Eric’s parents flew in on Wednesday, November 4th, right after our Flag Day/NC BBQ party and stayed until the following Tuesday, November 10th. We started off our visit with a trip to Casco Viejo on Thursday even though it’s way too hot to do that around lunch time.  Although the purpose of the outing was to show Susan and Ed the area, point out the building that was featured in Quantum of Solace, and grab some lunch, Eric and I ended up finding a mola (traditional textile art form of the Kuna people here in Panamá made using a reverse appliqué) that we both really liked.  We decided months ago that it would be nice to find a piece of art at some point to commemorate our time here, but we just hadn’t found anything that we loved.  Susan recognized that it was a meaningful moment and she and Ed generously offered to give us the mola as a Christmas gift!

I’ll spare you the details of my feeble attempts to negotiate with this 4 foot-nothing hard-as-nails Kuna woman.  Point is, in the end, we came away with this beautiful mola.  Gorgeous work, none of the corner cutting appliqué that you often see in the touristy areas like the little market we were in, 4 or 5 layers of fabric, beautiful colors…we love it.  Thank you so much, Ed and Susan!

The woman told us that her sister-in-law Raquel had made it and that she had worked on it for a year.  Now, who knows if that’s true, but when you look at all the tiny stitching all done by hand and see how these things are made (by starting with as many full pieces of cloth as there are colors, then cutting away the parts that you don’t want until you get down to the color layer that you want to show, if that makes sense), I believe that it’s possible for it to take someone that long.  I’m choosing to believe that there is a woman named Raquel who put a year’s worth of work into our beautiful piece.  And I’m grateful to her.

After a nice lunch of ceviche and various other seafoods and rice, Eric and his parents headed off to the Canal while I went to capoeira practice at the Canal Administration building.  But…there was actually something new at the Canal!  I missed out!  There’s a new movie there instead of the same old 3-D one that says that the new locks will be completed by 2014.  (FYI – they’re now scheduled to be open around March or April 2016).  Never fear though, my cousin Branson gets here this Friday so I’ll have another chance to go see it.

At the Canal!

As an aside, Jennifer Paris, Eric’s brother’s wife, texted me on Sunday morning to let me know that she and Ray, Eric’s brother, are planning to come down for a visit in January!  They found incredible prices on plane tickets and we urged them to book them the same day.  We are so thrilled that they’ll be able to join us!!!  Jennifer and I are already planning to go out dancing…and Ray and Eric are already planning to sit on bar stools with a couple of Balboas (Panamanian beers).  Perfect.

So anyway, on Friday we got in the car for the two hour drive up to the mountain town of El Valle de Antón, which I’ve mentioned several times before.  We rented a gorgeous house there with three bedrooms, three baths (too many, but hey, we got a good deal), a pool, a sauna, an outdoor shower that was lovely even though it had no hot water, an outdoor hot tub, an extra out-building for…I dunno…probably meditating or something because the whole house had Buddhist decor and random scented oils and whatnot.  Did that sound religist?  (like racist, but with religion?)  I can’t decide.  I didn’t like the way I said that, but I’m not sure why.  I’m not saying that it was weird, just distinctive.  And there were definite Buddhist aspects, but also miscellaneous other I’m-trying-to-create-a-peaceful-atmosphere aspects.  Does that make sense?

One of the non-theme conformative aspects of the decor was the GIANT EIFFEL TOWER built out of wine corks!!!  A fun surprise – perfect for a PARIS family getaway.  I know the rest of the family is used to the name, but it’s still new and fun to me.

There were also three dogs and a cat who lived on the property.  They freely entered and left the house as we left the doors open for the mountain breeze.  Luckily, we’re all dog people.  The tiny rat looking one was Rhett, a huge pingpong ball fan.  Very smart, despite the look on his face.  Ed renamed him Fetcher.  The brown one on the couch was Gigi, but I called her Princess because of her affinity for her place on the couch under the chandelier.  The big white one was Gray…or Tripper, as she came to be called.

Gray/Tripper took to laying on the floor in the middle of the huge kitchen.  As we prepared lunch on Saturday, I tripped over her a couple of times, as she blended in with the rug on the floor and was, well, sprawled out in the middle of the floor.  Anyway, I obviously should’ve asked the silly doggie to move because Susan soon followed in my clumsy footsteps.  She, however, went down and hit her head on the refrigerator.  Ouch.  Not fun.  She’s a trooper though, so after a few minutes of sitting on the floor with frozen veggies on her knee and forehead, she recovered and we went hiking!

Eric and I decided to show Ed and Susan the short waterfall hike that we did with Angela and Ashley when they were here several months back.  It also has a zipline through the trees that would be fun to try someday.

After that, we hit up the small zoo in town.  Actually, for the size of the town, the zoo is pretty big.  We had been told that we should remember that many of these animals are rescues, so if we thought their conditions were poor, we should think that it was better that they be there than dead.  Uplifting, right?  Well, like many things Panamá, it was best to go in with low expectations.  I was prepared to be horrified by this place, but I ended up really enjoying it.  There were turtles, crocodiles, monkeys, random giant rodents whose names I can’t remember, tons of parrots and toucans, leopards, an ocelot (Archer fans?  Anyone?  It was awesome.), and a few tapirs.  If you don’t know what a tapir is, they’re worth looking up.  Think of a giant hog/hippo body with an elephant head, cute but giant pig feet, rhino ears and an anteater nose.  Super cool.

Ed made friends with a monkey who was hanging right on the edge of his cage.  He touched his hand and even was close enough for long enough to inspect his fingerprints!

Susan, Eric, Ed, and a Monkey. I’ll let you guess who is who.

Paris men and a monkey. There’s a joke here somewhere.

Involuntary piggybackery.

This thing is about the size of a beagle.

After the zoo, we grabbed much needed showers (coyotes are REALLY stinky if you leave them alone for too long) and headed to La Casa de Lourdes, our favorite restaurant in El Valle.  Y’all have seen pics of it before b/c we went there with both Angela and Ashley and with Sarah and Dan.  This was the first time we went for dinner.  Eric was excited to introduce his dad to the “Christmas ham” (a giant piece of pork), and I got my regular corvina.

Susan and I took a walk up through the hydrangea bushes to see the view of the building from above while the boys finished their hams.  On our way, we saw a couple of frogs perched on the side of the pool.  With my encouragement, Susan scared one of them (nothing evil, plus she felt guilty afterwards.  Blame me.) and he jumped into the pool!  This is probably one of those really boring stories in writing so I’ll cut it short, but we ended up getting both frogs in the pool and watching them swim the length of it.  Very fun for some reason.  I enjoyed it.

We ended both evenings in El Valle with the same board game…Terra Mystica.  Yep, just as cool as it sounds.  🙂  Just kidding, Eric.  I love you!

Monday was dedicated to a trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic then back again.  We drove from Panamá City to Colón, checking out the locks on the Atlantic side of the Canal on our way.  It was actually pretty cool because they had made a lot of progress on the new bigger locks since the last time we had been there.  We got to drive across where one set of gates will be when they open, something no one will ever get to do again once they start working.  Really cool.

I dropped Susan, Ed, and Eric off at the train station in Colón and drove home while they took the train back along the Canal, something Susan had been excited about doing.  It’s been fun to see how each set of guests have wanted to do something a little different from every other visitor we’ve had.  This place sure has a lot to offer!