Are we in the upside down? Day 26 of the protests.

We woke up this morning and it was raining.  We usually get rain every day, but typically in the afternoon.  This morning was so cloudy and overcast we couldn’t see Volcan Baru, our neighboring volcano.

The morning brought some great news…. apparently, there are 10,000 containers of Propane enroute to our province.  We haven’t been able to get supplies from Panama City since the protests started. Yes, that would be 26 days of road closures brought on by the protesters.   We’re not sure how long it will take for them to arrive (by sea), but the fact that we know they are coming is super exciting.  We use propane to heat both our hot water and the oven/stove top.  We’ve been trying to be conservative, not knowing when more supplies will be arriving.

Gas arriving at the Delta Station in Boquete, Panama

We took a taxi into Boquete.  We seem to do this every other day or so.  Not having a vehicle has been really limiting.  Our jaunts into Boquete provide both exercise, and social outings for us.  During our walk, we passed the Delta gas station in town and there was a tanker filling up the tanks!  This was just as exciting as the propane news.  We’ve been out of gas for the better part of the last 3 weeks.  There were already about 60 cars in line waiting for the tanker to finish.  Again, because of the protests, gas can’t be delivered from Panama City.  Our current gas is now coming in from Costa Rica under some type of temporary agreement between our 2 countries.

As we were eating lunch, Pete checked his email and our 5 boxes we had mailed before leaving Tennessee had FINALLY arrived in Boquete.  We’d been tracking them with the air tag that I had accidently placed in one of the boxes.  We knew they were in country…. but had been sitting in Panama City for almost a month, unable to get delivered to us.  I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about getting our boxes (which will be at our house in about 2 hours).  I traveled without any type of walking shoes.  All sneakers had been put into the boxes.  At the time we shipped them, there weren’t any protests and we had thought they’d arrive shortly after our arrival.  Little did we know.  There is most likely a lot of useless stuff in the boxes…. but aside from my coveted shoes…. I know there are also some kitchen spices, kitchen utensils (such as a peeler, my much-needed garlic press, can openers etc.), and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t remember.  It’s going to be like Christmas at our house!

And as we walked out of the shipping location, the sun came out.  This day has been full of surprises and the weather is opposite of what we normally encounter.  And it’s been amazing!