Monkeying Around Boquete and Boca Chica

Hola!
What a fun week this has been. More cabina owners have arrived, although I'm not at liberty to name names, just in case the paparazzi are around the corner.

The guys have been doing some offshore fishing around the Hannibal Bank and Montosa, and have successfully tagged and released a 450 lb blue marlin, a Pacific Sail, and brought home several dorado, which we know as dolphin. This means that the meals have been delicious, with lots of fresh vegetables, rice, and fish many nights.

Yesterday we gave the water a break and took a day trip up to Boquete, a popular Ex-pat retirement town up in the mountains of Panama, about 100 kimometers from here. It's at least 10 degrees cooler, and 4000 feet higher, than where we are here in Boca Chica. We did some shopping and discovered a very unique hand made ceramic tile store run by some Americans from Sante Fe, NM. The owner was very inviting and allowed us to tour her production room, which is directly adjacent to the store. You'll see a picture here of one of her workers, and also one of a display area. Randy is going to have her create some custom tiles for us, that he's going to inlay into some tables for our porch in Awendaw. He'll work on the design in the next few days.

On the way back we stopped to have Happy Hour with some friends, Sam and Fred, who live on a spectacular piece of land a few kilometers from here, with breathtaking views and lots of cool animals. We enjoyed the nickel tour, and also the organic Gouda cheese made just across the water on Boca Brava Island, and a mystery punch that had guyabana as a secret ingredient. I'll post lots of animal pictures here, with descriptions, I've never seen so many different breeds of monkeys, not even during school field trips as a kid at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Last night there where 12 of us for dinner eating Randy's BBQ chicken, the most people we've had yet, and our newest kitchen helper Yandiris, did a fabulous job of stirring up a gourmet salad and rice medley out of a odd mix of ingredients. She lives on a sailboat moored right off our coast, and her husband drives her to work every evening, drops her off at the end of the cemetery, and she comes walking between the headstones on to our property, yesterday in a pretty red dress, almost like a heavenly ghost. She's recently bought an electric keyboard, and when she learned that Don was a professional musician, asked him to give her some lessons. Every night both before and after dinner, she has her 30 minute tutorial and is improving every day.

Right now Carroll and I are relaxing under cover, and the guys are back out there rocking and rolling with lines in the water. We've got a special chip in our radio that lets us hear what's going on offshore, and I just heard our Panamanian captain Hugo saying something about Atun grande, which means big tuna, so I'm guessing that's what's for dinner.

And that's my Panama journal for today, sleep tight, lord knows in Panama we need to watch the bedbugs... geez!