Panama City to Boquete - September 23, 2022

We headed for the airport at 12:30 pm from our hotel thanks to a taxi driver who knew exactly where we needed to go and fit our 5 check-in suitcases and 5 carry-on pieces in what appeared to be a small car; you'd think he'd been practicing.  When we arrived at the airport, terminal 2 (tiny), he located a fixer-guy with a cart who grabbed the luggage and loaded the cart, then moved us past barriers, through lines, past waiting people, squeezed us down to our allowed 4 check-in bags and 6 carry-ons, negotiated with the ticket agent, sweet-talked the clerk, and got us to the gate while there were still seats for the wait, where they took the 6th carry-on (former check-in bag) and had it turned back into a free check-in.  Whew!  And we had extra leg room!

Mr. Fix-it did all of that magic in 10 minutes, Miguel gave him $10, and he whisked his cart off to help some other poor tourist.  The average service wage in Panama City is $2.80 an hour; I expect that Mr. Fix-it is doing quite well.

The airplane was absolutely stuffed with big and little people, carry-ons, bags from the mall, and everything but livestock!  An hour after boarding, when we landed in David (Dah-veed), off-loaded, and headed to baggage claim, there were two baggage carts for the entire plane load of people.  Luckily, most people were heading home or away for the weekend, and not heavily baggaged - mostly weighed down with kids and stuff that would have dropped through the gaps of the baggage carts.  After wondering how we would ever get all of our suitcases out to meet our driver since we couldn't exit and re-enter the baggage claim area to take out another load, someone took pity and gave us a cart.  Then, life got easier.

We had arranged to have our local guide from February, Maury, send a driver to pick us up at the airport and take us to our AirBnB.  She sent Antonio - who she chose because he was educated in the USA, spoke comfortably in both languages, lives in Boquete, and knows the ex-pat life.  I was sitting in the backseat listening to Miguel and Antonio bubble along in Spanish - tripping over each other to tell their stories; they were so animated, it was a delight to hear.  Every 15 minutes or so, Miguel would ask if I needed anything, but before I could answer, the two of them would be bubbling away again.  The pieces I could catch were that Antonio is from Mexico.  He went to the USA on a work visa and went to college, saved over $50,000, which he brought to Panama, and bought taxi licenses in Boquete when it was just starting to grow in 2010, so now he has a valuable company of six cars and drivers who speak both English and Spanish in a district that limits the number of taxi licenses.  He and Miguel traded stories and how pleased they were to be in Boquete and have found such a beautiful place to live.

Then we crested the top of the Alto Boquete and saw the town spread out across the valley below, with Volcan Baru (the extinct volcano) and the cloud forest surrounding the town with the sun's rays streaming down, highlighting chunks of the town, and Miguel said,

                                                   "Boquete is so adorable!"

Antonio and I stared at him - the car went silent.  And then we burst out laughing!  

Miguel countered by bubbling again in Spanish, and Antonio bubbled in Spanish.  I giggled.   The Spanish simmered along until we pulled into the El Oasis Hotel at about 5:00 and unloaded all that luggage.

At the Front Desk, we met Melva, and Miguel and Melva bubbled in Spanish, then we hauled all of our luggage to the second floor and entered suite #5 which has a loft bedroom we ignored because there are 14 stairs to get up there, and we stored our luggage under the stairs to the loft while we went to a welcoming dinner in the El Oasis restaurant($36 for the two of us, gourmet and gorgeous), and then we listened to the river in our back yard and

                            gradually

                                                 became

                                                                   peaceful,

                                                                                          sleepy,          

                                                                                                           and slept.

Boquete really is adorable!  

MaryBea y Miguel

Note: I sent out a post yesterday that says it was published, but it seems no one got it, and I don't know why.  So if you want to hear about our trip to the mall, you can go to https://seattletopanama.digitalpress.blog/page/2/ and read the post titled "Last Day in Panama City, September 22, 2022".

How to find us:

Email: Use our Gmail accounts for email - for some reason, Comcast/Xfinity doesn't work so well in Central America.

WhatsApp is the best route for texts and voice calls, but it is iffy on video calls.  We are officially in the Outback of Panama now, in a valley with mountains and volcanos around, with lightning and thunderstorms in the afternoons, so there are periods where transmissions won't get through for a while.  Find it for your phone or computer at your favorite App store.

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Past Blog Posts: Go to this site and poke around to find past posts, some as old as January 2022.  https://seattletopanama.digitalpress.blog/page/2/