I wake up everyday feeling so happy to look out the window from my bed and see nothing but the sky and trees. It’s such a peaceful place. Well, especially now that the Flower and Cafe Festival has ended…whew! For the last ten days we’ve heard the sounds of so much revelry going on in the pueblo. Music until 4 or 5 in the morning. All night long! And what sounded like hordes of people . And the fireworks various times of the night and early morning. Oh, the Panamanians love to party! Let me tell ya! The nice thing about the wild parties is that it’s just good fun. You really never hear of any violence or muggings , no , they just have a good time with no need for any of that nonsense. Well, with the exception of the Indigenous men! They love to fight. Its common to see Indian men in town with beaten and sometimes bloody faces. I was in a store on Saturday morning , getting beer for Scott, and I was standing in line behind and Indian guy who looked like he’d been in a pretty good brawl. His face was bloody and his hands as well. But I’ll be damned that guy looked as happy as could be, he was all smiles. Of course I’m pretty sure he was still pretty toasted too! Hah! I just have to laugh to myself. To each his own I guess! I don’t really understand why you’d find getting your face beat to a pulp a fun pastime, but that’s just me. Hah!
It’s nice to have our peaceful little town back. Yesterday all the busses taking all the hordes of people back to wherever they came from were heading down the hill. And there are a ton of busses. This small little mountain town is overtaken by Panamanian tourists during the festival. I love driving over the bridge and seeing all the families and young couples taking pictures of themselves with the river in the background. Selfies are alive and well here in Panama, just like everyplace in the world! Its just adorable to see the groups of teenage girls fixing their hair and taking group selfies. And the Mom’s taking pictures of Dad holding the baby. Its reminds me of driving across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Boquete’s bridge is nothing nearly as huge but it seems to be a very popular spot for photos. It is very pretty with the Feria and the river. Especially when the Feria has all the beautiful flowerbeds all blooming, its quite a site. But, seeing those busses heading down the hill I felt like taking a sigh of relief to have the peace back again.
Yesterday morning we woke up to a dead generator! Gasp! I must tell you that generator is my best friend these days. We wont have electricity up to our property for a long time so until then we really depend on that generator to give us our power. So, when Scott got up and went out back to start that puppy up and it didn’t start, I knew we were in trouble. Ugh! Mind you, we have 4 generators. One is broken and not really repairable. One is up in the workshop and powers up the garage doors and the water supply room and the internet satellite . Then we have a big propane one which is not usable until we get our gas permit, so it sits waiting to be used here at the casita. And then the one that we use here in the casita is number 4…and now dead! We first thought we’d head up to the workshop and load up the generator from up there, and bring it down here. But….Its a pretty big one and really really heavy! I was afraid one of us would get hurt trying to get that in and out of the truck, just the two of us. So, needless to say, we now own 5 generators! Yep! Off we went down the hill to David to Do It (Home Depot-ish) to purchase a new one. We always turn the generator off at night so thats at least 8 hours for the refrigerator to have no power, that’s why it was so important to get it up and running again. I really didn’t want to have to toss our all our food. So, we now have a sparkly new generator, it even has an automatic start button, no pull thingy! Scott likes that!
The other thing we managed to accomplish this weekend was sorting and repacking our storage container. Right now we still have two big storage units down in Dolega. So we’ve gotten almost all of our stuff here in the casita that we need. the remaining things will be for the main house. There’s a bunch of boxes and the pool table, and another king size bed, a few small pieces of furniture and the kayak, bikes, a bunch of odds and ends. Our plan is to reorganize and put it all into one unit so we can get rid of the other one and save a bunch of money. But its a bit of a job. We needed to look through all the boxes because we were missing a few little things like coffee mugs and all the remote controls, and just a couple other things. I got some artwork out so we can hang a few pretty things on the walls here. Scott will have to take one of our workers down there with him this week to help him move the heavy things over. It’ll be good to get that all organized.
The other thing we did this weekend was pick out granite for our kitchen countertops. The fabricators are coming up today,(maybe) to measure. It’ll be nice to have that done too. We also went down to Elemec (the tile and plumbing supply store) and ordered more of the same tile we used here in the Casita. For all my friends in the states who don’t know this, here in Panama there’s no carpet and not often wood floors. The entire house is tiled. Which is pretty nice for cleaning. So I just love the tile we used here and the store we bought it from no longer had it , but the store in Panama City had some, so we ordered enough for the main house. We aren’t exactly sure where we will store it, but we’ll figure that out! Hah! Scott plans to call the tractor guy in the next week or so to get him up here to start digging for the foundation of the main house…..Here we go!
The fireplace on the terrace is nearly done, it only needs to be repayoed (I cant seem to spell that word!) . They finished doing the chimney last week. Of course I decided I wanted the opening of the fireplace to have an arch to it. So Scott explained that to Javier, he chuckled and rolled his eyes along with Scott, but I’ll get my arch! Have no doubt! Hah! I’ll be glad when they’re all done working on the terrace so they can do the tile there as well , it will be the same tile thats in the house.. They still have to finish the big arches and then that area will be all mine! Right now I have to bring all the patio furniture inside everyday or it will just get all dirty and ruined. We did get to enjoy the terrace with some friends on Saturday evening. Luana & Bond wanted to come up and Kat & Allen said they’d love to come up and Andrea joined us too! We made some snacks and had some wine and sat outside and chatted! Let me tell you, coming to our house right now is not for the timid! Hah! Its actually quite a pain in the butt just to get to the casita at the moment. You first have to park your car at the end of the cement drive , unless you are driving a 4 X4, and then there’s a short, kinda muddy walk to the beginning of our property, followed by a very steep, gravelly, slippery hike down to our casita. And the adventure isn’t over once you reach the casita, you then have to navigate around construction debris and piles of dirt and then walk across a balance beam type thing, just to reach our terrace. Don’t even bother trying to reach the front door! The walkway isn’t in yet and thats a really dangerous area. So, for those of you here in Boquete that have said you’d like to come over, If I haven’t invited you, its because its kinda dangerous still! Once we get the road in and the walkways in I will be much more social. I’ve nearly fallen into ditches and slipped and fallen several times on the walk down the hill, I tell ya, this place is pretty rustic still.
As usual, I’ve written a long winded post! I sat down to just write a little something to keep you up to date on our adventure and look what I’ve done! Well, this is just a little taste of what’s going on here. Never a dull moment, for sure! We say we’re “retired”, but, Pffffffft! We’re still working! And quite possibly working harder than we’ve worked in our lives! But at the end of the day, when we drop from exhaustion, we both have smiles on our faces. This adventure is filled with endless surprises and we never really know what’s around the next corner, but one thing we know for sure…every morning when we wake up we hear the wind rushing through the trees that surround our little casita and we look out the window from our bed to see the sun rising and the new day beginning and we smile again. Life is truly Good!
Let The Adventure "Continue"! 
Holly, what a beautiful person you are! (And pretty sharp with the writing, as well….I can just hear your laughing voice as I read!)
Thanks so Much John! And thanks for keeping in touch with me. Tell Tim I was thinking of him on his Birthday! Hugs to you both!!
Great update Holly! Love how you write about your adventures:) Miss you guys!