Panama Scouting - Day 11 - Tour of Panama Day 2
Hello from Panama! Today we toured the Azuero Peninsula, and we stopped to smell the flowers.
Today's photos are brought to you by the color Yellow!
The wifi at our hotel is low volume, so I cannot send you a good variety of flower photos I took today, but with the sponsorship of the color Yellow, these two are delightful. The first photo is of the Pachystachys Lutea plant from Peru, also known as the Golden Shrimp flower, or the Lollipop plant. Cute, isn't it? The second plant is Heliconia Psittacorum, native to South America and the Caribbean, and to Panama. This photo also shows the intensity of the sunshine here, as the arch is a light reflection, like a twisting rainbow across my photo. I couldn't see it when I took the photo, but three photos later, it was still showing up in each photo! Didn't happen to the next guy who tried, however, so it must have been a personal rainbow!
We happened to be in a gardener's yard, looking at a short-term rental duplex. The duplex was beautiful, and built in the last couple of years at a cost of $90,000 on a piece of land bought for $7000 (on a Visa card!) in 2008. The two-bedroom, two-bath apartment had a full USA-style kitchen, an air conditioning unit in each room, and hot water throughout (hot water in homes is not common in Panamanian homes due to the cost of electricity, but then, the water never gets cold, either, because of the ambient temperature). The apartment is probably 750 square feet with a lovely front patio and gated parking, and a backyard with rocking chairs for resting in the shade of the trees. It rents for $65 per night or $350 a week, and $1100 per month, but if you stay for a month, they are negotiable, as that doesn't happen very often. The apartment is in Los Tables, and I will tell you more about Los Tablas, the town, tomorrow when I can send you a photo.
Tonight we are staying in David (pronounced Dah-VEED), the second-largest city in Panama. You can tell it is the second-largest city in Panama because it has a real regional airport and not just an airstrip for rich folk's Cessnas and helicopters (lots of rich folk around Panama). The other way you can tell it is a major city is that it has a big variety of stores and the second largest public hospital in Panama. This is the place people come from northwestern Panama for shopping and healthcare when they cannot find specialty items or care closer to home.
One interesting thing about the hospitals and physicians here is that if you qualify for medical school, the government will pay for you to go, usually in the USA. When doctors graduate, they return to Panama and return the favor by practicing in the public hospitals - some alternating weeks between public and private, working morning surgeries in the public hospital and afternoons on private patients or switching hospitals as their specialty is needed. People here who have insurance go to different hospitals than the public hospitals, but the medical teams are likely to be the same. They are paid for the care they deliver in the public health system, but the view on care is more holistic than in a capitalist system.
Drugs are not the first solution, and many people, upon coming here, discover that they can go off regimens they were given in the USA by using other routes of care or lifestyle changes. One of the ex-pats we spoke with said that when she arrived in 2015, she was having difficulty with her tummy adjusting to the new foods and her allergies were kicking in strong; the doctor recommended that she eat a tablespoon of local honey morning and evening, have a tablespoon of local molasses for lunch (made from local sugar cane), and eat two kiwis per day. The honey would acclimate her body slowly to the local plants and vegetables, and the molasses would soothe her stomach and intestines, while the kiwi would provide anti-oxidants and vitamins - all three would provide local minerals that her body might not be used to ingesting yet. That did the trick for her, and she gladly paid the doctor the $12 charge for the 45-minute visit. When she told the story, many of the ex-pats in the room nodded and smiled, sharing similar experiences.
I would like to thank the color Yellow for sponsoring this afternoon's Panama Photo(s) of the Day. I hope you enjoy the break in the action to bask in these beautiful products of Panama's sunny disposition!
Mary Bea y Miguel