Manmade Bottle Island - Amazing

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Flood in Boquete

Flooding in Boquete

It all started with a tropical storm that caused a heavy 4 days of rain the ground became so saturated that the mountainous roads became quickly impassable with mud slides and the rivers roared and in many cases change course and swept away cars, homes, and in some cases lives. Here are a few pictures that I took along with a news link.

Lined up under shelter watching the event

Down stream from the bridge this is early on

The river rose another 2' higher

This little pig didn't make it

This is the road we used to walk down each morning

The real problem is on the Bocas Del Toro side with the stream behind Mario swelling up over its banks and wiped out the cabanas behind his house. He said he has moved to over the restaurant but we are not able to get over there and check until the roads are open there are various reports on the condition and we are holding out for an eye witness. But in true Panamain style when we finally got hold of Mario he said life was good family is safe and staying up over the restaraunt and they have power but the neighbor Estaf's place was completly wipped out.

What's new From Panama

Hey all let me catch you up on what is happening now.

We are trying to push ahead with Punta Linda and are searching for some help (investors)but we trust it will come cause it is time for something this good. In the meantime we will be letting you know what kind of progress we are making - we have made tremendous headway with planning already - and what is going on in our daily lives here in Boquete.

We do have a professionally prepared business plan and great compensation for investors who might like to keep their money in a safe place and in a money making project, so if you think of anyone who might be a fit for us please let us and them know. Fortunately tourism in Panama as well as the general economy continues to thrive and we feel very fortunate for that.

Yesterday I went to Punta Linda to show some people the Rambala property that we have for sale and while there talked to Mario who had just had a birthday bash for 5 year old Susan with over 100 people. Linda and I were not able to make the party but are saving ourselves for Mario's birthday on the 23 of November.

After showing the property and enjoying Juana's ( Mario's girl friends) chicken and rice and bidding all farewell I started on the hour forty minute drive home to Boquete and 10 minutes into the drive I reached down for a sip from a drink I had opened in the morning and as I grabbed a big swallow I felt in my mouth what felt like a leaf or something. Then it moved and I felt a sting. After coating the inside of my van with spewed drink turning every thing into a sticky mess I tried sucking on my lip to get the poison and stinger out. Well that didn't seem to help and as I continued driving down the winding 2 lane mountain road with no turn out or shoulders to pull over on I felt my lip starting to swell and swell.

Then I had a brilliant idea and figured I would take some pictures of my lip and the road while I was driving just in case any thing happened they could maybe reconstruct what happened with the pictures. By the time I had gotten home it was so big I could no longer even sip a drink.

The moral of this story is always check your open cans before you drink and if you don't, at least drink through your teeth. The only thing I am happy with is at least it didn't go down my throat and sting me there and I did make it home safely.

Adventure Ideas for Punta Linda Adventure Park

Hello All!

Here is Eric's latest idea of how to make Punta Linda the best adventure park in the world. He experienced this one - the Winter Park Alpine Slide about 12 years ago in Colorado. Looks like great fun! Anybody have any other ideas for the park? Please send them along in the comments.

Last Day For Now Week 3 day 15

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Week 3 Day 15

Today is the last day of 3 weeks allotted to trail building for now. It was important to get a baseline and to discover how quickly and smoothly the trail work would go. Friday and lunch today is hot dogs with beans and rice a little garlic and onion and you have a sort of chili and of course Justo had to help her and tell her how to cook it - the guy is amazing with what all he knows. Since it is the last day I stressed to Justo to tell them I want to try and finish all we have started and to clean it up so it is presentable to others. I wanted to polish up the gem so to speak. The trail off the main path up to the bamboo is looking better actually it is pretty good and is going to be a little longer distance to get up there walking wise but a lot smoother and easier to walk. The rails are looking good and the trail is not cut as wide giving it a nice natural feel. All day long there are at least 6 workers going to the creek gathering rocks in a bag and carrying them up to the trail dumping them and returning.

It is really looking good and making the trails so much more solid and less slippery. Some of the bougainvillea aren’t doing well and Justo pointed out to me that some leaf cutter ants that thought they were tasty. I can tell already this is going to be tough to write because I just keep thinking not so much about the job they did or the people I just got to know a little but more of the all the individual moments of stellar incidents. I was looking again for details to make it better wondering what would really make the place unforgettable but still haven’t found that special thing so I guess the beauty alone will have to suffice and there is plenty of that. I am still looking for that perfect tree for beginning the zip line runs. I have been lost in the ever changing light under the canopy of trees and how it makes the walk down the same trail seem different each time. Each time I see so many other things in the changing light. I can sense a little bit of urgency as they try to finish or at least make everything look good before the end of the day. After a week of coaching even Celestino’s wife is carrying large rocks from the creek two at a time barefoot. As I walk the trails I find my self thinking about the last 14 days of effort and the mini series of events each day. I am really sad this is coming to an end for now and I am going to miss all these people.

The day ended and Justo and I left a little before the crew to go get payroll ready after telling the guys to be sure to wash all the tools and bring them down. We barely got to the van and had the money counted out before they arrived; guess they were ready too. Oh I almost forgot the guy who was working on sanding and polishing the bamboo rails didn’t show up today and I had some one else doing that job. Well about 2 this afternoon he showed up. He told Justo he had just fallen back to sleep when the others took off and had just now gotten there. He walked 2 hours to get there to work just over a hour and then turn around and have to walk 2 hours back home - that is dedication. Well it was payday too so I guess that counts for something.

Rare Hummer on Punta Linda

Ruffus spreading his wings

I did see another humming bird flit on the way out. I am already counting the days until can restart this project. Benny the biologist is supposed to show up at PL on next Saturday so Linda and I will be anxious to see what he has to say.

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Yellow Fever Shots??

hello all
Please check this link to our other site for all the information you need on the Yellow Fever Shot and if you need one. Coming or going from US or Canada only = no need.
Hooray! But if you are going anywhere else on the way you better check the rules.

Eric's Journal Day 14

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The regular crew showed up Celestinos wife was minus her sister so Justo and I loaded them up with food, chain saw, and a Milwaukie battery saw and sent them up. Justo informed me that the guy with a backhoe and two dump trucks had stopped by last night and was going to come at 7 am to give me an estimate, I looked at my phone to see the time and asked him - is that Panamanian time? He kind of chuckled and I told him we had time to go get the meat for their lunch and be back before he showed up. So off we went today the chicken necks looked the freshest so that was our decision and to be honest I don’t think we have had a complaint since we started buying their food, guess I wouldn’t complain either. No doubt they eat for sustenance not for pleasure like we tend to.
Shortly after we got back to PL the prospective road guys arrived and we talked and headed up to the entrance of PL.

Two electricians and Justo

On the way he was commenting about the conditions and said those wouldn’t be a problem and just hearing that made me smile so we continued upward on the 1 km walk over and back over a stream countless times. All the time he said that isn’t a problem. After every person we have talked to and all that came out of their mouths was how much and how hard it was to build; l it was a welcome relief to hear those words that I once used to chime in my contracting days. Once we got to the entrance of PL he was feeling pretty good that the road was not going to be a problem so Justo and I took him up the hill towards the bamboo. The trail the cows have made over the years is almost straight up the narrow ridge that reaches to the bamboo and I would easily say it is well over 45 degrees -possibly even closer to 60 and remember that 90 is a straight wall. He still seemed confident that this was not a problem so I asked him for two prices. One road just to the entrance and one to the bamboo - he said no problem. I sure hope this is the rainbow I have been wanting so desperately.
Bamboo Groove

After that we went back to the entrance and while Justo walked ahead I took my time, carefully checking and started punching out the work they had done. It honestly looked good but needed a little polishing to really shine so I went to Justo and talked to him about it and said we needed to get Celestino to walk it with us so we could show him the small details we wanted addressed. As I walked back I asked the guys if they had seen Celestino and I kept getting a head shake until finally I got one of the guys who didn’t seem busy and told him to go get Celestino. He kind of just stood there and finally I asked him “Celestino vamanos?” Remember when I tell you that I told the guys to do something its not even a 25% chance that they understand me on the best of days so it’s always pot luck. It did seem to work and in about 15 minutes Celestino appeared and Justo and I walked to the entrance of PL. I began with I wanted him to know about what a good job I thought they where doing. Then I told him I had a few things that needed to be finished up. He nodded and we started. Most of the things were like small making a ditch a little deeper for drainage, picking up the debris from the construction of the bridges and trail, cutting a root back here and there and adding more rock. They are going to hear that one a lot tomorrow “add more rock.” As we continued over all the trails pointing out this and that I remembered Celestino had sent two of his men to work on an alternative trail to the top. I asked Justo about that and saw Celestino smile. I of course wanted to see the new trail to the top and was pleasantly surprised and although it wasn’t any thing special, it was a trail with a switch back that was very easy to walk. I told him I was very pleased when we finished the trail and that we didn’t have time to work on that trail right now but at least we found it. He smiled and I looked at Justo who was huffing and puffing a little bit and realized we had just walked all the way up to the bamboo and climbed down then walked up past the bamboo finding another trail and I knew he had to be exhausted so we headed back down. Life is good.

When we got down to Laguna de Justo and the bench Justo took a break. We talked a bit and then he started moving rocks on his waterfall. I decided it was time to do some work and walked up and grabbed my 18 volt battery saw in one hand and my 18 volt battery saws all in my other and headed up the hill to trim the posts on the rails and cut the ends of the bamboo to be square. It makes them all look a lot better after I do that. I almost forgot when Justo and I returned to the entrance this morning after talking to the backhoe guys we saw a lone guy at the front working on sanding and cleaning the rails. I had given him a sanding block that after the first rail was used up. He had done a good job but was showing me the sanding block. I then grabbed his machete and started showing him how to use the machete to scrape and smooth the bamboo that way. It was like a lighting bolt had just hit the ground next to him he was so startled at how you could scrape and smooth something like that. I mentioned to Justo that he was probably born with a machete in his hand and how he had acted like it was the first time he had ever seen that. Once I had seen him at the entrance to PL I hardly ever saw him again all day so I guess he worked on scraping and polishing the rails all day. Much later in the day I asked Justo if he knew if there were even 12 people today. He thought for a second and didn’t know either so we started counting over and over until finally Justo had to ask Celestino and he told him about the (12)? guys scraping - good thing because I thought I was going crazy.

Salistinos Wife

As long as we are talking about the 12 guys lets talk about the 13th woman. I know she cooks for 12 guys of course she doesn’t have to get any food and Celestino makes sure she has fire wood, we have made a shelter for her to keep dry and to cook under and the tent is right by a stream. This is the stream I have been asking her to clean up for all this time and finally she did. Well for the last couple of days I have been noticing she has been sitting there a lot just talking to her sister or just dangling her feet in the creek. I had told Justo to tell Celestino that if I was going to pay her she was going to need to work the whole time. When I talked to Justo and asked him if he had talked to Celestino he said he had not talked to him yet. Tomorrow that will have to be one of the first things we talk about in the morning.

As the day went on the progress did slow down a lot without being able to communicate I was struggling hard to keep on top of things and I didn’t do too well. I didn’t leave until the day was done and made sure they washed the tools and took what we no longer needed up there down to my van so we didn’t have as much to carry down tomorrow. As I was walking the trails today seeing the ones we had done and seeing the ones that didn’t work out on our exploration for the ultimate path I realized that we didn’t just clear one km of trails we probably cleared 10 km of trails but where only had 1 km or so that really worked well and got finished. Still that’s pretty good and I did a lot of exploration and haven’t gotten to the other side yet which is 4 times the size of this side. What’s cool is I feel sometimes like I am just scratching the surface of a giant gem and sometimes I laugh at my self and think it’s a giant turd - such is a typical day in my jungle life. I don’t really mean that but it is sometimes exasperating not being able to communicate and trying to get the job done.

We all got off the mountain and put some of the tools in the van; I have already loaded what we don’t need in the cabana out in back of Mario’s. I just had one of the best warm showers in the world the day is over and only one more day to go for now. Tomorrow is going to be a great day I just know it is.

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