A Window with a View

Panama Sights

We came over from Taboga about 2 weeks ago, spent one week in the anchorage known as “La Playita”, where we got lots of practice getting the dinghy in an out of the water. We're now in the anchorage at the Balboa Yacht Club, not to be confused with the similarly named Yacht Club of Newport Beach. Anyway...it’s so much easier to get around from here and we’ve been able to see more of the area. We’ve stocked up on books during the book exchanges and enjoyed hanging out with other cruisers while munching on pizza and enjoying a few beers. We picked up some charts for our trip to Ecuador from the folks on “Gallant Fox’, along with some first hand info on the Marina in Puerto Lucia, Ecuador. We been to the ruins of Old Panama, Casco Viejo, the walking street, and last night we went to the final night of Carnival; I've even had my hair done the other day and a facial too...I'm feeling so fancy. We had planned to leave a few days ago but couldn’t resist staying until Carnival. Latest news on our departure date is Friday; heading for Ecuador with stops on the way to include the Perlas Islands. We have to provision, fix leaks in the dinghy and check out as well before we head out.

What we saw in Chiriqui

Here's a few more of what we saw in Chiriqui

Inland Trip Across Panama...Al's Wild Ride

Before we left for the states back in June we rented a car to drive across much of Panama ending up in the Chiriqui region. We visited the expat favorite retirement town of Boquete, along with Guadalupe, Volcan and Cerro Punta. These are the highlands where there are cattle farms and agriculture and with that comes the oh so welcomed cool weather….it was pure heaven. One of the places we stayed at is Los Quetzales Lodge; it’s basic but much nicer than what the guide book reported. We even spent the day with Laura, a real estate agent whose nice office Baru Realty in Volcan proved to be the perfect place to make our inquiries. Laura is great; she showed us beautiful lots that we are still fantasizing about and even introduced us to some of her friends that live in Volcan. We did some hiking around the area taking in all the beauty and visited Finca Dracula; despite the spooky name, this finca (farm) is revered as one of the most important orchid farms in Central America with more than 600 species on display that are cloned to produce 250,000 plants yearly. The fincas name refers to the Dracula orchid, a purple flower that droops and hides itself during daylight and comes to life at night…hence the name.

Back to Taboga, Panama

PANAMA – FEB 14, 2011

We’re back in Panama, still on a mooring at Taboga Island. The island of Taboga is about 10 miles from Panama City, a beach town where the city folks flock on weekends to relax and party at the beach (mostly very loudly and till past 3 AM). All the approx. 900 residents of Taboga take a ferry into the city regularly to do all their grocery shopping, there are few only one or two shops on the island and they don’t carry much. There are a few small hotels and a couple of restaurants as well.

Taboga has it’s share of history, Capt. Morgan amongst other pirates came in search of gold and pearls. Francisco Pizarro and Paul Gauguin each lived here for a short time; it’s told that Paul Gauguin worked on the canal after having run out of money. Taboga was also a place where workers that had fallen ill, while working on France’s early failed attempt at building the Panama Canal, came to recuperate. Many people came from all over the world to work on the canal and many stayed, you can easily see that in the vast ethnic diversity in the populous of Panama. Yesterday after having spent the day in Panama City we caught a cab to get back to the Calypso Queen ferry by 4 o’clock; our driver spoke with a very definite Jamaican accent so I asked where he was from. Dawson said he was from right here but that his Great-Grandfather had come from Jamaica to work on the canal, and had stayed on. I thought about it and his accent made sense, growing up here he spoke Spanish but at home they spoke English, with, of course, a Jamaican accent.