From Covid California Back To Pandemic Panama - March, 2021

Being Here 

After 4.5 months of quarantining estilo estadounidense in Sacramento (more below) we are now back on Isla Bastimentos (locally: Basti) in Bocas del Toro, Panamá. 

Same Caribbean - Different View

We have found a soft landing spot in a vacation villa at the Red Frog Beach Resort while Bryce and the guys at Bocas Yacht Services finish up a few below-water-line projects on Abracadabra. Importantly, after months of only WhatsApp pictures, Bryce has finally been able to take a first hand look at the work done in his absence, including the dried-out, rebuilt and seriously reinforced rudder. 

This Baby Could Crack Ice

All's well -- though life on the hard has left Abracadabra spectacularly grubby. Cleaning =  project next.

While work on Abracadabra is underway we will enjoy the beautiful view from the back porch of "our" comfortable and very nicely appointed and equipped villa. Which comes with its own front-row seat to the Basti Island wildlife show. 

In only a few days of residence we have observed big birds, little birds, colorful birds, humming birds and Capuchin monkeys - several in the trees, one strolling across the lawn and one old chap who pointedly left his scat at each end of the back porch, gang marker style ("this area is controlled by the Westside Basti Capuchins!"). 

Elderly Capuchin, Refusing To Make Eye Contact
(Picture Cropped To Eliminate Scat)

One afternoon a hawk flew into the house through the open front door and bonked itself against the glass sliding door in the back. Molly flapped and hooted something helpful like "Oh my god! Oh my god!" while Bryce covered the (fortunately only slightly) stunned hawk with a towel and carried it outside. After shaking its head in a WTF was that! sort of way, the hawk flew off to tell a wild story to its compadres. As have we (telling, not flying).

The owners of the villa arranged to have window and door screens installed this week which we originally thought would be helpful to keep the mosquito and random assorted insect populations at bay -- but now we are thinking their primary purpose may be to deter visiting birds and monkeys! 

Junier Wilson and His Assistant -
So Glad To See Them! 

Though we are glad to be back on Basti, and we are looking forward to the reopening of Nacho Mama's (beach bar tacos), it is with great sadness that we report the departure of both of our pizza purveyors; one high-tailed it to Hawaii and the other returned to Colombia. It may be time to learn how to make pizza dough. Hundreds of people around the world have used this pandemic stay-at-home period to perfect the art of baking bread -- surely one of us can figure out pizza dough. 

Getting Here

Our return to Panama was less personally stressful than our trip from Panama to California last October in part because it was our second experience with pandemic travel -- but mostly because we both are fully Pfizer vaccinated (thank you, County of Sacramento). We are as personally protected as one can be at this point in science. And yes, we still wear masks and distance ourselves from others.  

Panama requires everyone entering the country to provide evidence of a negative-result Covid test taken within 48 hours of arrival or to take a test at the airport upon arrival. Travelers who test positive at the airport must quarantine for 14 days in a government-approved hotel in Panama City: two weeks of delivered hotel food and CNN International followed by a whopping credit card bill -- and that's for the lucky ones who aren't terribly sick. We took rapid-result Covid tests in the LA area and, fortunately, tested negative. Also fortunately, our test results were accepted by the authorities at Tocumen airport. 

The comfort of having negative test results and being vaccinated also allowed us to join Molly's brother Rob, our brother-in-law, Tom, and family standard poodle, Bravo, for dinner at an out-door Italian restaurant in Los Angeles. We had not seen them for over a year!   

Being There 

Our time in Sacramento, much of it spent outside, passed pleasantly. We enjoyed watching the seasons change.

Spring Flowers Said Good-bye

Fall Colors Greeted Our Arrival 
(Official Delivery Van Of The Pandemic
Included To Date The Shot)

          The Best Part of Our Stay: 

Seeing our California peeps was wonderful - so much better than Zooms (not that those haven't been a pandemic-sanity-life-line). We primarily socialized outdoors, thankful for the up-side of a dry winter season. Fire Season will undoubtedly be brutal, but we chose to enjoy the moments we were given. A favorite social activity became "walk-chats" with friends through the area's many parks.

Camellias At Capitol Park**

               ** We did a bit of a U-turn to avoid a small "Recall Newsom" rally, complete with vendors of left-over Stop The Steal stuff, in front of the Capitol's West Door; not much enthusiasm, not much of a crowd.

We joined friends Anne and Perry for a delightful outdoor wine-tasting event at Miraflores. 

One evening, friends Irene and Frank convinced us to join them to view Sandhill Cranes return from their day-time haunts to their night-time resting spot at the Isenberg Crane Reserve near Lodi. Though the helpful docents we remember from our visit years ago weren't there due to pandemic restrictions (reservations required when they are) we were able to see the birds.

Indoor socializing was first limited to our "pod" - friends Ken and Claudia - but once our age-cohort began to be vaccinated we were able to enjoy indoor dinners at a couple of other friends' homes. Jacket-free dining! We wonder how difficult it will be to go back to the noise and discomfort of indoor restaurant dining, particularly for those of us with friends who are excellent cooks. [A few examples: Frank's back-yard tempura was oh-my!-level delicious and Toby and Patricia's ravioli was much better than the tortellini served at the restaurant in LA.]

          The Holiday Part of Our Stay:

(Much of This Is a Sub-Set of The Best Part of Our Stay)

It was fun to decorate our first full-sized Christmas tree in [a lot of / maybe 10?] years. 

A Real Sized Tree! With Long-Forgotten
Ornaments Found In Our Storage Locker

 

And wonderful to join our "pod" - Claudia and Ken - for holiday feasts. Thanksgiving passed without pictures, but we pulled out the phones at Christmas:

Christmas "Pod" Gathering -- Masked

The "Pod" At Table

We even hauled out some of our gazillion nativity scenes from the storage locker and spread them around our rental house. 

Arnold Family Nativity From Palestine

A Favorite From Mexico;
Hand Model To Provide Scale

          The Sanity-Preserving Part of Our Stay:

On our own, we walked and walked and walked along the Sacramento River levees and the greenbelt parkway which links the river and the flood control canals that seem to run on / branch out forever. We enjoyed recognizing and greeting our temporary neighbors (the young woman who talked on her phone while flinging a tennis ball that her dog loved to fetch; the retiree that working on his golf putt most afternoons; the elderly wheelchair-bound lady and her jovial care-taker; etc.) and viewing local birds.

An Honor Guard Flanks A Canal

Suburban Turkeys

We continued our Zoom connections. Friends Toby and Patricia have set up a monthly Italian wine tasting Zoom which has been a lot of fun. Toby chooses a wine, tells the group a little bit about it (the region of Italy, the grapes -- all that wine stuff) and has each viewer weigh in on what they think. We are not only impressed by Toby's knowledge of Italian wines -- but by his ability to gently herd a bunch of wine-drinking cats! We worry we may not be able to continue to weigh in from Panama. Our internet connection may be good enough, but Bocas del Toro is better known for sweet rum drinks than Italian wine.  

          The To-Do List Part of Our Stay:

In addition to Covid vaccinations we were vaccinated against everything on our doctor's list of stuff-old-people-should-get-vaccinated-against (flu, pneumonia, shingles - the works). We figure at this point we are practically invincible - or totally under the control of Bill Gates - or maybe both. Molly's cataract surgeries went well and she is delighted with her good eye-sight and that she no longer has to keep track of glasses, contact lenses and related cleaning liquids while traveling. Bryce had a post-cataract surgery issue taken care of as well.

Bryce purchased a new computer which involved moving documents and pictures from the old computer and to/from the cloud and was accompanied by a great deal of profanity; it's what they taught him during his Microsoft certification courses. All worth it from Molly's standpoint; OUR computer is now HER computer. 

We would mention that we got rid of some things in our storage locker but, well - it doesn't really look that much better. Sigh. Even small progress is progress.

So, Next . . .  

We will watch birds and monkeys; work on Abracadabra; contact shipping companies to see what we can find out about shipping Abracadabra to British Columbia; and take care of ourselves and each other. 

To All You-All:

Take care of yourselves. Let us know how everything is going for you and yours. We hope to see you soon -- even if only on Zoom!