We found the house without much trouble on Monday night around 9:30. After a few minutes of yelling his name, Raúl, the caretaker, appeared and came to open the gate. Also at the gate was a cute, if very skinny, dog who was eager to meet us. I have forgotten her name at the moment, but I’ll get back to you. She’s super sweet and I’m glad for her company.
Our vicious killer of a guard dog.
Raúl let us into the house and immediately my mind went into snap judgment mode, as I imagine (hope? selfishly, for the sake of making me normal, not because snap judgments are good) it does for most people when they arrive in a new place. The first thing I noticed were the very clean and shiny stone floors. Then the huge thatched roof. It feels like we live in a big tiki hut, honestly. Those were some of the positive parts.
As we continued exploring, I found both positive and negative elements. Or maybe I’ll just say positive and interesting. That’s a better way for me to handle it.
Interesting: outside of the fridge is quite rusted and gross looking. Positive: the inside looks clean and feels cold.
Positive: there is a desk and chair for Eric! Interesting: the seat of the chair is not parallel to the floor.
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- Check out the chair. Plus, his workstation is convenient to the facilities!
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- The rest of his office/the guest room.
Positive: there are screens on the windows to keep bugs out. Interesting: It doesn’t really matter because various portions of the roof do not completely come together, leaving fairly large spaces for creatures to enter.
Interesting: The GIANT cricket on the wall just outside our bathroom. Positive: My husband is trained in the art of capturing these guys in towels and releasing them outside…so as to challenge them to re-enter via the roofline.
Positive: Salamanders/various lizards are not harmful. They’re not even gross. Interesting: They will scare the absolute hell out of you when they sneak up on you in the water closet.
Positive: Eric is willing to go after these with his patented towel method…at least until they hide behind the toilet.
Positive: I feel safe here. Interesting: Rusty barbed wire outside our window. This one isn’t actually so bad. I’m pretty used to seeing this around here. Doesn’t bother me.
See the rusty barbed wire just outside the window?
Positive: Really beautiful and fun tiki-style thatched roof. Interesting: No windows to open upstairs to allow for the amazing Punta Chame breezes to come through the 2nd floor. Positive: We have a 2nd floor. It’s pretty silly.
Positive: We have a stove and oven. Interesting: We have completely unlabeled knobs. How hot is the oven supposed to be for those potatoes? 425? Well, fun. I’m going to set it on plain white kinda far away from the dot. Positive: Eric is a good cook. Last night we had a lovely meal of rosemary potatoes and various fried things filled with meat. Man, did we miss our fried things filled with meat!
Eric was the first to have a go at the shower yesterday (Tuesday) morning. We had been told that we would have hot water, which was pretty special. We weren’t surprised to find out that it was one of those plastic contraptions stuck onto the pipe as it comes out of the wall…I’m not a plumber, I don’t know how to better describe it. Let’s just say it’s a fairly basic system. Not a problem…until the water just stops. Yes, we have hot water, but only for 2 minutes at a time. If Eric didn’t have time to finish his shower, I knew I was doomed.
Last night I gave it a try. I immediately realized that buying separate shampoo and conditioner had been a big mistake. It turns out that I can either wash my hair or my body, but not both in the same go. I’ll have to work on a solution to this one. Currently I have 12 hour old hair and the rest of me is freshly washed. Well, freshly washed with a thick coating of 100% deet.
If you didn’t know it before, you are now realizing that I am not an outdoorsy kind of girl. I desperately want to be. I grew up in Asheville and played in the woods every day when I was little. I love the idea of camping. I love hiking, as long as there are no bugs or spiderwebs. I love fresh air and quiet. I love that I cannot hear any cars right now and that the breeze blows through the [first floor of the] house in the evenings. But gosh, I do not like any kind of insects. I hate the feeling of grass on my wet feet (Mom, remember how I was never good with slip-n-slides on the front lawn?). I think my parents have photos of me on the beach with one foot in a bucket of water. Apparently I would wash the sand off of one foot, then switch feet, only to have to do it all over again. I like to think that maybe that made me an easy kid to keep busy. I was diligent at least.
And yes, this is a completely different type of experience from our last time in Panamá. I knew that coming in, and I am prepared to do some adapting. We’ll get to that part.
But first, the most unsettling thing by far…the smell of the toilet paper. Yep. Seriously.
What is evidently the most common brand of toilet paper in this country has an intensely strong smell. It’s not a bad smell. It’s a bit like baby powder and a bit like a cleaning product. The problem for me is that the smell is intricately intertwined with my month-long illness and week-long hospital stay in early 2015. More on that in a later post. For now I’ll just say that it brought back some terrifying memories and added unnecessary anxieties to this new experience. But, I’m making small changes to alleviate my anxieties. Don’t like the toilet paper? Get new toilet paper! Done. Think all the dishes are gross? Wash them all and clean out the drawers (*we don’t have a pantry or cabinets, just drawers).
So today, I am making a list of ways to work through my worries and anxieties about the house and being here in general. Here’s what I have so far. I’m sure I’ll add to the list as the days go by.
- Deal with one anxiety at a time.
- Blog your way through those anxieties. Find humor in the inconveniences. Or at least allow others to find humor in it.
- Clean one thing at a time.
- If the spoons look really disgusting, buy new spoons.
- Deal with bugs when you see them, not when you imagine them coming.
- Remember that you do NOT have c.diff. this time around. And even if you get it, we now know what to look for and how to handle it a lot more quickly.
- Locate the closest medical facilities, just to put your mind at ease.
- STAY HYDRATED.
- If the smell of the perfumed toilet paper reminds you of having c.diff., get new toilet paper.
- Accept that cleanliness is relative (i.e. clean + bug spray + sunscreen + whatever kind of dirt blows in through the windows = clean).
- When overwhelmed, stick your feet in the pool, pet the dog, and read a book.
- Don’t pee in a shower that doesn’t drain properly. The next day will not be awesome.
And now, a few more photos of the house. It’s a weird shape, so it’s hard to get your bearings with just pictures, but here goes:
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- The entrance to Casa Ukaiki. No idea what that means.
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- The kitchen, the loft, and the entrance to the master suite, although that’s too fancy a term to use. haha.
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- One of the newly constructed pergolas. Neither of us can figure out the point of such structures. I mean, maybe if you’re going to have plants grow all over it, but otherwise it’s just kinda worthless. I’m pretending I’m going to take up yoga again and practice on the new deck under it.
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- The stairs and the living room from the front door(ish). The kitchen is to the left.
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- Looking down at the entrance, couch, and kitchen bar from the loft.
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- The front door. We have SO many chairs outside, plus a hammock and a swing. Fun!
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- The view from the driveway. The mini soccer field (like really tiny) is behind me to the left. The fire pit is on my left as well.
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- Fire pit area.
This morning I was a little groggy from cold medicine when Eric left the bedroom to start his day. I picked my head up to see him go. He stopped abruptly and said, “I think that’s a cricket?” I went right back to sleep, but remembered his words later in the day and decided to ask about it. His response? “I mean, I think it was a cricket! I just think it was injured or something. So it was just laying there, flopping all silly.”
So there’s that.
In other news, Eric got his kite today! Very exciting! He hasn’t fully unfolded it yet, but it’s blue and a darker blue and kinda reddish. Photo coming soon. We went over to the kite school around 3:30 today and caught up with Itzick – “the Ab Master” – Millie, who is responsible for keeping the school running, and Nino, Eric’s adorable 20-something Austrian instructor.
Machete Kites
We went for a long walk along the beach, then headed up to the “Machete Swing Bar.” Calm down, it’s nothing kinky. It’s the outdoor bar at the kite school that has swings instead of seats. The temperature was perfect and the sun was starting to go down. Beautiful. We discovered something slightly unnerving – the bar no longer carries Balboa, Eric’s Panamanian beer of choice. It now carries only Quilmes, an Argentine (Argentinian? I’m never sure) beer. Luckily, it’s not so bad. Whew!
Real men drink beer on swings.
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- If you zoom in, you can see Panama City in the distance. It was really clear today. Most of the time you can’t really make it out.
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- Notice the boat’s name: Carolina!!!
We walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. I’m not usually a sucker for sunsets on the beach. To me, most beachscapes are boring. There’s water, there’s sky. That’s it. But here, there are beautiful mountains across the water. There are brightly colored kites all over the sky. It’s always exactly the right temperature. There’s always a nice breeze. The instructors usually go out to kite, so you’re also watching a pretty spectacular show. Tonight Eric gestured for me to stand in front of him so he could wrap his arms around me. At the same time, we both sighed. Perfection.
