OUR RETIRED ADVENTURE
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qUEREMOS VIVIR AL SOL
KSha
Costa Rica is amazing! Beauty abounds.
Panama is "home" for now. Loving life!
South America is next! Columbia here we come.
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After an interesting flight from Bocas to Panama City, we made it back to the city of broad shoulders. I got the window seats on our flights and took a few pics on our way from the island and the Panamanian sunset as we left Panama City. The clouds cleared long enough for me to get the last shot as we came in to land. We got in just in time as the snow came down the day after we arrived. That was not a nice welcome...but Bob-AirBnB Bob, says that it has been a pretty mild winter. I am missing the warm sun on my face though. We were so happy to have had a wonderful family party at the Lowe's--for the Seibels, during this return. My goddaughter planned it and my in-laws hosted a super fun time with the extended Chicago family. I thought I was at a baby shower there for a minute as we received super thoughtful parting gifts from too many people. Melanie even took the time to invent a signature drink for the send off and do an "adios" video for us (sharing the link). Sha and I had a blast! I have to thank our official party photographer, from the Lisa-Kuzniar-Bujak studio. Despite all the harsh rules and no hot plate allowed upstairs; this is a pretty cool AirBnB! Here is the Youtube link to see Melanie's great video! We are finishing up on the doctor visits. As I write this, I am knee deep into the wonderful world of colonoscopy prep...(TMI??). Thought I had also better let you know that Sha is the defending PCC champion; I couldn't catch her. I am looking for better results during the PCC Part Dos starting the first week in March. I also am not enjoying wearing pants. I also got a double thumbs up on my year-end spine surgery check up.
In a week's time we will be back in Coronado Bay, Panama; looking forward to not wearing pants. We will have a pair of early visitors as Ed (who's turning 70!) and his beautiful bride Randi from Georgia will come see us at the end of March and my folks; Willie and Lois from South Dakota, will be visiting in Mid April. I'm sure there will be some card games played during those two visits. Retired life is good, I'm not gonna lie to you about that. We're living our dream and loving every minute of it! Looking forward to putting a lot of pins on the world map. I'll check back in from Coronado Bay! Pura Vida!
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Island life comes with a completely different vibe and groove to it. To live here, you would want to be outside the main town and have some type of economical transportation (bicycle or scooter...maybe golf cart) as the taxis are expensive to use on a daily basis (how I long for the Ubers of Panama City). I am not sure what it takes to be a taxi driver here in Bocas, but these dudes usually have big wads of cash from the "gringo" fares which are $2-3 a person for rides into town from our hotel (about 3 km or ~2 miles). Or you could find a spot on one of the many islands and get around by boat...which would be kinda cool. There are all kinds of Mini Supers (grocery stores) throughout town as well as several Farmacias to take care of most general needs. It seems to be more rainy on the Caribbean side of Panama, but generally has rained at night and most of our days have been awesome. On our last day here it is cloudy as I write to you today.  Saturday was our last scheduled walk day so that BB's stuff that gets soaked with sweat could be washed and dried before we leave. NGG sent us way past Paki Point (spot with the smiling Buddha) to see if we could find a restaurant in the jungle that we 'd heard great things about; Arboloco. This took us along the sandy road right along the water; my favorite path to walk.   We were getting to the point where I was thinking it may be time to turn around for home...so that I could make it back without needing a taxi, when we changed our minds.  We had to cross the little creek that crossed the road at this point and then a short way before we turned off the road into the trees. We had to walk through a path of plants to get to the restaurant so we could see it. We met the owners, Stacey and Clem, who built the place and Clem who is from the Island of Dominica in the Caribbean, is the head chef. Really neat to hear their story and how their restaurant came to be. Before we left we got the WhatsApp number to make a reservation and headed for home. It didn't take us long after we got home to confirm our table for dinner that evening.    We enjoyed this incredible Caribbean fried cauliflower in peanut sauce and spicy peppers and carrots (pictured above). Then shared a chef special featuring all the Caribbean style meats and seafood, with fried plantains and 3 exquisite dipping sauces...wow! This was a cool dining experience in the middle of the trees. We headed into town for a late lunch on Sunday before we headed over to the Toro Loco sports bar for the Super Bowl. When we arrived at the bar, our bartender, Rose, had saved us 2 seats at the bar so we had good seats to see the game! Couldn't have planned that any better even if I had planned it.  Here's a little taste of the place... By the time the game got underway, there wasn't an empty seat or place to stand. We got into a couple of squares and I was hoping the Chiefs didn't hit that FG before halftime...had the numbers without that score for $125...darn. Kinda hard for me to root against the kicker. That was a lot of fun to watch the game there with a rowdy crowd. Interestingly, the bar could only have the audio on in English on one TV due to the service they used, with 3 more TVs showing the game as well. If the other TVs were used, the audio would be in Spanish. Unfortunately, the TV with the audio was way behind the feed of the other 3 TVs...so we saw the play, and then in about a minute the audio TV caught up to give us the play by play. Took a bit to get used but was just fine.
We are having a lazy Monday and as the sun is coming out we are thinking about making sure our tan lines are intact and heading to the pool. Hasta luego from the islands! Pura Vida!  The view from our balcony hasn't gotten old during our long stay at Playa Tortuga. The people here are so nice, and the daily breakfasts are awesome. Sha and I are not sure how they scramble their eggs; but boy are they good. As we head into our last days here on the Island, it's hard to believe we've been in Panama for 3 months. On our walking path that takes us to the surfers beach, the paved road stops and the road is hard sand and runs right along the water. The bank is lined with wire boxes filled with rocks to prevent the erosion of the bank. There must have been some storms out at sea because the waves along the resort's shoreline have been more intense this past week. On one of our walks last week we found out that the waves have been more intense all over the island. The walk along the water started out like normal as you can see in the first photo; but changed drastically when we rounded the corner. First a few rocks on the road, then there were more rocks than sand in some spots as the rocks got tossed up onto the road. The last photo shows where the barrier was broken and the road was half washed away where a car could just get by the spot. Men had come to repair the breach in the barrier and remake and refill the wire boxes of rocks. 
  We have been enjoying Cribbage during most afternoons; wait...I should say Sha has been enjoying Cribbage most afternoons. As January was winding down I had retaken the PCC lead and was feeling pretty good with my prowess at the board. Well that didn't last, and turned completely upside down during the last days of January and has not subsided as February moves along. On the 5th, as I was losing the third game of three games, Sha stopped dealing and pointed out to sea as the full moon was coming up in the sky. I hope the pictures show you how cool it was to watch it in person. I got the last one at 30X zoom on Sha's phone.       I do want to say that I have won 100 games in this year's PCC. Unfortunately, Sha has won 111 games with only a few days remaining in the tourney. Cool "Carolina" Kev has been trying to boost my confidence, which I appreciate--Club Kev! The Floating Bar is well-known around the island, and we finally took a water taxi to visit on the 7th. We had met the owner, Chad at Renny Pizza outside of the Gran Bahia hotel during our short stay there during dinner one night. We chose this day as there was to be a "worm orgy" when the sun went down in the water around the bar. Yeah, we chuckled too, but found the explanation intriguing, so we went. There is an aquatic worm (about the size of the first joint of your pinky) living in the water depths that 2 days after a full moon reproduce. The females come to the surface and release their eggs in a spiral cloud around them, and then males come to fertilize them. Interesting thing is they glow bright light blue so you can see them in the dark! All lights of the bar go off and NO cameras are allowed to disrupt the process. One guy turned on his flashlight on his phone and everyone shouted at him to turn it off--serious business. It was pretty cool to see and lasted about 15 minutes. I can now confidently check worm orgy off my bucket list. We are trying to hit our favorite spots before we head back to the States and Skully's was last night's choice for Karaoke night; and then across the road to our favorite pizza place Ciao. Met a Wyoming Teton Park Ranger who rode his motorcycle down here from Wyoming and was heading to Costa Rica in a few days. He is staying in his tent that he puts up where he can...we wished him the best as there is a lot of overnight rain expected this week. There wasn't anybody sining any country songs, so that had to be remedied. When we went to eat, we got to hear some good music while we had our pizza.   We signed our 6-month lease today for the Coronado Bay house that we have been talking about. Also bought our return tickets to Panama for March 6th.  Planning to go to town to watch the Super Bowl at Toro Loco "the sports bar" in town. Hope we can hear the commercials in English. Well that's the skinny on the island happenings. Hoping the forecasted rain we are seeing will yield some sunny afternoons as it always has during our trip. We will be back in Chicago late in the evening of the 15th.
Pura Vida! We are enjoying the "quieter" life outside the "big city" of Bocas Town back at Playa Tortuga. Cars are moving a little faster along the road for our morning walks; but walking along the beach is hard to beat. We've had some good rain showers in the last few days, but every day has always turned into a sunny day and in the mid 80's. [As I write today it is still cloudy at 1:30 PM, unusual.] Last Wednesday we took an excursion by boat, that was set up by our general manager here at Playa Tortuga (got us 50% discount for the trip), that had us visiting several islands, sightseeing aquatic life and snorkeling. We boarded a van with several other people from our hotel that took us into town to the dock to load onto the boat. At about 10 AM, eighteen of us boarded the canopied boat and we set out to sea. 
Our captain cranked up the 250 HP engine and we were flying across the water in no time. Once out in the open water, although you can still see land masses, I lost my directional perspective pretty quickly. We didn't know exactly where we were going, but we knew our first stop was to see dolphins. Now before anyone gets too excited, we saw several of them, but I failed to get a picture of any of them. I know I'm not as good as NGG, but we were in a large open area with about 10 or more other boats and when the dolphins breached the water they were a ways off, sometimes near other boats and there wasn't a great opportunity to get a pic-although I tried!  We then drove a short ways around and through islands of mangrove trees to look for sloths; where I did manage a picture...thank you very much.   We said goodbye to our sloth friend and headed back out to sea. After a while of speeding along, we started to slow down and then the engine stopped. As the captain spoke in Spanish, we weren't sure what was the plan, but soon found out we had stopped to do some snorkeling...in the middle of open water! As we looked around we noticed we could see the bottom--maybe about 10-12 feet deep, and there was coral there as well. The captain was handing out the snorkeling masks to those that wanted them, including me. Not understanding the protocol on how to get out of the boat, I watched a couple of "younger" people show me how...put your legs over and go! Sha was still undecided as I went into the water. Sha noticed the small ladder that was our reentry back onto the boat and passed on getting in. The water was comfortably warm and enjoyable to float in. I saw the different kinds of coral and a lot of small fishes as I snorkeled around the boat with about half of our party getting in the water. The ladder back onto the boat wasn't quite as difficult as I had imaged and I reloaded without incident. After everyone was back on the boat, we drove a short distance to a restaurant on the water to order lunch...not eat it-just order it, and have an opportunity to hit the head if necessary.  After everyone ordered lunch, we left. I'm not sure if everyone else thought this was weird, but after Sha and I exchanged some "WTF" looks we soldiered on. Our furthest destination was next; Zapatilla island #2. These two tiny islands are the last land masses of Bocas Del Toro as you head into the open Caribbean Sea.  Approaching Zapatilla #2.  A lone palm tree on a rock offshore of Zapatilla #2.  Piece of Zapatilla beach. We all voted for a 2-hour stay before unloading at the dock. This was a popular destination as we saw multiple other tour boats offshore and many people already on the patches of beach that we could see. The area was a National Marine Park and there was a marked walk way through the jungle that was located at the end of the dock where we got off the boat.  We walked along the trail for about 15 minutes until it started moving away from the water, and then we returned to the beach. I added these two driftwood pieces for our good friend Karen in Coco because she loves them as much as I do. Hi Karen!
      We were enjoying the sunshine as we waded in the water, we also noticed that off in the distance it looked like it was raining. Then we noticed it was getting closer. Before too long the wind had picked up and we decided we needed to head for the covered palapa about 50 meters off of the water. We made it to cover as the light rain came down. We had about a half an hour before we were to reload onto the boat; and by the time that came around, the rain had passed and the sun was on its way back out. We all reloaded the boat and headed back to get our lunch in the bright sunshine. From Zapatilla to the restaurant is about a half an hour ride over the open sea. When we arrived, we were told to sit down and our food would be out shortly. Sha and I were trying to theorize how this all would work; having ordered our food about 3 hours ago, would they remember who ordered what AND then be able to find us all sitting around at different tables. I gotta say they handle it pretty well. A man would come out of the kitchen with 2 plates and be calling names...he would walk around and find the person(s) with their hand up and then deliver. Only a few times did he have to walk around the different areas twice--probably because someone wasn't paying attention and missed their name being called the first time. Sha got her order first and I wasn't so sure they hadn't forgot mine; but a few minutes later it came out. After you ate, you then went up and paid your bill. We could see our captain checking in with the kitchen to see if any of our group still needed to pay before we got the call to load up the boat. While we waited, we saw some cool fish.   A pair of needle fish.  There were literally millions of these tiny fishes in swarms under the dock and around the pillars of the restaurant. After reloading the boat (once everyone had paid their tab), we headed back to our home dock. About halfway "home", I was thinking this was a nice long day and a wonderful trip when the boat started slowing down...we were no where near anything, and then the engine cut and we were floating. The captain didn't say anything right away; and just when I thought we might need to call for help, the captain said, "Do you see anything?" Looking harder into the shallow water I realized I could see starfish on the sandy floor. Captain asked if anyone wanted to snorkel with the starfish; and yup I certainly did! NGG got these two great shots from the boat as I did my aquatic investigations. Interesting to see the different colors of them.   What a cool last piece to experience during a wonderful day. Seven hours after boarding our boat in the morning, we got back off at our home dock. We got the van ride home, changed and headed off to Skully's for BINGO. Good thing we did as Sha was a big winner in the second game of the night!  We took it easy on Thursday as the jarring of open water travel required a day of relaxing by the pool. Friday we went back into town to our favorite deli by our old hotel Gran Bahia for lunch. We each had a wonderful cheeseburger that costed us $8...for both of them! We added a $0.65 bag of chips and a $1 soda. I love a $10.25 lunch! We then strolled the downtown streets until we got to the park (still decorated with the lanterns) and played cribbage for an hour and a half; Sha is still kicking my behind. We then hit a Happy hour for a little refreshment and then walked back to La Buga to have sushi by the water.  
After a good walk this morning, we've had a relaxing day while I've caught you up on our continued stay on Bocas. Sha is wanting some pasta for dinner tonight so we'll be planning where we will go soon.
Update on the house rental...Seems that making payments to Panamanian accounts and banks is more difficult than one would think. Oh it can be done, but the fees for transfers or apps are way more than we want to spend (% of total sum, plus bank fees on the sender and receiver's side). We didn't retire to pay to use our own money. So we are still trying to work out how our security deposit and first month's rent won't cost us an arm and a leg to make them. Stay tuned... We miss you all and hope you are well. We will see our Chi-town family in less than two weeks! Pura Vida! |
Kevin & Sharon SeibelBeginning our next big adventure! Archives
December 2023
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