Venao Vagrants

Since returning from Panama City, we have been staying close to home. The deck is awesome, heck, the whole condo is awesome. So we spend a lot of time sitting outside reading or visiting friends on Zoom. The owner has some nice plants, so we do our best to keep them alive. Not a requirement just something we enjoy doing.

The coolest thing about the open lawn area that sits between us and the sea, is the fact that you never know who or what is going to come walking across in front of the window. Lately, there has been a lot more activity. I’m not sure if it’s due to more people being vaccinated or maybe, it’s some kind of holiday. There are vacationers throwing frisbees, either man to man or man to dog. One day a full on modeling shoot was going on including a drone to get shoes from above. But my favorites are always the random wildlife.

Speaking of vaccinations, the government of Panama was gracious enough to supply us with our first dose of Covid vaccine last Thursday. It was an auto drive through set up at the county fairgrounds. The only kink to our plans is that now we have to stay close for 30 days in order to get the second shot. So we are busy brainstorming and rearranging whatever loose knit plans we had already been putting together.

As always, our day to day Venao doings center around getting into the ocean. We surf, boogie board or streak across the bay on our paddle boards. Directly in front of the condo, a navy fast boat is pretty much always moored keeping an eye out for traffickers. From peeking with the binoculars, they have four guys stuck on the maybe 28 foot boat just sitting there 24/7. A few days back, they were joined by a mini fleet of fishing pangas taking a break in the still water hidden by the island. I saw some of the guys filleting fish on deck, so I grabbed the paddle board and headed out to see if I could buy a kilo of fresh catch. The 3 men on the boat had a number of good sized tuna but they were sport fishing guys so they didn’t really want to sell it. So they gave me three big filets and said it was on the house. Awesome!! I thanked them all then quickly started back for shore. They were bailing out all of the bloody water from inside the pangas and there I was with a bag of bleeding fish so I stroked hard for the safety of dry land. We had an afternoon snack of the freshest sashimi then seared filets for dinner. Muchas Gracias amigos!

A few thunder squalls complete with amazing light shows and booming sound effects, plenty of super tide changes with the changing of the moon and numerous beautiful sunsets. Playa Venao rocks.