Another typical rainy season day:
Overcast, heavy dark clouds on the horizon, the rumbling of a distant
thunderstorm…and hot and muggy.
We headed out to have lunch because Sean has found this restaurant
that serves good sausages (i.e. brats). I decided I was game, and as usual, we
drag Emma kicking and screaming. So we
finally find the place, and I have to confess, it was too much of a dive for
me. I was like, “This is the Place?” and
then Emma starts in (because to the restaurant’s credit it was packed with cars
in front). “I’m not going here! I can’t
eat in front of people!There are too many people here!” Oh my god, she is so weird (really she’s not, she’s
just 13, and incredibly self-conscious).
So after a minute or two of debating, we ended up going to... I will
give everyone a second or two to vote on where we ended up eating…
If you voted for McDonald’s you would be right…ding! ding! ding!
(At this point I never want to look at a McDonald’s again, much less eat at
one). I think the aversion therapy is working!
To me the burger patties at McDonalds here in Panama are super salty, and
extremely tough and rubbery. Really, it
is pretty repulsive. But Emma has
decided to trade her pink slime obsession for a Big Mac Obsession.
And not only Emma, but most of Panama. Panamanian’s seem to LOVE McDonalds as much as
Americans. Every time we go, or drive by,
the place is packed. Even at the mall,
McDonald’s and KFC have the longest lines of all the fast food places.
I mentioned before that the bread seems better here in
Panama. I suspect it is the humidity
that keeps it moist and fresh tasting. But
the beef is not better. The beef here is
all grass fed, and extremely lean, which tends to give it a weird gamey taste,
and make it rubbery and dry. When I made
burgers at the villa, I tried to compensate for that but using a Barefoot
Contessa tip: putting a pat of butter in the middle of the patties. It seemed to help, but still, it isn’t
exactly what we are used to. We even
tried to eat steaks again, because the first time they were quite good, and
remember, I got three decent sized steaks for $5.00! The cut actually looks quite a bit like a New
York steak cut, but it is not. The
second time we had steak, it tasted ok, but it was extremely tough and chewy,
so we have finally given up on eating beef here, and are eating only chicken
from the store, which tastes like what we are used to.
The pork, which we have not tried, looks really strange. It looks pre-frozen, and the cuts are
unfamiliar.
Sean has really enjoyed the Ceviche he’s been ordering (I am too big
of a chicken to try it, but he hasn’t been sick yet.) And of course the fresh langostino’s
are really good. I bet even the corvina (which
is a local fish) would taste good.
So when we returned from our less than satisfying lunch, we were
getting out of the car, and Dimas, the caretaker, approached our car and said something in
Spanish. Sean just shook his head, and I
asked, “¿Que?” But Dimas decided it was too much effort to try to get us to
understand (probably rightfully so), and he called a Señor Romero, and had him
explain to us that the pool was being shut down for a week due to a broken
pump.
WHAAAT? The pool is the
only redeeming thing about this vacation (Well that and the view of the ocean,
but a view isn’t going to cool you off!)
Are you friggin’ kidding ME! It’s like I should call this blog 26 days
of being jinxed in Panama, but maybe this is just what happens in an emerging
first world country? Hakuna Matata. Es no Problema…We were so bummed. It was an exceptionally
muggy day, and we were looking forward to cooling off in the pool, and now we
were stuck. I decided to take a cool
shower, and then turn the air on in the villa to bring the humidity (and heat)
down. Thank goodness, I had downloaded a
new book. Sean just sat forlornly saying,
“When he’s not looking, I’m going to jump in!” and “When do you
want to go back in to the city?”
I replied, “Remember, there
is no hot water in the city.”
“I don’t care; there is only intermittent hot water here! At least there is a pool to swim in!”
Poor Sean, he loved the pool even more than I did.
I felt sorry for those couples that had just arrived at the
villa. For one of their two weeks, there
wasn’t going to be a pool to swim in. At
least we were almost at the end of our vacation, and we had the pool at the
city apartment.
So, Sean and I decided that if the next day was a nice day, we would spend it at the beach,
and then head in to the city on Sunday.
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