoke just a little bit of English. The three of us did just fine. To open an account in this bank, we need two forms of identification, a letter stating we were in good standing with our US bank, a $1050 deposit, two personal references (Thank you, Clyde, for answering your phone, since we had no idea they would call upon you today!), and a tax return or paper that proves salary for the month. We filled out the application form, copies were made of everything we brought, then we signed the "we authorize the bank to let the US government know what we are doing", and a W-2 form. On Monday we will get an email in English letting us know if we have been approved, and if so, we can go into the bank to deposit the money (plus cash for two debit cards, a checkbook and 25 checks). This process took close to an hour. Next stop was to find the market in San Carlos that Clyde told us about last night. We have been to San Carlos (great restaurant called "Carlitos") and beyond, but we had not ever gotten out of the car for produce. This market is less than ten minutes from El Machetazo. We realized after the fact that there are a few cubicles there to choose produce from, but we were accosted by one gentleman, so we let him bag our produce. We stopped on the way to pick up a pineapple and some red peppers. Here is what we bought for $7 (pineapple, two cucumbers, six red and green peppers, two heads of cabbage, lettuce, tomatos and onions):

Our less than seven dollar bounty

We are making something on Sunday for lunch. There are ingredients we are looking for and if we can't find one thing, we will make another or we actually know how to make the one ingredient so we could go all out and make it. Easy enough. Let's see what we come up with tomorrow. After we stopped at the market, we went to the shop called Fantasy (the store that has a little bit of everything, but buy it when you see it) for hangars. We found wooden hangers and blue colored thick plastic (wanna be wooden) hangers. They were less than fifty cents a hanger. Sold. Across the parking lot we went into El Machetazo for groceries. We were hungry, we had no plan, and we were a bit overwhelmed. We were going in different directions especially because for months we have been eating salads for dinner and on the weekends eating with our lake house roommates or dining out, so today we just didn't have a real idea of what we wanted to have in the house. But we managed to work our way through the aisles reading the labels and comparing the prices. We bought more fruit, bread, chicken, and I haven't a clue what else. Once home we unloaded the groceries, threw in that second load of laundry, and we set out to take a little road trip. We noticed the water pressure was low, so we filled up a sink before we left.We decided to drive down two side roads this afternoon. One was through the town of Cabuya where Clyde and Terry had looked at a rental house for us. We didn't find the house, but we saw horses, cows, a planned and gated community, a body of water (Rio Chame?) with a family picnicing nearby, a church and a school, and let's not forget, a random bull not within a fence.

Possibly part of Chame River

A horse and a house

Cabuya Church

A bull hanging out by the road having the lunch that I missed out on!

The next road we traveled took us to Las Lajas. Or at least I knew we were on the road to Las Lajas. Here we drove up hill for about twenty minutes. The temperature changed once we were in the clouds. We saw a development called Rancho Sante Fe. Not a whole lot of building going on, but many signs indicating a spectacular community up ahead. The views looking out to communities like Gorgona, Coronado, farther west to Santa Clara and also of the Pacific Ocean and beyond were spectacular.

Buildings way far out there are on the beach

Tiny highrise white buildings along the Pacific

Wow! And there are houses up here with this view!

The planned community that no one is building in (so it goes in Panama), but they have the signs.

Not a whole lot of rain during rainy season, but things are green.

Driving down the hill went by much quicker, and once we were through with the road trip, we stopped at a second Fantasy shop on the highway. No hangers. We just need a few more. And we also stopped at another grocery story prior to this to look for those few ingredients and instead we bought this:

The tall can of chips are "Just like Pringles" haha

Once to our turn off, we drove down the street of our neighborhood. We discovered a mini mart for when we want to walk and get a quick snack haha and there is also a large plant nursery at the end of the road which wasn't open when we were there. They are open Mon-Sun until 3:30. Here they start the week on signs at Monday, not Sunday. We also saw a church, our police station, and a little park. This is where we will start walking too when we tire of walking around our neighborhood three times.

The road to town

A little park with the church in background

The Church

The graveyard

Just a blue fence with a cross on the side of the road

Girl in our neighborhood walking home from school (it is 5:30)

The children here that go to public school either go from 7-12 or 12-5 according to Luis. The girl above obviously got the later shift.At the end of the day we knew we were going to be "facetiming" with our daughter. But first we chatted with my sister on facetime and caught up. Still so amazed that I could see her, and immediately following this call, we talked with our beautiful daughter. She had a great week and is settling into her new apartment pretty much like we are settling here. One thing I told her is I don't really know the temperature here, because I have yet to find a news channel I want to watch (we do have Apple TV and Roku set up, but alas, some stations won't allow us to see them live), and our rental car doesn't tell the temperature. What I do know is that as usual, today I woke up to sun. Then a little rain by the market, and then sun all day. Perhaps it will storm tonight. The dark clouds came in quickly and while chatting with our daughter, it darkened on the computer screen really fast. But no rain yet. I have yet to put moisturizer on my face before applying makeup (I learned this two visits here ago), and things dry really fast here (I hang some clothes damp, and they are dry within the hour, and my hair for whatever reason dries really fast.) And lucky for our daughter, she had just made herself a fantastic pasta meal with sausage whereas we are so hungry and tired at this point (we have had an apple and a few chips) that we are throwing farfalle noodles in a pot to boil, and Ray will have his with butter, and mine will be doused in sauce. We shut the house up, turned on some AC because quite frankly, we have been really great about not running it all in the main room. The house has stayed pretty cool (and it is cool outside) but when two bats came flying at house right at the sliding glass gates, I knew it was time to shut the house up. And also, this is what the landlord suggested so as to keep the bugs, flies and now bats on the outside! More to come tomorrow, I am sure! Pictures below to show house and market: