Playing Waiting Games

Today, we moved the antenna from the rental to the top of the new house.

Don't have much time for loads of news and figure you
don't want to hear about packing boxes, anyway. By the
end of the week, we hope to catch up with the antenna,
but still don't have a firm date for our electric
connection, so we may go sailing for a while.

Paco (the electrician pictured below) says the electric company has
passed our application for electricity and will come
out this week to review options about installing the
poles... I asked Paco if we should plan on one or two
years - he just laughed, but I was only half kidding.

Of beds & electricity ...

This is our photo of the week:




See how the clouds roll through the rain forest? We've been trying to get a photo of that for ages, but generally, by the time we realize the clouds are coming, we're in the 'fog'.

Paul commissioned Mr. Rodriquez to build a bed for our spare room - here the finished product is, when we went to pay for it at his shop:


Now, the only problem with having a queen sized bed built is getting it home. Luckily, Mr. Rodriquez knew Carlos, a taxi driver, whose taxi was a Toyota truck and judging by how quickly they got it loaded and strapped down, they've done this before:



Since our major problem was figuring out how to move our mattress to the new house, we asked the taxi driver if it was possible to drop by our rental house - he could do this in the same load! And he did .... the cost for moving both bed and mattress was $3.00.



Looks good in the guest room, doesn't it? Paul had Mr. Rodriguez build the bed 'Panama-style', which means that no box spring is needed. Believe it or not, it's very comfortable.

We're still waiting for Union Fermosa, the local electric company, to put in 1/2 kilometer of poles and install our service. The crew has optomistically built the thing we need for the electric company to hook up to. Don't ask me what it's called, but Carlos, the architect, designed it so we could use the bottom portion for our trash cans - they just haven't built the gates for it, yet, in these photos.



Union Fermosa says we'll have electricity in "15 days" ... we've heard other gringos say they were given the same time, yet one person waited 35 days, so I'm fairly certain they mean 15 'Panama days' ... Panama doesn't count time like anywhere else I've ever been - they only count Monday thru Friday (claim they count working days, but even if a place is open on Saturday, they don't count it as a work day). Furthermore, they do not count holidays. SO, when the electric company tells us "15 days" I scramble to find out if there are any holidays this month (not that I can tell), so I figure they really meant "3 weeks".

Water week, too -

Now that wet season has returned with a vengeance, things are looking very green and even the little local water falls have picked up pizazze:

Flowers are blooming:

And the growth on trees that looked dead has sprung back to life:



Normally, I take photos of the front of the house because it's a lot easier... Today, I more or less got a photo of the back, but as you see, it's close to the steep bank down to the creek and that bank is rain forest, so while you get a glimpse, you can also see why I don't take photos of the back.


AND, this is our 'photo of the week' simply because it was such a shock to drive down our little back road and find this sign telling everyone what a lovely area Tisingal is.

Water Week

Just about every week during rainy season is 'water week', but that epitaph is particularly true of the past week. Paul and two of the guys spent 3 mornings building a 'house' for the spring. I keep telling him that he can't call it a house because it's one of the most un-square things I've ever seen. Paul's goal was to only allow spring water in the structure, so he needed to keep it away from surface water (a nearby cliff)... and he was hemmed in by 3 big bolders, which acted like side walls... the floor was a rock, too.

As you can see in the following series of photos, the 'structure' looks more like a boulder, itself and I'm betting that by the end of rainy season, it'll blend in with it's neighboring boulders.