We discovered the above beauty clinging to laundry we'd left out over night ... it was almost as big as Jeanne's hand.
We'll add butterfly photos if we ever figure out how to get photos of them with a digital camera ... you would not believe how speedy the ones down here are! Of course, the birds are fast, too, so I guess their prey must be, as well.
At present, we're inching toward November, which is a month when it seems like every other day is a holiday in Panama. We'd expected to have our pensionado visas by now --- the lawyer originally told us "2-3 months".... it's been over a half year. While it would be easy to put all the blame on our lawyer, I must be fair and explain that it's also the system she's dealing with - as we understand it, shortly after we applied for this visa, the head of Panama's Department of Immigration changed the rule for tourist visas from 90 days to 30 days - and inundated his department with tons of extra paperwork and ill will from visitors.... after a couple months of this, the president told the director 'either you resign or you'll be fired' ... he resigned. At that point (2-3 months ago) our visa had been approved and was only awaiting his signature .... it seems no one else is authorized to sign this .... The good news is that a new director was appointed about a month ago / the bad news is that instead of catching up on paperwork, his first 'act of office' seems to have been to visit the district offices and fire everyone, thus now no one knows what they're doing.
What can I say? Welcome to Panama, a mix of 3rd world mud-floor huts & 1st world skyscrapers.
