Penn & Dawn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 10

Our beach house

Day Eighteen, Sunday June 9th 2016 (for about two weeks)

Heidi goes home today. She was paranoid about missing her plane, so we arrived in town at nine am for her noon flight.

We dropped by the airport so Heidi could check that her flight was on schedule and check her bags. Remember, this airport is like something out of Romancing the Stone. There are eight parking places and no security preventing you from entering the boarding gate part of the terminal. As a matter of fact, there is only the boarding gate part of the terminal, no fancy chain restaurants, bars or executive clubs.

The terminal is a one story building with a bad yellow paint job. Apparently in the last election, there was a ballot measure to collect funds to improve the airport. After the measure passed, the terminal was given a new coat of yellow paint.

A month or so later, a work crew came along and painted white primer over about twenty percent of the surface. Then all worked stopped. No one knows where the millions of dollars allocated to the improvements went.

Oh, well. That’s Panama.

When you enter the terminal, the room for deplaning passengers is right in front of you. To the right is a “ticket counter.” Next is the one boarding gate and further down the building is a waiting area with about fifty or so chairs. Not a problem, no plane with more than fifty passengers is ever going to land here.

Since we had three hours to kill before her departure, Miss Heidi wanted to go shopping for gifts to take home to her friends.

We drove about five blocks to an open lot with several open-air stands set up selling the local artisans’ wares. Heidi and Dawn plowed through the stalls and I got bored and stood by the truck. Heidi argued price with the vendors, even if the price was only one dollar, she had to get
 a better bargain. Eventually she collected several choice items.

Dawn refused to buy anything there. The prices for the items, made in China, were higher than she’d pay for the same thing in San Diego. Cravat tourista.

After the excruciating shopping adventure was over, we found a place to have brunch, then headed back to the airport.

One more word about Panamanian security: you know how you run your bags through an X-ray machine before they’re loaded on a plane in the U.S.?  It’s kinda the same here, except two nice young ladies open your bags and go through them looking for contraband.

I suppose this isn’t too big a thing, unless they pull out your frilly underwear and other assorted personal toys that you don’t want anyone seeing.

This is the part that takes the longest. Since our security guards go through each bag by hand, the line builds up. With an X-ray machine, the bag would go through in a few seconds. By hand, the search can take five minutes or more, depending on how interesting your baggage is or how big an ass you make out of yourself with the guards.

Finally we got Heidi checked in and left the airport. We stopped at the mini-super for a few grocery items, then headed home.

Bocas airport (just kidding)

FREEDOM!!! We were in our luxurious jungle hideout by ourselves. Nothing to do now but sit back, relax and enjoy our freedom, right?

When we got home, Dawn stopped in the basement to check the load of laundry she left washing. The utility sinks were full and water was overflowing onto the floor. Our plumbing was stopped up.

I traced the stoppage from the kitchen to the septic tank and determined that it was in the laundry room. It was so far down the line that we needed a plumber’s snake to get to it. Of course, we didn’t have any such tool.

Our neighbor, Gundela, stopped by to check on us and went through all of the same checks I’d just done and pronounced that our pipes were stopped up. Duh!

We stopped by the neighbors on the other side, Rosemary and Courtney. Courtney seemed like a very knowledgeable, get-things-done sort of guy. He didn’t have any bright ideas. I asked if there was a plumber on the island I could call.

After they stopped laughing they informed me that the nearest plumber is in David, on the mainland. It’s a four-hour drive from David to the ferry landing, then an hour ferry trip across to our little island. From the airport, it was another forty-five minute drive to our house. Either that or we could fly him out for the one hundred dollars airfare each way.

I called Wes. He said that they’d had that problem before, he thought it was caused by fat being washed down the drain, then congealing in the pipes. The solution was to pour boiling water down the drain, then use the plumber’s helper to force it down.

Okay, easy enough. Wait a minute! The hot water heater wouldn’t light.

We spent a day or two gathering useless suggestions from the neighbors, then went into town for something. When we got back, the sink was empty and the drain was running clean. We boiled a kettle of water and dumped it down the drain.

If flowed easily.

Now the hot water heater problem. Wes suggested that we get Jim, from the next house (about a mile away) to our east.

We drove over to talk to Jim and Frances. That isn’t as easy as it sounds. The driveway to Jim’s place is more like a burro trail. Bushes and trees bang against the truck. Pot holes could swallow your vehicle. When it rained, the mud was knee deep. We needed to put the truck into 4-wheel drive to get through.

Jim said gave me a few suggestions, then said if I couldn’t get it going again, to let him know and he’d take a look at it.

Jim is the island’s solar electricity and flash water heater expert.

If you haven’t heard of a flash water heater (and unless you live on a boat, you probably haven’t) it is a gas fired water heater with no holding tank. The water enters the tank cold and exits it hot. No fuss, no muss, no bother. It’s really a good idea, since you don’t have any large holding tank to rust out and explode in your basement or garage. Besides, it provides an endless stream of hot water. As long as you have water and gas (propane in our case) you have hot water.

Unless your igniter dies.

Our private beach

I tried all of Jim’s suggestions and nothing worked. I finally drove back over to his house to tell him we needed his help. You understand that I couldn’t just call him. There is no cell service on this side of the island.

We have two basic means of communication here. The coconut telegraph and a personal visit. There is a heavy iron gate to discourage tourist from driving down our road. People leave notes taped to the gate for others all the time.

Of course, everyone who goes through the gate stops to read the note, whether it’s meant for them or not, so everyone knows your business. I don’t know how the word travels so fast, but by the time you get home from posting the note, someone drops by to ask you about it. (Well, maybe it takes a little longer, but you get the point.)

The other method of communicating is face-to-face. You climb into your truck, drive to their house and have a conversation with them.

So to Jim’s house I went. He said he’d be by in the morning. That makes two days without hot water. I saw no point in trying to rush him; it wouldn’t have done any good. We’re on Panama time here.

The next day Jim and Frances dropped by. While Frances and Dawn gossiped, Jim tore the hot water heater apart. The problem was the igniter. It wouldn’t light the gas.

It’s a simple part to replace, if you can find one.

Jim left, saying he’d track down a new igniter for us.

A couple of days later, he dropped by to let us know he’d found a source. The new igniter cost two hundred and seventy-five dollars. The whole heater had only cost about three hundred dollars to begin with.

This was a decision for Wes. I drove over to Juanie’s to call him. No answer. They are driving around the United States in a motor home and are frequently out of cell phone range. I left him a text message.

Two or three days later, he got the message, contacted Jim and discussed the issue. In another couple of days, he let us know that he’d ordered a new water heater from David. It would arrive on Friday.

Toby is our fairy god mother. She runs a service in David that shops for you. You need a new water heater, call Toby. You want to order toilet paper or beef tenderloin, call Toby. She even sent her people to pay our parking ticket in Almirante, on the mainland.

Wes has an account with her. He sends her money, she keeps track of his balance and when it’s low, he sends her more.

When we needed auto parts, we called Toby. There wasn’t enough money in the account to cover it. After several discussions, we figured out how to handle it. We hid five hundred dollars in a magazine, then put it in an envelope. You are not allowed to ship cash on an airplane. We took the envelope to the airport and shipped it to David, where Toby picked it up. You wouldn’t do that in the States.

On Friday, I drove into town to meet the truck and bring the heater home. Then I drove over to Jim’s to let him know it was here.

“I should be able to stop by on Sunday,” he told me.

Sure enough, he showed up on Sunday and installed the new heater.

It only took us two weeks to get the problem solved. That’s two weeks of boiling water to do the dishes and taking cold showers. Oh, well. It’s Panama.