And the walls start upward ...

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The following is the original blog, which I added photos, etc. to the bottom of -- then I realized the same people visited the blog to see update, and since I will be updating it at least once a week, now that the house is starting, I'll be adding the new portions on top.

Yes, we signed a contract with Carlos, who assured us that he would build us a wonderful house for the budget we have available. I gave him a sketch of the floor plan that we wanted and told him we wanted an L-shaped roof that has hips on the ends and eaves that are a minimum of one meter from the walls. Okay, Paul was the one who demanded wide eaves - in SC, we learned just how much damage rain could do and there is a mega wet season here.

We're looking forward to having a termite-proof house - block/stucco walls + metal rafters & a faux red tile roof that's corragated cement.

I'd originally wanted the living room to be open to the outdoors, but Carlos tweaked my roof design to have a high roof with huge windows on either end - Paul figures that will be better at night. It does get nippy at this altitude.

Basically, the 'guest wing' will consist of 2 bedrooms connected by a full bath (shower only). Then a sort of hall, which is really open to the living room. On the other side, the kitchen will open to the living room - a large L-shaped eating counter will divide the space, yet allow people to intermingle. A half bath and laundry room are adjacent on one side of the kitchen; a small dining room on the other. Just outside the dining room, we eventually plan to have an outdoor kitchen, so we'll have a lovely sliding door to link the areas.

The door to the master bedroom opens off the dining room. I'd originally thought of having a sliding door in there, too, but the one in the dining room should be close enough. The Master bedroom opens into the master bath: Paul's jacuzzi tub, my shower, his and her sinks and, of course, a toilet... Paul totally detests the short toilets that are the norm, down here, but Carlos assures us that the can get 3 taller toilets.

He also assures us he can get this done in 4 months and give us a 'turn key house', though he does seem baffled by dishwashers and says we'll need to purchase this. (This after first offering recommendations for a maid.)

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Meet Victor, who has been working with Paul on the walls:






In the states, we would have the footings dug with a backhoe, but in Panama, labor is inexpensive because jobs are scarce. Our architect/contractor, Carlos, pays each worker on his crew $10-25/day and he's considered to be a great employer.

While Carlos (in the white cap) & his crew work on the house, Paul and Victor use the plentiful rocks in our yard to continue building the rock wall around the property, which they began a few weeks ago, and I putter at landscaping ... I'm hampered in this goal by the knowledge that the septic system will need to be dug in, so I'm second-guessing Carlos as per his intentions on that subject, and, for now, confining my efforts to one corner of the lot. AND, as I put in paths, I dig up rocks, which I shove to the side of my path .... dear Paul thought I was building walls and asked if I'd like some suggestions for building stronger ones.... that's a fine example of how one person judges another by themselves ... HE was building walls, so thought that since 'my' rocks were more or less in a line, I must be building walls, too. Not. Outlining a garden, until the rocks are needed elsewhere, yes - frankly, I consider my 'walls' more of a line of debris from clearing my path than a wall.

The house started out by going down to dig the footings, so for the first couple weeks there wasn't much progress to be seen. However, walls are now rising to the eventual roof and in some rooms we can even see where the window will be, so I can begin to lay out complimentary garden beds.

From the beginning, Carlos has told us that he wants to put a rock in our floor ... we learned that the rock he wants to put into it is apparently too hard for his crew to dig out of the footings ... they dug down over a meter and that rock is still going. I guess the darn thing could be in a worse place, but I'd designed the house to have a doorway to facilitate 'traffic flow' from the garage and laundry area to the guest wing and due to the rock, I'll now have to put shelves up there so people won't trip on the protrusion.

Building in Panama certainly has unexpected situations!

Rainbow on the Horizon

I've seen main rainbows in my life, but this was the first 'horizon rainbow' I'd ever seen. Magnificent, isn't it?

Maps to help orient you:

First, a topographical map - Tisingal is just to the left of the Volcan triangle, which is on the far left:



& the provinces of Panama:

Around our area ....

A local stone mason carves statues out of solid rock. He makes things to custom order as well as copy ancient designs:

IMO (in my opinion) his work is far superior to things I've seen at Pier 1.

And this palace is the house to the west of our lot... can not understand why it's uninhabited -

This is what the plants look like in the wild -
These wild orchids are my favorite -

This is one of my favorite neighbors - I call her Linda, which is Spanish for pretty:

And this is the house to our east ... it's inhabited, but I suspect that it will soon be sold to another gringo & whoever buys it will have a lovely bonfire - this assumes that the Ngobe who lives these doesn't burn it down himself ... I've seen smoke billowing out of the cracks more than once:

Canyon trip

Hello from 'the canyon', which is a fast moving little river about a half hour drive from Volcan. As you can see, it's quite spectacular:

A few of Panama's birds...

The above photo was taken by our friend, Nariño V. Aizpurúa, who is a local ornithologist. In case anyone is interested, he has a company called Western Wind's Venture and will take people on birding trips - his knowledge is amazing.

While I haven't had much luck photographing birds, as you can see, others have, so I've borrowed a few bird photos from others, too - if you like what you see, you can view lots more at http://panamabirding.com. The first photo is of Panama's famous quetzal, which nests on the slopes of Baru - I think its christmasy colors are appropriate since poinsettias and mistletoe grow wild in this area:

Another map & further explanation of the area ...

Though Panama is roughly the same size as South Carolina, it doesn't resemble it in any other way. At its narrowest point, about 50 miles of rugged mountains separate the Caribbean Sea from the Pacific and I'm told that if you stand atop the correct peak on a clear day, you can see both oceans. I'm just trying to figure out why I want to climb a mountain to do that.

Ehem, getting back to the map: Volcan is on the far left (west). This is where we've rented a house. The lot we purchased is about 5 kilometers farther west - it's on the slopes of the Tisingal volcano, which last erupted 300 years before Christ. The core is cold, so we think we're pretty safe. Tisingal spawned the lovely creek, appropriately named Rio de Tisingal, that borders our property.


AND, 2,300 years ago, when it erupted, it blessed our property with a million rocks,.

Flowers & butterflies

Until coming here, we'd never dreamed that citrus trees, impatiens and orchids grew wild. I mean on some level of thought we must have known this, but to us, these were exotic plants only grown in greenhouses.

Not any more.

When we purchased our lot, we also purchased one full grown grapefruit tree and three lemon trees... and we've been getting a 'citrus education', particularly about lemons, which can be small as a ping-pong ball or large as a five-pound bag of sugar; their taste ranges from sweet (practically tasteless) to bitter (this sort taste good if dipped in a bit of sugar).

We also learned that parakeets fly in noisy flocks, while parrots and falcons seem rather solitary. Despite the fact that the area our lot is in in a prime location for birders, we haven't had much luck taking photos of birds ... butterflies and flowers are calmer, so we'll share these with you:











Not all the flowers are small the ones below are seen on the 'flame of the forest', which is the national tree of Panama and each blossom is the size of a teacup:



AND, until now, perhaps you could say that you'd never seen the flower of a banana tree:


While I wouldn't call a banana blossom beautiful, I would certain call it sculptural...

And, I promised photos of the butterflies which were slow enough to focus on (beleive me there are some really fast species around here):

Beautiful vistas are everywhere you look ...

Beautiful as the mountains are, and desolate as they can seem, I must remember that many farms (fincas) have coffee plantations here:



At the moment, the ripe beans (red) are being picked. Workers need to be very careful about how they work and not let beans drop to the ground, as this can create problems. They pick beans into 5 gallon buckets and, depending on who they work for either get paid by the bucket or pound.




As you can see, coffee plants are very attractive. The factories that process the beans are generally off the beaten path, some of them are so remote that 4 wheel drive is necessary.