2-28-26 Leaving San Pancho

 We had dinner last night at La Ola Rica again.  Everything was delish.  We played our last game of hand and foot last night and sadly the guys won, but only by 35 points so the final tally was 5 to 3.  

We are all packed and are waiting for our driver to take us to the airport.  This has been a lovely respite from the winter.  We won't actually be home until tomorrow as our flight doesn't get into Bradley until 11:45 PM - too late to drive home after traveling all day.  We are booked into a hotel at the airport and will drive home tomorrow morning.

2-27-26 San Pancho

 We had a lovely dinner last night at Ikan.  Dave, Cathie and I had beet salad, mahi maki and shredded squash with edamame.  Russ had shrimp, spinach and peas and pineapple puree.  We walked down the street and checked out the Gelato shop.  It was very good and we were able to get a non-dairy for Dave.  We had a rousing game of cards last night.  The guys ended up winning by only 100 points.  Tonight's game will be the deciding one - we will either tie or the guys will win.  Cathie and I are putting on our big girl pants for this one!

We got up early this morning and went down to the estuary to catch the morning birds.  We saw Great Blue heron, great kiskadee, black vulture, Northern jacana, American coot, brown pelican, great egret, Heermann's gull, least grebe, Sinaloa crow, blue winged teal, sand piper, grackle, yellow crowned night heron, black necked stilts, and the magnificent frigate bird.  We then went to breakfast at Maria's Restaurant.  We got there a bit early so we took a walk down both sides of the street.  We took a pic on Tristan and Dee's house high on the hill looking of the downtown area where we were standing.  I also took a pic of Russ next to a jaguar mural. He would like to have seen one, but not up close.  Everything at Maria's was quite delicious!  Unfortunately, a car sped (unusual to see one going so fast) by on the street in front of us and ran over a baby chick that was part of a brood that a mother hen was shepherding across the street.  Poor little chick.  After breakfast, we went up to check out birds at the polo grounds.  We saw orange fronted parrots, blue gray gnat catchers. We passed several large stands of bamboo on our walk.  On the way out, we stopped to look at a dragon that someone had carved from a fallen tree - very cool!  We came back to the house and did some reading by the pool and took a few dips to cool off.  We did a last load of laundry and then packed our suitcases.  We will be picked up at 10:30 to go to the airport for our ride home.  

We have had a wonderful respite from winter during our stay here.  The weather has been a constant 85 degrees with sunshine every day.  The house is amazing: three floors, four bedrooms each with its own veranda, four baths, kitchen/living room with rocking chairs on the veranda and a top floor which is like being in a tree house on the top floor.  We have had an amazing and relaxing time here and love that Tristan and Dee shared their hone with us.  The town is small and safe and the people are friendly and kind. 

2-26-26 San Pancho

 We had a lovely dinner last night.  Everything was delicious!  Blake was originally from Pennsylvania and use to own two restaurants.  Here moved here with his wife and son four years ago and runs a catering/private chef business here in San Pancho.  We had beet salad with goat cheese and pistachios with a lemon/olive oil dressing, shrimp with salsa verde, mahi mahi with a tomato, onion and green bean topping, and polenta.  The dessert was a homemade raspberry, strawberry, blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  We were too stuffed and it was too late to start a game of cards by the time he left so we read for a bit until bed time.

Russ, Cathie and I went to the beach for a few hours this morning.  There was a lovely breeze.  I put my feet in the water - cool, but not cold.  We saw pelicans, blue footed boobies and a magnificent frigate bird fly overhead fly overhead.  Russ filled a broken coconut shell with water for a dog that came to our umbrella for some shade.  He also had a beach massage in a tent that was set up nearby.  We had lunch and as Cathie was doing the dishes, she was startled by two gechos at the bottom of the sink.  They probably came to get water.  Dave caught them and let them go in one of the plant pots on the veranda as they are good for eating any small bugs that might be around.  We will go into town for dinner tonight and then play cards when we get back. The last pic is of Russ and Dave reading on the veranda as I was setting up to blog.

2-25-26 Jungle Petroglyphs

 Cathie and I managed to win last night so now we are tied 3 to 3.

For some reason we had no water this morning so cleaned up the best we could with what was in our water bottles and went for drive with Jorge, our guide, to see the petroglyphs.  On the way to the site we stopped and Jorge pointed out a mango tree with tiny fruit on it.  We also passed fields of persimmons, bananas and pineapples.  There was one field of Brahman cattle.  No one is sure which of the ancient cultures made the petroglyphs or for what purpose, but there were lots of them!  We walked and at times scrambled over rocks in the jungle to see the various types.  One of the pics is one I took of an idol on Jorge's phone.  A friend of his found it nearby and gave it to time.  At the end of the road was a tall wall made of mostly square blocks of basalt with several pools of water at the base.  The wall reminded me of Saqsaywaman which we saw in Cusco, Peru.  Jorge showed us that many of the petroglyphs were not carved into the basalt itself, but into a homemade cement layer that was added to the rock.  I found that quite interesting.  When we were on the way back, we stopped at a small roadside stand where we were treated to a variety of fruits and sweets: watermelon, passionfruit, mango, jackfruit, starfruit, banana, pear banana, and plantain.  The sweets were a mixture of fruit sweets and homemade macaroons.

We came back to San Pancho and relaxed by the pool.  Now we are chatting with Blake who is a chef that Tristan hired to cook dinner for us tonight. We will let you know what we had tomorrow.  Right now we are just chatting as he is prepping.

2-24-26. San Pancho

 We did go down to dinner and although a few stores and restaurants remained closed, we found a nice restaurant that served a variety of dishes.  I had a shrimp taco, Dave had mahi mahi, Cathie had a chicken enchilada, and Russ had a shrimp burrito and, of course, we shared guacamole and chips (we voted it second best so far).  We went down the street to the vegan ice cream shop and enjoyed our first dessert.  Usually we are too full.  While we were eating our ice cream, we bumped into our neighbor Ted again (small town).  We came back to the house and played a game of cards which the guys won.

This morning we went down to the small market in the town.  We enjoyed walking around and looking at the merchandise.  We chatted with a young man who was originally from Michigan, but has been in San Pancho since 2007.  He was selling homemade dog biscuits so we bought some as we are always running into strays around the house, on our walks and in town.  We also bumped into Ted again.  This time I remembered that I knew someone who lived in Crested Butte (Tom and Nancy McLoughlin's son Benji) and asked if he knew him - he did!  It always amazes me how small this world really is.  We came back to the house and read by the pool and took a dip.  Later we took a walk to the end of the street where there is a small cemetery.  It was very colorful!  I took a few pics from the top floor of the house: one is to the south and if you look over the soccer field, you can see the town.  The other is to the west where the Pacific Ocean and the local beach is.   We will have leftovers tonight and try to even up the score again.  Tomorrw morning we are going on a petroglyph walk in the jungle.