I am in Shelter Bay, and I am Vibing

Location: Shelter Bay, Panama

What's the difference between a well-dressed gentleman on a unicycle and a poorly-dressed gentleman on a bicycle? Attire. 

That joke was from Tuesday morning's net. Monday morning's joke was "what do you call a deer with no eyes? No idea" but it needs to be told with an Australian accent for the pun to work and I didn't know how to convey that with enough "oomph" to make a good opening, so I had to content myself with unicycles.

In my last post, there was a veritable war in the comments section between various family members about the merits of boxed wine. Jem's opinion is that anything is all right "as long as it's drinkable." Of course, this is coming from a person who enjoys sipping 85% Sunset rum. I was also asked to post a picture of my face instead of that of a shaggy dog. For the record, that dog's name is Jester, and due to your remarks, he now feels verklempt. Here is a picture of Jem and I eating pistachios. Neither of us are looking at the camera because we are old and don't understand technology.

(I have indeed shaved most of my hair off. It seemed to be the next logical step after my undercut.)

Monday and Tuesday were mostly spent doing errands. A few boat parts arrived and needed to be installed. The sails were not included, as there is still too much wind for a safe installation. Paul from the sail loft did, however, bring my custom hat. It has a boat on it!

Speaking of boats, it's really cool to live in a place where you can look up and see enormous floating houses glide past you a few times a day. For example, this morning, a square-rig stopped by.

Monday, the veggie truck stopped by. It's technically not allowed on the premises, so it stops in the shaded part of a roundabout behind an abandoned church that looks vaguely like a haunted administrative building. We bought a beautiful amount of fresh vegetables and a kilo of prawns, some of which we had for dinner. During that time, Jem told me a story about how once in Australia he and some friends found a screaming woman in Australia and after calming her down found out that while she was using the washroom, a very large cane toad was in the toilet bowl and leapt out, hit her rear, and hurtled her onto the stall door. Let this be a warning.

Tuesday we went into town to buy groceries. Half of the shuttle bus was filled with German speakers. Unfortunately, my cegep German 1 class hadn't covered the complexities of catamaran bilge pumps, so I wasn't able to keep up. In the grocery store, we came across some interesting names for sauces.

Tuesday evening we had rotisserie chicken that we had bought that morning. The chicken was deliciously full of herbs and outdid St-Hubert by a long shot. We then to the weekly marina movie night, and watched Mamma Mia projected onto the white wall of a nearby shed next to a huge glowing speaker. Highlights of the night included a kid scootering past the screen at the climax of "The Winner Takes It All," Jester barking as the song ended, the entire child audience groaning when Donna kissed Sam, and a lady at the back of the screening area making slightly off-colour jokes throughout the movie.

This morning I went on the weekly nature walk. The only other person on the walk was John, the same South African guy who talked to me about leaves the last time I went. John is running the walks these days because Bud and Tracy (the people who ran it the last time I went) had left for the Pacific. John told me that he liked them because they didn't talk about birds as much as the person before them. "Birds are nice, but too much of it and they get boring." True to his, word, John only mentioned birds once to say that the pelicans here are diving pelicans, whereas those in Australia swim on the water's surface and dip their heads in.

It's the dry season in Panama, and dead leaves litter the ground, much like late fall back home. There are small paths through the leaves, where leafcutter ants have cleared them to make highways through the undergrowth. There are giant ant colonies tunneled into clay hillsides, and smaller colonies in bark-textured pods on the trunks of palm trees, almost like termite nests. There's a type of palm tree with rose-like spikes on its trunk to deter climbing. We saw beautiful blue morpho butterflies flying along the road, and a capuchin monkey climbing in the treetops. We walked hurriedly along a path under a fallen branch hanging precariously by vines. Then we went to the nearby beach and sat on an almond tree that grew horizontally over the water and let the waves wash over the sand underneath the trunk. And I saw a Jesus lizard! It was a good day.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it. Ok bye now