BOATBUMMS LOG: SID'S BIRTHDAY

Some three weeks later we are still battling the stupid birds. Sid finally climbed up the mast and took the antenna and windex down and wrapped netting around anything these pesty little critters can land on. I think he got it all.

For Sid’s Birthday on October 13^th we went to Adriana’s in La Guyra. Cindy and Reed and Debbie and Reg joined us. The appetizer was incredible they made little bowls with plantains and stuffed them with “Pulpo Creollo” Octopus on a light coconut curry sauce. Everybody had some type of seafood and all was amazing. Had some beers, rum and coke and also a bottle of wine.

Since it was Sid’s BD I thought I’d pick up the tab so when everybody was asking for the bill it was already a done deal. They of course protested and I just laughed, the bill was a shockingly shocking 69 dollars!!!! Hey Sid you can have a Birthday any time.

A big wall of black clouds came towards us and beyond the village I saw some huge tube hanging from the cloud, my gosh it was a enormous waterspout. The top half was as wide as the tornadoes they show you on TV just on the bottom the usual narrow waterspout came down. It was already very close to land but luckily where it was there is nothing but nature and no villages or homes.

Creollo Pulpo stuffed Patacones

Pargo Frito

Impressive Waterspout/Tornado

One day I had to get the laundry key from Jack, he and the other employees were down by the waterfront cutting the trees back. I was half way down the stairs with wet clothes over my sholder; I noticed something right next to me on the hand rail moving. It was a two toed sloth. My guess was that it was Molasses one of the sloths Binnie had rescued; she still comes around now and then and even shows of her babies when she has any. I could have touched her she was that close. She was not happy with me being there and started moving, I had no idea how fast they can go. I ran back as fast as I could, threw the clothes into the dryer, ran down to our little house, grabbed my camera and ran back to where the sloth was, but was outrun by a sloth. She was already in the tree, but I still managed to get a couple of good shots of her.

The same day I saw a baby boa on the drive way. Unfortunately she was run over by the truck. Just a week earlier I saw one slightly bigger. They are really beautiful.

I wonder where mama is??!!!

Plus Thousands of these beautiful butterflies where flying everywhere:

For the third time now living on land we lost our landline. The phone was dead in the whole entire area of Costa Arriba. After 10 days still no phone but surprise Cindy’s phone was ringing. It was the baker. She skyped me and ask me if I recognized the following phone number. Sure did it was the phone number of Hans’s restaurant, that explained why the baker would call her. The phone company had somehow cross wired phones. Sarah now had Guido and Silvia’s number. These two phones seemed to work the rest did not. After two phoneless weeks while I was in Colon I went to Cable and Wireless or as we call them Worthless and put the third or fourth complaints in. The girl took the paper with all my neighbors’ phone numbers including ours and she made one phone call after another but never saying a word. She would listen for a few seconds then hang up. After each call she said: “oh they stole that cable!” A good 10 minutes later she was done calling and confirmed that all numbers had stolen cables. I asked her how she knew it as she had never spoken to anyone during that time. She just said well that happens a lot. So I asked her very patiently that after they had been stolen for two weeks already if they could replace them? She thought a minute then said: “Yes, they are shopping for cables”. I could not hold it but laughed out loud. You just gotta love life in a third world country. Oh by the way after 5 more days we finally got our phones back, except for Cindy, hers is still not working. Mine dialed but a voicemail came on that we had not paid the excessive bill. Jack called this time to let them know that he had paid the bills and he was told to try again in 15 minutes. Yeah it worked. Except our phone is broken and does not transmit the spare phone the ringer is so low it sound like a mouse under a pillow. But hey we got the phone back.

Carol came back and since it was Black Christ Festival in Portobelo meaning we were cut off from the rest of Panama we spent a fun day at her house in La Guyira swimming, relaxing and of course eating.

Liver Pate by Cindy and Sushi by Manuela

Carol has now her own train set

There is never a dull moment around here. I went shopping in Panama City and at Riba Smith I used one of the two ATM machines to get 300 dollars out. It was processing and processing for a good minute then just went back to the welcome screen. Weird so I tried the machine right next to it from a different bank. Hmm same thing happened but this time after saying that it is processing it said not possible to process. The next store I went to I hit the ATM again and this time it told me that I had exceeded my daily allowance, hmmmm. After a few hours I finally got hold of Sid and he checked our account and sure enough 600 dollar plus the 12 bucks fees were taken out. He called the bank right away. Two days later, I was just in the process of trying to sink the house, Pat called and told me that they were just standing in line at an ATM machine in Colon when the lady in front of him had the same thing happening but in her case it did not give her the money but told her that her bank balance was 00.00, and yet another woman was there and she had 2.00 left in her account. It seemed that the cards from local banks were drained while mine they could only take the amount I punched in. Obviously Pat and her hubby did not attempt to get any money out of the machine. Seems like there is a major scam going on. Later I received an email from Jen stating that this is a country wide problem. Sarah and Bill had each 500 dollars taken at an ATM.

Oh yes, you read right I tried to drown the house. Did laundry and somehow the washer drain hose came out, I was just cleaning the living room when the phone rang and I stepped in one inch deep water while getting the phone. (Now I know what that dark color hose was that I thought was the vacuum cleaners hose, it looks just the same!

What a mess, the water was already in the bedroom and in bathroom and half the kitchen was flooded, luckily the living room with carpet was spared. Just good I already had the shop vac in the house which did a wonderful job sucking the water up. Still was a mess and everything that got wet, which was a lot, had to be hung up and dried. So the one day house cleaning job took a few extra days.

Poor Ollie had a booboo on his toe and so he can’t lick the antibacterial cream off I put socks on him. Just not sure if he was embarrassed about the socks or the color or the hearts?!!!