Sour Lemons

We have two kinds of lemons growing on our farm in Palmira, and lots and lots of them. Panamanian lemons have a big, thick, gnarly skin and aren’t really that sour. What they call “sweet lemons” are yellow, round like an orange, with yellow inside . . . and they are lemons, and they are sweet. You can eat a wedge without scrunching up your mouth! They are great for making lemonade. But sometimes a recipe calls for a good old sour, North American lemon.

You rarely see them in the stores, but last week our local Romero store had real lemons: four for 89 cents. So Nikki bought a bag. Two days later they were rotten! So I took them back to Romero’s. After a lot of discussion, grudgingly they gave me another bag of four lemons. I guess this was because I was a gringo since normally in Panama “the customer is always wrong.” Anyhow we brought those lemons home and two days later . . . you got it . . . rotten lemons.

A friend told me, “Don’t you know by now that whenever they put something on sale it’s either beyond the expiration date or about to go bad?” She’s been in Panama for thirty years, so she should know.

We have three markets in Boquete: Romero’s, Mandrian and Bruna. Romero’s has the most selection . . . such as it is . . . but the really good markets are in David. Rey, Super 99, and Baru generally have most everything and are more up to North American expectations. Rey is comparable to Von’s or any of the big stores in the US.  But with gas at $4.70 a gallon, a trip to David costs around $20-25!  Supposedly Rey has purchased Romero’s. Rey offers nothing but top quality, at a premium price, so maybe they are using Romero’s for stuff that doesn’t meet their standards for Rey stores. Who knows?

But the lemons at Romero’s definitely suck.

In Boquete we dream of having a Rey or Reba Smith market in Boquete . . . of course we also dream of direct flights to the US from our local David airport.

Pirates Still Bury Treasure in Panama

This week the National Police uncovered 1,500 kilos of cocaine buried on the beach in Las Lajas in Chiriqui, about 2 hours from Boquete. Unfortunately for the drug pirates Panama is just too good to pass by. With 1000 miles of coastline, sharing an open jungle border with Columbia, and at the crossroads of the Americas . . . Add to the problem the enormous financial incentive for relatively poor people . . . and you have a problem. At the root of the problem is the insatiable demand in the US for cocaine and other drugs, and as long as drugs are illegal there will always be the financial incentive.

On Again . . . Off Again

Now that the Internet provider who was going to “save the day” has walked away and I’m back to the original provider . . . it is on again, off again and totally unreliable. I could hook up to cable, which is fast and reliable, but since I’m moving to our new place in Palmira within a month (or three or four or five . . . ) it just doesn’t make sense to sign up for cable . . . so I’m making do. But it’s tough to keep up with the blog without reliable connectivity.