Last lunch at Higueron

Today was one of our "one more time" lunches.  We had lunch at the little restaurant here where we live called Higueron, and we invited Leigh (who we had lunch with last week) to join us again.

At Higueron, I had my favorite - the Caribbean Salad, and Guillermo had his favorite - a wrap and a bowl of soup.  Their iced tea is delicious also!!!  The rain seems to have gone away here so we had another beautiful day to be eating outside.  We have always loved eating at this little outdoor restaurant.  We told our waitress (who by now knew us because it was she who usually waited on us) that this was our last lunch here since we'd be leaving in several days.  She was so nice, after our meal, she brought out a complimentary dessert for the 3 of us.  Some sort of coffee custard bites and a nice-sized square of key-lime pie.  All of it was delicious!

After lunch, we went by our house for a few minutes and then we all walked into town and we parted ways there.  After picking up a few things, we walked back home and then later on in the evening, we watched Lost on TV like we usually do.  Here is a picture of the view from the couch where we watch TV.

Just wondering if it will look like this when we look out the window as we're watching TV back in San Antonio.  ;-)

Hiking in Finca Lerida

We had been wanting to go back to Finca Lerida and hike the trails there ONE MORE time before we leave.  Starting with last Wednesday, when we actually got up very early and even called a taxi the night before to take us!  But that Wednesday morning, the weather didn't look that good so we called the taxi and cancelled.  Then each day after that it either was very cloudy when we got up (which meant it'd be raining later) or it was already raining.  We were beginning to think that we had lost our chance to go up there.
But no, today the sky towards the volcano was clear blue sky so we figured it'd be a good day.  We called a taxi to take us up, paid our "trail fee" and took it easy the whole way up.  The hardest part of the trail really is right before you get to the best part of the trail, the part where the trail becomes narrower and your in the forest. We spent quite a bit of time as soon as we got into the forest trying to identify (better yet trying to even SEE the bird) that always seemed to be JUST RIGHT THERE, but we couldn't see it!  The fact that it was practically straight above us didn't help, because our necks would hurt looking up so long.  Finally, we decided to get a plastic bag that Guillermo had in his backpack, spread it out on the ground and lie down on it, looking up, to see if we could see the bird.  This really helped being able to look straight up, but it didn't make it any more possible to figure out where the bird was.  Finally, we gave up and stood around a little longer trying to see it when all of a sudden Guillermo spotted it among the leaves.  It was a 3 wattled Bell Bird!  We were so happy to finally see it.  It looked like a young male, so its coloring wasn't that great.  But satisified, we continued on the trail.

This time, at the T of the trail, we turned left and headed toward the waterfall.  That was a nice hike and we heard LOTS of birds but couldn't see any of them.  There were some birds that sounded exactly like a child swinging on a squeaky swing.  At the end of the trail, there is a waterfall, but you can't get very close to it and it's hard to see between the trees.  On our walk back, I almost stepped on a snake!!  It passed right between Guillermo and me!   So, Guillermo either walked right over it, or it coordinated its crossing of the trail to fit perfectly between the two of us as we walked by - and I was walking right behind Guillermo!!  As soon as I saw the snake, right where I was about to step, I made a noise that made Guillermo think I had fallen down the embankment.   Well, it WAS a shock to see that snake!   This snake was dark gray, very thin and about 2 and a half feet long.  That was VERY exciting!

Back at the T of the trail, we ran into a family who hadn't really planned on hiking that far but somehow or another there they were.  They were all in shorts and short-sleeves and getting eaten up by mosquitoes.  Guillermo gave them some repellant wipes and they were so grateful.  They seemed very nice and they headed on in the direction of the waterfall, and we started slowly walking down.  Next thing we know, they caught up with us again, saying they decided against going all the way to the waterfall.  So, they joined us the rest of the way on the trail back down.  When we got back out to the coffee fields, we heard the Bell Bird again, so we all stood around and tried to pick it out of the trees.  This one we did get to see well, and we saw its colors better so that was nice!

Guillermo with Aaron and Griffin as we're heading back down.

A nice purple Jacaranda among the green trees

I think we've stood in this spot plenty of times before!

We had lunch with the family back at the Finca Lerida lodge and then we took separate taxis back to our places.

Aaron, Mary Beth, Griffin, Lauren

A view of the flowers just outside the restaurant.

Accepted!

Well, we sent in attempt #2 of asking for an extension to file our taxes to the IRS yesterday morning, with SOME of the corrections they had asked for - namely correcting the city, state and zip code and entering a pin number for myself.  The city, state and zip code were the correct ones, just not entered exactly as THEY wanted.  I entered it as:   San Antonio, Tx  78210.  They wanted it like this:  City:  San Antonio    State:  TX   Zip Code:  78210   Ok, whatever, that was easy to fix.
The extension form we originally filed had also asked for a pin number for Guillermo, which we could make up and enter and that's what we had done.  But I hadn't noticed that they also wanted a pin number for me, too.  So, also easy, make up a pin number and enter it.
The last thing was that they disagreed with our adjusted gross income from last year and wanted us to put in the correct number.  That I did not change, because I had definitely entered the correct adjusted gross income from last year.  I mean, what else could I do??  That was the right figure, it was what was on our copy from last year and well, all we could do was just resubmit and hope for the best.
This morning there was an email from the IRS saying our extension had been accepted.  Sent to us at 11:30pm last night.  So, now we have until August 15th to file the real form........

And the rainy season is definitely back.  Summer is over and it looks like what they consider winter here is starting again.  It has rained every single day now for the past 4 or 5 days and even last night, it rained almost all night.  It is really cool again, too.  It's nice, but it IS going to make our walks into town to get groceries a little trickier now.

Washing the dishes after lunch this afternoon, and staring out the window at the "bajareque" falling, it sure makes us think of snow falling.  Is there such a thing as rain flakes?  Because that is definitely what it looks like.  And they fall like snow, too, swirling all around.

Rejected!

Sure enough, we got an email today from the IRS telling us our extension has been rejected, and they outlined about 6 reasons why.  So, we corrected what we could and kept some of it the same because even though they claim the figures are not correct, they in fact are.  Then resent the extension today.  So, we'll see what happens next.  If they reject it one more time, because they STILL dispute those figures, we'll just have to call them up.  Thank goodness for Call Phone on gmail, but still, a phone call to the IRS can't be easy or go quickly......

Today we met a lady downtown for lunch who is a friend of the lady who ran the bed and breakfast we stayed at in Samara.  When we were in Samara, she told us she had a friend living in Boquete and that we just HAD to get together with her.  So, after a few emails, we met her today for lunch.  We had an enjoyable lunch (although the food was lousy) and then we walked to Sugar and Spice to have a Chai.  The weather was lovely today.  Lots of low clouds and it was so cool with a nice breeze.  We got rain again later on in the evening and we enjoyed hearing it on the roof while we watched Lost on TV.

IRS extension in, for now....

We've been working on our income tax form online for several weeks now, and actually had the Extension form filled out for several days already.  It was just too hard to press that "submit" button.  But after looking over the form one last time today, the submit button was in fact pressed and it's done.  It's by no means over with, because even though it's sent in, it could be rejected.  And it still leaves us having to do the actual real 1040 form once we get back to San Antonio.  But at least (if the extension isn't rejected) we have an additional 4 months to get that 1040 in now.

On to more pleasant topics.  The weather here in Boquete feels like it felt back in November.  It has been a lot cooler and there hasn't been anywhere near as much sun as even just a week ago.  We seem to be getting rain everyday again, just like back in November and December.  The rainy season has probably started already again, even though it is still a little early for that.  But we are enjoying the rain and the cool weather.

We are also feeling those first faint little concerns that our time is coming to an end here.  There are exactly two full weeks left until we leave Boquete, and therefore Panama, and this time we won't be going back.  We have started to consider if what we buy from the store today will be finished by the time we leave, we have started to think about which restaurants we should go back to one last time and just plain started thinking about how everything we have been seeing and living around will not be part of our lives anymore.  There's a certain sadness to that.

Naranjilla juice

Here is Guillermo making naranjilla juice again.  He used the naranjillas that Angie was able to score when we went to Finca Lerida a few weeks ago.

The juice is quite good!  Too bad the Naranjillas in San Antonio don't ever grow to be this good.

Yesterday, we were a dismayed when Guillermo tried to make a call to the states on his computer and he noticed there was a Panamanian flag on the dial pad, instead of an American flag.  And sure enough, when he dialed a US number, it would not go through.  We thought that maybe this wonderful feature of gmail had come to an end and we wouldn't be able to make anymore free calls.  Well, today, we got back into the dial pad, and noticed there was a drop down arrow next to the Panamanian flag, and so we clicked on it and changed it back to the American flag.   A +1 came up where you enter the phone number, but we decided to try it anyway and it worked!  We were able to make a call to the states!!!  So, let's hope it continues this way for at LEAST 3 more weeks.

My goodness, I thought my laptop was over and done with last night.  Starting at about 8:30, any sound it made was broken up and everything was super super slow.  If I tried to scroll up or down, it'd take like 10 seconds for that to register and then it'd scroll real slow, if it DID scroll.  Web pages took forever to come in.  It wasn't just the internet, because of the scrolling and clicking on other icons not connected to the internet.  But fortunately, today it seems back to normal.

We just got back from walking into town.  Guillermo bought a tarp, because he is thinking of climbing the Baru Volcano.  Not sure I like that idea AT ALL, but he wants to do it.  He says he'll TRY to get to the top, but will turn around if he feels that would be best.   I tried to make a poll on the blog about that, but couldn't figure out how to get the question to show up.  What's the good of having the answers, if you can't even see what the question is!?!?!?

It's hot today, but the last two days have been nice because we've had thunderstorms both days.  We were so excited to see the storm two days ago that we sat outside on the balcony to watch the lightning and the rain!  Here's a picture of the "yard" out front which, even though it is not ours, we water often and spend time out there trimming dead blooms and weeds.