Little Learnings - Nov 1, 2022 - Boquete, Panama
Panamanian birds like to have conversations. I can stand out on the balcony and sing or whistle to the birds, and they will converse. There seems to be a wider variety of birds in this neighborhood than in the hotel's area, but that might be my noticing, or who shows up for the different buffets offered by the Haven across the street and the other snazzy houses. When I put out food in the morning, I make some whistles similar to their calls, and I may not get the same calls back, but birds will start replying. I can start it up again when the conversation subsides with whistles or singing. They don't necessarily come into the yard to chat, but they will watch from the power lines or from the fence or the trees. When I back off, they will check out the fruit offerings and call their friends to join in the buffet.
And there are apps for that. Birds of Panama has photos of about 2000 birds known to either be in Panama or to move through Panama on migration, and most of them also have recorded bird calls. I have been able to use it to identify a lot of birds from the hotel and our neighborhood already. A cool thing has also been that I can walk out to the balcony or to the hammock pavilion and play the songs of birds I think I have seen and see which ones call back in response. That tells me which are in the neighborhood. Of course, that doesn't mean they stand still for photos or come close enough for me to photograph with my phone, but it is fun. There is a Flickr account for birds of Panama that also has some great photos, and I might be able to share some of those if I cannot catch my own for you. The birds here are spectacular, and they chat all day long!
Plantains are the zucchini of the border area. The gentleman who maintains the properties, Ameth (Ah-met), is from a small town near the border with Costa Rica, and his family has a plantation/finca that grows many fruits and vegetables. Ameth goes home each weekend to visit his wife and family, bringing us a different item each week when he returns. Last week he brought us plantains - enough for us to eat 3-4 every day and to learn a new recipe every day. Plantain empanadas, fried sweet plantains with honey, atol de plátano (a drink), and more ripen every day. Green plantains are not eaten much in Guatemala, but in Panama and northern South America, they are commonly eaten as savory dishes, so many recipes are on YouTube. Currently, Miguel is working on a batch fried in olive oil, and instead of honey, he is using hot habanero sauce. He will be eating those alone.
Green oranges make the best juice. I didn't even know green oranges were a thing! I saw a curiosity at the hotel, where the breakfast ladies had put out an interesting fruit for the bird buffet that looked like an orange but in a green peel, and the birds thought it was luscious! Ameth brought us a big bag of green oranges from his father's finca/plantation, and Miguel got excited - these are the kind of oranges he had as a kid. They make the best, sweetest juice. When he was a child, the green oranges were not pretty enough for export to the USA but grew easily in people's yards. Sure enough, the acidity is low, the sweetness is high, and if you juice them, the birds love to share the leftovers!
Flip Flop: A funny note similar to the change of seasons when you cross the equator: in Seattle, the squirrels are brown, and the mosquitos are black. In Panama, the squirrels are black, and the mosquitos are brown. I found this photo of a black squirrel from Costa Rica - less than 30 miles from here - he looks just like the guy who scrambles across the power lines outside our balcony, always when I don't have my phone out.
Mosquitos and no-see-ums don't like smelly hand lotion. Spiders don't care. I am getting bitten and bitten and bitten. The tiny no-see-ums can be seen if you look closely, but they are so small that I cannot feel them when they land and bite unless they land right on my ear or in my nose. For some reason, they prefer bony places like knuckles, shoulders, elbows, and collarbones over fatty places like the rest of me. One got under the sheets last night, and I have bites all over my back - I feel like a big lumbering bear today, looking for any post or tree to lean against and scratch. BUT, anywhere I can reach with the smelly hand lotion, they don't like to bite as much. I don't blame them. And I will take advantage of this stinky advantage as long as I can put it past them. The exercise in flexibility to slather myself in smelly lotion should also count as stretching points for yoga or pilates and may provide flexibility entertainment for the neighborhood birds - perhaps for the whole neighborhood!
Microwaves often have buttons for specific dishes. We were pretty concerned when the microwave at the hotel had a button for "Palomitas," which means little doves or baby doves. Given that we had a white Paloma in Seattle that Miguel called Palomita, it was quite disconcerting to discover that Panama would devote a particular setting on the microwave to the cooking of our charming pet. On the final day of our stay, I asked Luz, our breakfast lady, why the microwave would have a 3-minute setting for the cooking of baby doves; she giggled and giggled and giggled while I worried. Then, she told me that in Panama, as in some other Latin American countries, popcorn is called Palomitas.
Whew!
In Guatemala, popcorn is called poporopo. Miguel had never heard the word palomitas used for popped corn, so he was just as dismayed as I was when it appeared on the microwave control panel! The microwave at the new house's control panel is in English, so there are no unsettling settings.
No Mail Delivery: Panama has no street addresses. There is no federal mail delivery, so there is no need for house numbers and street addresses. We are the house on the corner of Calle 13, across from The Haven - we give that address to taxis and workers or water delivery people, and everyone finds us.
Ex-pats tend to find this lack of street address very uncomfortable despite the positive aspect that we get no junk mail, no political mailers, and no donation requests. We ex-pats use services like Mailboxes R Us, mainly because we miss Amazon deliveries. MaryBea and Miguel now have a mailing address in Florida through ServiTechnique that ships to Panama, and we picked up our first package at their office today - from Amazon, of course! So long as there is a tracking number, we pay $4 a pound for air delivery, and it takes 5-7 days from the date it is received in Doral, Florida - we can even receive my medications, so long as there is a tracking number. Shipping something back to the USA is a slower process as it goes through the Panamanian post office to Florida (5-10 days) and then through the standard USA postal service across the country and takes whatever time it takes.
Garden: We have a lovely garden at this house - gardens are not common in Panama, mainly because things grow whether you want them to or not, and most Panamanians don't have the time to cultivate pretty things while weeding out the undesirable, which grows at least as well as the pretty stuff. If they are going to garden, it is for sustenance, and they need food. We have bougainvillea, lilies, hibiscus, hydrangea, and lots of small plants that might be weeds, but they flower. We also have plants trying to be beautiful, but no one has had time to tend to them. So I will undertake some gardening, and we will see what comes of this endeavor. Having been an apartment liver for the better part of my life and never a tropics dweller, we shall see what comes of this. As a start, I discovered an app for that, and I will identify some of the plants we have in the yard, some I find on my walks, and find a hat that will protect me from my seven-minute sun limit.
Thank you for another lovely time! This new month of November is national holiday month in Panama, and thousands of people come to Boquete for celebrations, parades, and all kinds of loudness. We are greatly relieved to have moved out of the center of town in time to miss the greatest of the ruckus but have been warned that we didn't get far enough away to avoid having lots of drunken revelers park their cars on our street. We had a taste of the amphitheater sound effects of living in a mountain valley when major concerts were going on over the weekend. Stand by for the month's opening salvo on November 3, when the first Independence Day of November is celebrated, from Colombia in 1903!
Have a wonderful evening!
MaryBea y Miguel
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