Retired Nomads: September 1 to 30

Happy birthday to Scott & Dad this month. We had a nice 3-way chat on SKYPE for the birthdays.

It’s been a fairly quiet month as most of our time has been spent wading through all of the photos from Africa. Finally got the blog updated and the albums finished on Picasa. Phew!

We went to the monthly CASA get-together. The local police surprised us with a visit. Louise has a lunch planned next month to have them speak and let the expats meet them. Maybe they got confused that it was this month, but a few of the highest ranked police came and addressed our meeting. Officer Howard spoke English pretty well (got the point across) and assured us he wanted to improve the relationship between Gringos and the police.

Since we no longer need our Christmas tree we looked so hard to find, we donated it to “Bid4the Beaches” an auction that raises money to give to the many causes here to help those in need.

B4B benefits the following not-for-profit initiatives:

Panama Helpline

Woody’s House of Hope

Conservacion Panama

PaCT Community Theatre

Spay Panama

Rotary Club of Playa Coronado

IFF Panama

Our group dinner was at Vista Mar at Las Terrazas Restaurant. The food is really good there…especially the dessert which was “almost” too pretty to eat. (yeah right….) Sally got picks of us licking the plate. (OK, just pretending to lick them, but we wanted to)

Camarones Diablo Negro

Ice Cream, Hazelnut & chocolate!

We met Jim & Jennifer for lunch in Aguadulce (about 2 hours up the coast). We were headed to the Salt Flats in search of the Roseate Spoonbills reported to be there. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any, but saw lots of other birds. After lunch we went in search of freshly caught shrimp and the second place we went to had some! We each bought a couple pounds. We had a tasty shrimp scampi with half of them and grilled skewers with the rest. They were a whopping $4.00 a lb!

first place we tried to buy shrimp

where we found and bought shrimp

bus stop across the street from the shrimp place

end of the road......

fishing village

salt flats

Little Blue Heron

Black-necked Stilt

Glossy Ibis

Blue-winged Teal

Glossy Ibis & Teal

American Kestrel

Brown-throated Parakeet

We had dinner at Cholo’s Mexican Restaurant with friends that had just returned from house sitting in Costa Rica. So, we swapped stories about our trips. They were kind enough to come back to the condo and let us subject them to some photos of Africa. They are headed to Ecuador for their next house sit.

We are getting ready for our short trip back to Arizona on October 1 to 8. Since the flight is early we are spending the night at the Riande, a hotel close to the airport that provides a shuttle. We have 10 meals and have already planned our “feeding schedule” to fit in a few of our favorite restaurants.

Since mediation is in the magistrates chambers we need business attire which is now lacking from our wardrobes. So, I will try to find a less casual top to wear with a pair of black slacks once we get there. It seems I have formal wear for cruises and casual wear for here and not a lot in between. Greg still has a couple of suits so he is good to go. We meet with the attorneys on Sunday afternoon and mediation is Monday morning. Looking forward to seeing Scott and family again and my BFF Mary.

Here are a few shots of our daily walks: