Which do you think is easier to buy? Hint: This is Panama…
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| Phone or Crackers? |
The salesgirl at the Movil store spoke excellent English. She showed us a $20 phone, sold it to us,
activated it, and then told us how and where to buy minute cards (weird that we couldn't buy them there), and showed us what to do once we bought the
card. We were in and out of there in
under 10 minutes.
Then we went to the Super 99 grocery store to buy a phone card and
some groceries. I have been craving
cheese and crackers. Now, I've explained
that cheese is a delicacy here in Panama (well, except for processed cheese
slices, of which there is an abundance.
So I went to look at the cheese section again. I noticed I could get a cheddar (not sharp,
cause that might actually have flavor), jack, or Gouda. Those seemed to be the choices. Some were coming from the US: Kraft (hmm, not
exactly artisanal) and some were coming from (of all places) New Zealand. I went back and forth, and finally chose a
New Zealand cheddar; now for some crackers. OK, so there were bread sticks. Oh, and some toasted baguette
slices. They looked sort of thick, and
dry. However, there were no crackers.
Arrg…I don’t understand, crackers are good, especially with cheese. Where is the expat demand for crackers? I
cannot be the only one…or maybe I am?
So, I put the cheese back and continued shopping, and lo and
behold in the exotic import section (cue angels) there were crackers! Real crackers.
Real crackers with garlic. YES!
But wait, there was no price. Oh well,
how much could they possibly charge for crackers? So I threw them in the basket, and went all
the back to the other side of the store to get the cheese. (Spoiler Alert: I believe the time spent on
choosing cheese and looking for crackers, we were already fast approaching the
10 minute mark. We finished our shopping
and headed to check out. (Remember, after you unload your basket, pull it back
into the grocery store, and an employee will, at some point, put it back in the
grocery cart corral, which is inside the store.
NEVER under any circumstances, try to push it through to the other side
of the check stand as we do here in the United States, or you will get a swift,
sharp reprimand.)
As we are checking out and we get to the crackers, the fun
begins. The crackers have not been
entered into their system yet, as they are too new of an item (I knew they were
not there the week before!). But that
doesn’t stop our little Panamanian worker bees from trying every which way to
input and scan the box. And, check the
shelf, and call the manager, and then, I don’t know how high up they had to go
to get the price, but in the meantime,
we were holding up Senor ne’er do well, who was buying a beer and a package of
hot dogs. (I just hope he remembers to take the individual plastic wrap off EACH
HOT DOG before he eats them!) He just kept mumbling sarcastic things softly to
the checker, who tried to look like she wasn’t listening, and most certainly
was not amused with whatever clever things he was saying about the cracker
eating gringos (Except I saw the smirk
on her face, as she purposely tried not
to make eye contact with him.) Look, I wanted to yell, cheese and crackers with
a glass of wine are really good! It is
worth this, I swear! So finally, after a good 10 minutes of holding up the
line, and not being told anything, there was a nod from the manager, and voila
the crackers rang up at $3.99 REALLY? for some crappy crackers!? These people
must think gringos are NUTS!
It is harder to buy crackers.
We got back to the condo right before a HUGE storm hit. It started out like last week’s rain storm,
rumbling thunder, and dark clouds far off in the distance. So Sean decides, “Hey this is great weather
to take a swim”. (To be fair it was still really hot, but I personally don’t
like taunting lightning bolts). After a few minutes, I hear Sean talking to someone, and I think, “Who
else is crazy enough to be out in this weather?” There Sean is swimming in the pool, thunder booming overhead, menacing dark clouds about to open
up, and he is talking with a fully dressed, older Canadian woman, standing by
the pool, holding an umbrella over her head. I couldn’t shake the thought that
Mary Poppins had retired to Panama. Sean introduced us, and I proceed to ask a
few polite questions (ya know, to be polite, even though I just wanted to head
inside, as the rain was starting to fall). And she seemed weirdly exasperated at all of
my questions. (Maybe she also wanted to leave, and was answering just to be
polite?) At one point, I asked her where San Carlos is, and she answered, “Oh
it is about 15 kilometers up the road,” and then she says (half snickering to
herself), ”Oh but I forgot you are imperial…Well that means about 10 miles up
the road.” HEY! Don’t condescend to me lady, I can covert kilometers to miles
with the best of them—just multiply everything by .6. Well, easier said than done, but HEY, I can do
it. It was another surreal exchange, as
a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, Sean jumped out of the pool, and
the mysterious Canadian woman, who built a house in San Carlos, scurried off.
(Or maybe she flew away). I can’t really
say if she was real or not.
The storm was a doozy....Basically this storm was far more intense than the one last week, with wind whipping the trees around, and thunder and lightening happening simultaneously, ya know like in that scene from the movie Poltergeist when the little girl gets pulled into the tree...like that...(well, except no one got pulled into a tree), but...
when it was over, a branch had taken out a part of the fence. (Anti-climatic I know... pun intended, look it up folks!)
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