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Water, Water everywhere

May 8, 2013 by 12 Comments

Today I flew out of David’s spiffy new airport to the morass known as Panama City. I have grown to dislike the urban jungle. If I want a city there are many I would prefer and tomorrow I will be taking a bigger bird to one of those.

On my way out of David I managed to snap a photo of the Port of Pedregal.
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There is lots of water flowing into the sea but it is not in the right place for generating electricity and Panama has a real problem. Notice the brown areas near the top of the photo that once were green, before deforestation. the trees hold the water and removing them does not help a watershed.

These photos posted on Facebook by Dr. Regulo Valdes show Fortuna Reservoir today, 8 May, not looking good.
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Tonight I am in hotel in Panama City. I visited the Multicentro Mall and they did indeed shut of their air conditioning, the mall was warming up. I also visited a Casino and their AC was refrigerator cold.

At seven PM I took this photo.
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According to the new emergency order all those commercial lights and the casino across from me are supposed shut down at 10pm.

You know the situation is evolving when the government starts with closing their offices early, something few would notice, moves to closing schools that use almost no electricity, Mayra does not even have a light bulb in her class room,  to the now desperate measures of cutting revenues to the Casinos. We now know the cause is just and problem is real.

Panama needs rain, lots of rain, but not all at once or the flooding will be horrific.


Filed Under: Featured, General Interest, Happenings, Survival Kit Items, Utilities, weather

Powerless and without Internet, the winds are back, evil winds

March 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The Jazz and Blues festival was wonderful but I need to wonder if the horns did not attract the big winds that keeps on blowing. The wind apparently has blown ships ashore in Colon, caused some flooding in the same city and forced Union Fenosa into over time. Our lights were on and off all day yesterday, off again at 6pm, one at midnight for an hour and then the mother of many saplings crashed on the the road above my house. The brave power lines tried to break it’s fall but alas they pulled a tendon and crashed to the ground.

I suspect it will be a day or two more before the linemen return to restring the cables. I do thank my intrepid neighbor David who was out with the roosters this morning making firewood of the tree and allowing the rest of us mortals to pass the scene.

On a more sober note COPA announced their 2013 expansion plans today and alas I do not see flight to or from or even passing over David.

How am I posting with no Internet and no electricity? iPad, battery and 3G , miracles.


Filed Under: Travel from Panama, weather

Help Wanted: Rain dancers for Boquete Panama

December 6, 2012 by 2 Comments

In Boquete Panama the land of green and more green it might seem unlikely that the rain gods need to be appeased, but they do. Boquete District is home to about fifteen thousand people, innumerable farm animals and an economy based of tourism and agriculture.  The government is busy damming rivers which does not help river rafting tourists, the mayor is banning music at night and mother nature is threatening ruin to agriculture and tourism alike.

Boquete is experiencing the impact of global climate change, there is little historical record, but locals say it is warmer and dryer than in the past. Whether climate change is a natural phenomena or man made, the result is the same and either way I doubt the result can be changed. If you doubt the local impact this is a link to a study of coffee growers in Africa discussing the impact of climate change and potential loss of habitat for Arabica coffee, the type we grow here in Boquete.

This has been a spectacular year for tourism, beautiful dry days through out the once rainy season. People have been thrilled, many crops have required irrigation in the rainy season, but since much is grown in greenhouses that is not unusual. What appears to be unusual is the lack of recharge of ground water.

I have been mute on the topic because I hoped I was wrong, but the numbers from Lloyd Cripe at Boqueteweather.com support my perception, Palmira Boquete had a very dry year.  Lloyd’s numbers are from his finca in Palmira Boquete and only go back to 2008. The numbers from Boquete weather do not provide the evidence for the anecdotal perceptions of my neighbors, but it is all we have for hard numbers. Other areas in Boquete will vary significantly , but it has been a dry year, not the first dry year, but dry. These are rainfall numbers in inches from Palmira Boquete.

Jan – Nov 2008  219.45

Jan – Nov 2009  140.7

Jan  - Nov 2010  211.54

Jan – Nov 2011  175.90

We have seen the impact of low rainfall before and it is coming again. The water for both agriculture and home use comes from the streams running down the mountains surrounding Boquete. According to people who check on the Alto Jaramillo water supply at Cerro Azul on Jaramillo our feeding creek is already very low as if we were well into dry season. I doubt we are unique, this is probably a reality throughout Boquete.

Alto Jaramillo Water starts here in Cerro Azul

This could be a year where water is rationed, we have done it before on Jaramillo. As a Water Junta member for about three years, I have had to be a water Nazi in the past. Tell neighbors to stop watering plants, stop watering gardens, fix leaking pipes etc. This has little more then psychological impact because if you understand Boquete’s water system you will know it does not help much except during peak use hours. We have no reservoirs in this area. Drinking and agricultural water is drawn from running streams and if it does not go into the system it still runs into the sea or soaks into the ground on its path, either way it is gone.

We might have enjoyed the dry, rainy season but if there is not water when you turn on the shower you might wish it had been wetter. It’s time for a rain dance!


Filed Under: Survival Kit Items, Utilities, weather

Road building: A progress report

May 28, 2011 by 5 Comments

Many residents of Boquete Panama read this blog, in addition a lot of people who visit and people planning to visit also visit the site. This will be of little interest to residents, perhaps more to people planning to visit or move here. This is a short film shot driving from Alto Boquete to David that in it’s condensed four minutes shows some of the progress being made on the expansion of the highway from two to four lanes. By mere random timing it also demonstrates the beginning of the rainy season and the reality of driving in a tropical downpour.

I have no knowledge of highway construction and perhaps it is irrelevant but they started laying asphalt on the road when the rains started. As less than an amateur I would have guessed that dry would be better?

Recently Don Winner at Panama-guide.com posted about having a camera in his car which filmed real time a traffic accident. I would like to point you at the very low cost solution I use for these driving videos, this is about $100 less than the Panaguard solution Don recommends and has two hours of capacity. It involves a FLIP video camera and velcro to hold the camera to the dashboard. This link is to Flip on Amazon, velcro is available in David at Novey or Doit if you want an inexpensive car security solution.

Boquete Panama to David road construction


Filed Under: Chiriqui, Featured, General Interest, Survival Kit Items, Travel in Panama, weather Tagged With: , , ,

A blast of air from the north

March 18, 2011 by 5 Comments

Most expats I know in Boquete look forward to summer here; the dry time. I am a contrarian, I loath the dry season with it’s periodic winds and blasting sun. After almost forty years living in the desert I came here to rehydrate. In most of the “green season” a Costa Rican marketing term for the wet season, it only rains a short part of the day but clouds tend to mask the sun keeping it much cooler and moister.

People seem to forget we are high, in my case thirteen hundred meters above sea level and close to the equator; about eight degrees north. This makes the sun brutal and makes this a lousy place for Scandinavians or other pink skinned people like me. Whether the clouds are there or the sun blasting, people need to take precautions or they will be visiting the dermatologists of David to get cancerous lesions removed. Wear a hat, wear long pants, wear long sleeves and wear sun screen. The clouds, much as I love them only reduce the visible light, the the UV that devastates our skin.

The most evil climatic event in Boquete is the wind. The winds of Boquete not in any tourist brochure nor real estate sales brochure. Whether you are in Bajo Boquete, the town, Alto Boquete or in hills around Boquete when the winds come, you know it. Sometimes they only last a day, sometimes a week, one year I recall three weeks. I would rather be stuck in a tropical downpour or even a blizzard then the winds of Boquete for three weeks and yet I am here. There is no escaping mother nature and her whims of fancy.
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The winds bring the dry season, they shift the flow of clouds and are a seasonal event. The rain becomes occasional Bajareque, otherwise known as the misty rain from the north. The Bajareque produces incredible rainbows and keeps parts of the area wet through the dry season. The winds, do not seem to bother the Leprechauns who play under the rainbows. Personally I like the moisture, but when we have Bajareque in my part of Jaramillo, it means the winds from the north are blowing it over the mountains from the Caribbean.

The geography here has taken a bit of time for accommodation. The Caribbean is to the north, the Pacific to the south, Costa Rica to the west and Panama City to the east. The sun sets not by extinguishing itself daily in the vast Pacific Ocean but by dropping over the mountains into Costa Rica. Where they gain a little more time, about an hour, so they are in a different time zone, UTC -6, vs. Panama UTC -5.

So much for the wind which is making me a bit crazy today and the sun which is shining too brightly. As you can tell I must be edgy just taking the time to write this bit of fancy.


Filed Under: Featured, General Interest, Survival Kit Items, weather Tagged With: , ,

Revenge of the Rio Caldera

August 23, 2010 by 19 Comments

In November 2009 rains in the mountains above Boquete caused significant flooding in the valley, destroying a bridge and flooding many houses. Since then the government invested millions virtually paving the river in stones.truckcaldera.jpg

Yesterday mother nature proved itself once again more powerful than the labors of man and machine. After a day of heavy rain the Caldera once again started cleaning it’s banks of the stones and overflowing in several areas.
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Today the damage was assessed and people were cleaning our flooded houses.

The restaurant formerly known as the Palo Alto, until it was destroyed by the river in November 2009 was rebuilt and reopened as The Rock. Today the location of the restaurant formerly known as the Rock, is mud again. I could not drive the road to Palo Alto to take photos, the road was closed. I have been told a bridge out along the road and there has been significant damage to at least one hotel on the road.

I did drive into town from Jaramillo and despite slides and trees on the road I made it.P1030965.jpg

The town of Boquete shows some signs of flooding, mud on roads near bridges,

Lloyd Cripe has send out this information about the 13.98 inches of rain yesterday and more to come.

“At the Palmira Station we recorded 13.98 inches of rain between 2:00pm and 8:00pm.  You can see a graph of the rainfall at Weather underground.  Just chose the date of August 22, 2010 and take a look.  Most of the rain fell between 2 and 6 pm.  The streams and rivers were gorged and some flooding occurred. ”

This is a link to more photos provided by Mark Heyer. Link

More to come!


Filed Under: Survival Kit Items, weather Tagged With: ,