Swimming Not Driving

We were going to drive away today but yesterday the sirens came out on the waters of Bahia Salinas and the waves went flat as the winds dropped and we were swimming in a vast salt water swimming pool. 

“Let’s stay another day,” Layne said so who was I to argue?

How many days would you want to spend here? We are alone except for a few locals who walk their dogs past us morning and evening and a handful of hotel guests who stroll across the highway and stare at the water for a few minutes. Oh and Josef who lives in a rental house for sale across the sandy track behind us. 

He really lives in Linz in Austria and spends his summers flying helicopters so during the cold winter months he travels and sail boards in places with strong winds. Like Bahia Salinas. 

We swim in the wavelets raised by the winds blowing across the bay while he zips almost out of sight in seconds. “How was Nicaragua?” I asked after one his flights in the direction of the mountains that somewhere imprecise mark where the two countries join. 

Our other Austrian friends, youngsters we met in Mexico have arrived in Panama City. They are in a hurry as they have to be home in Europe in April so they took a chance and worked their way around the road blocks that still have Panama closed to highway traffic. 

For us retired old farts with time on our hands we see no advantage to pushing into Panama before the country settles down. The protestors have won, the copper mine they objected to will have to close but they don’t trust the President to honor the ruling of the Supreme Court in their favor. So the PanAmerican Highway is still closed and Lisa and Sandro had to scramble on dirt backroads to get to Panama City. 

Neither of us feels like pulling a John Wayne to get somewhere we don’t have to be right now. Confront masked protestors or go for a swim? You choose because we made our choice. 

Josef and his girlfriend have invited us out to dinner with them tonight at a Costa Rican place  nearby and tomorrow we really do mean to get on the road south stopping wherever we find the next pleasant swimming beach.