Saturday in David

Hello! Today the sun is shining as usual and the chickens are clucking. Rosalina´s cousin Mariela is here from Panama City to attend the flower and coffee fair in Boquete today. I am excited to go. Alex, Joy, Rosalina and I went last week and we really enjoyed it.
These last couple of weeks in Panama are pretty low key. Alex and Joy and Luis are all gone and I am spending a lot of time with Alessandra who works in the house here. Today is her birthday. Yesterday we went as we like to do to the olympic swimming pool out by the airport. However when we arrived we found that it was completely full of kids and they turned us away at the door. We had fun being mad at the people who turned us away, especially a man with a bobbly head who told us to come back after twelve with a ridiculous smile on his face.
"There´s nothing funny!" I said and later Alessandra and I laughed and laughed about that. We were very hot and Rosalina had already left and was planning to pick us up in an hour. So we began to walk and Alessandra suggested we take the bus into town to see if the casino pool was open. So, I had my first David City bus ride. These are the sort of privately owned buses that move really fast and are already moving as you are stepping onto them. Big stuffed hearts we the words "I love you" on them and plastic beads and crosses dangle from the rearview mirror. It felt freeing to be on the bus with Alessandra and to feel the breeze through the half open window. I do not often go anywhere alone in David, in fact I don´t think I ever have. It is not like home where I wander outside looking in shops and stopping for a coffee and staying to write in my journal and people watch for as long as I like. Here I am pretty sheltered and Alessandra very much so. Alessandra asked the bus driver to let us out and we were on the street walking toward the casino. It´s quite an adventure to walk down a street in David. There are sidewalks, but they´re not always consistent and the cars are aggressive and don´t make a sign of slowing when people are crossing the street. The air smells of exhaust and dust. Pedestrians are accustomed and play games with their lives walking casually into the busy street, crossing randomly as they like. Dogs, chickens, and iguanas do the same, sometimes with very sad results.
Before we reached the casino we had to stop and try to reach Angela by payphone at the house to let her know what was going on. Two men in an old beat up truck honked their horn at us and out of the open window said the equivalent of "Hey Baby! hehehehe!" We entered a little store.
"Buenas!!!" Alessandra said over the counter of small bags of chips, gum, and candy. No one answered. Then a woman peeped her head out from a back room. Alessandra bought two small boxes of mint gum, one for each of us and dialed the house number. We tried several times, but Angela did not answer. We gave up and decided to see if the casino pool was open and try to call from there.
We went through the back parking lot where the last time we came we met a tired old woman sweeping the sidewalk with playboy bunny earrings swinging from her ears. Since then I have seen many people sporting the playboy symbol and it never fails to make me laugh at least inside my head. I really like it when men wear it! At the fair in Boquete we passed a man in a cowboy hat with a glistening silver playboy rabbit on it. Alex and I both looked at eachother laughing. Soon we passed a booth where a pile of similar hats were for sale. I considered buying one.
The pool was not open today.
I love my adventures with Alessandra. I am very curious about the vibrant street life I see in David. People wander down town in and out of shops. It´s fun to stop at a stall and get an agua de pipa (coconut water.) A man under a tent with a pile of green coconuts and a machete will slice you one open and you can pop a straw in for a refreshing treat on a hot day (any day.) I don´t know how people open coconuts back home, but a machete seems to be the way to go. The ground is littered with coconut lids. Another interesting treat I tried with Alessandra was at a fruit stand. A teenage boy with a butcher´s apron dirtied with pink and orange colored stains instead of red sells you a bag of pineapple or papaya seasoned with vinagre, salt, and pepper. A good flavor.
Among other news I spent the night with a gecko last night. There is a phenomenon that occurs daily, or nightly in Panama worthy of an x-file. It occurs when you enter a room and turn on a light. For an instant you will see something...and then "bam!" it´s gone and you wonder if you ever really saw it. At that point you have a choice, to investigate or to pretend as if you didn´t see anything. I usually choose the second option. I entered the bedroom last night just in time to see a medium sized gecko on the wall swiggle quickly behind a framed painting. I stopped for a moment and considered what to do. Soon I went about business as usual. A little bit later I heard
"cucucucucucucucuccuck." It sounded a little bit louder than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary.... "It´s good," I thought "he will take care of any stray insects for me." I have observed them to be excellent hunters and when they cling to the window screens it´s like a front seat at the gecko theatre. They move quickly toward a crunchy, powdery moth, then stop, observe, move again and "snap!" the light crisp delicacy is theirs. But, they don´t waste time. A few crunches are sufficient before swallowing and moving on to the next meal.
I have never been an insect lover. I respect them as creatures and I am sure there are amazing ones. Here in Panama there are various sizes of cockroaches and insects and they are pretty much a fact of life. Ants of different types crawl around. Some are big, some medium, and some tiny ones are very fast and move like drunk drivers swerving all over your dinner plate.
It has been a while, but I have been meaning to write about an amazing beetle I saw with Alessandra at the pool. I can´t remember the name, but I think I have seen them at the Insectarium at the Montreal Botanical Gardens. It is a giant one, black and the size of a small kiwi with a hooked nose. I believe they were the ones that I found cute that were sitting in a tank eating fruit. Well, somehow this poor black beetle found its way into the pool and was clinging to the divider rope that distinguishes the lanes. It was a hot sunny morning. A talingo swooped down to refresh its wings and belly briefly in the pool water. No one was in the pool except the two of us and the rope spun lazily around and around in the calm water, the beetle spinning with it moving under and out of the water, but never letting go. I was distressed, not sure what to do or if I could help it, feeling sorry for it, but also scared of it. I consulted Alessandra and suddenly screamed high and at the top of my lungs. Alessandra´s face displayed an devilish little smile as her fingernails touched my thigh hard and pinched pretending she was the bug landing on me. We both laughed, and the big bellied pool keeper came running out of the nearby pool house
"Hey! Hey! You nearly gave me a heart attack here!" he said partly annoyed and partly looking relieved. Alessandra pointed out the bug, the man observed it with no change of expression and went back in the pool house. I never found out what the fate of the bug was.