What is a Panamanian Public Works Crew?

You.

The entire town of Boquete may have one Public Road Crew.  So, if you want the trees removed from the road, you do it.  You grab your trusty chain saw and get with it.

The wind has been blowing Colorado style, 50 to 70 miles per hour.  Trees are down everywhere.  Power lines are down everywhere.  

No power here or David or anywhere in the Chirique (like a county) region.  

Locals say they  cannot remember a storm like this.  I don't know if Panamanians have short memories but this is one hell of a storm.  The storm itself lasted 3 full days.  The aftermath will last 2 to 3 weeks.

At this point, we are estimating power in 2 to 3 weeks.

So, after we cleared the roads, we went to get our generator.  This is Panama and this is not just running across town to get it.

We have to stop and get money to pay for it (we don't have checks for our checking account yet).  We stop at the lady's house who is selling it.  We call her foreman to see if he can unlock the construction shed where the generator is stored.  Then we meet on site and get it.  All of this through the "Big Wind", rain and downed trees.

Oh, but we need gas with, of course, no gas can.  We dig around and find a one gallon plastic bottle. 

Now to the gas station.  The wind is blowing so hard, we struggle to open the rear door to the Beast.  Once open, the station attendant has a fit and tells us doors have been blowing off cars all day.  So we shut the door (easier said than done) and put the leaking gas can in the front of the car...oh boy, now we smell gas every time we get in the car. 

Now we have power for the refrigerator so we don't lose all our food and we have a light.  

The biggest problem is that all the repairs to electric lines will delay the installation of the electricity to our house.  The floods in December set the our installation back 4 to 6 months.  Now these repairs will delay our installation once again.

We are considering going off the grid for power because we may have to wait a couple of years for power to the house.

This will be an interesting problem to solve.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

So how am I on the Internet, you ask.

Well, our landlord has 4 houses on his property.  And, he has the relay tower for the internet service which, of course, has no power.

So we run a power cord down to the electric panel that powers up the internet tower and his switch and plug all this into the generator.  We run an extension cord to the house with the internet router, internet phones and computers and fire it all up.  And, miraculously, it all works without burning up the generator.

We have power cords running all over this 3 acre site and a couple of generators going.

So, not so instant internet.

We will be running the internet each evening for 3 to 4 hours.

It is good to be back in communication, no matter how limited it is!