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Every morning when I wake up, there’s a different picture outside my sliding glass doors on this lagoon in Bocas del Toro, Panamá. This morning a white mist hovers over a pearl gray sea, like fine mesh. I feel like the Lady of the Lake, floating on top of a cloud in my bed. Then Elvis starts barking. He’s chasing the horses out of the yard again and sounds like he’s on doggie drugs. His bark has the edge of hysteria: GET OUT OF MY YAR YAR YAR YAR YARD!  The horses wander back across the dirt road to the beach and look at Elvis with mild interest. As soon as he comes in to get his bonesicle, they’ll wander back over again. When Lucy and Elvis are eating their frozen bones, there is little that seems urgent, not even a herd of wayward horses chomping on my lawn a few feet away.  I get up and check my email and nothing’s pressing.  It’s a great morning to go the farm, and I start moving in that direction. I put on my long pants and rubber boots, the best protection in the thick tropical grass after a night of rain. The chiggers (grass lice) don’t like damp weather, and love to find a nice dry leg, or even better, a breast, where they can burrow into the top layer of skin. I don’t get many chigger bites now. Those that do stick around, get immediately suffocated under a coat of clear nail polish - and Bada Bing, they go straight to chigger hell.

One of the beautiful beaches in Bocas

Down at the Buena Vista on a Friday night, you don’t hear too many complaints about the road. There is a great deal of worry, though, about people building on the coast. Where will they put their septic systems? Bocas is in transition from the Land that Time Forgot to the Land that Everyone Wants to Subdivide. The previous mayor was recently arrested. Rumor has it there were 70 different denuncias against him. Maybe the whole Municipal Council will join him in prison one day, and they’ll be forced to play Bocas Monopoly in their cells, using play money. 

Fairy Tale Central

Living in paradise can be stressful sometimes. That’s what the newcomers don’t know yet: building permits, bank transfers, surprises from officialdom. It all takes longer, and daily life is much more unpredictable when you’re not working a regular job in your home country. When I’m feeling stressed, my cure is to walk through the gates into heaven, and that is why it has its name: Finca Cielo en la Tierra, the farm we call heaven on earth. The natural beauty of this place is almost overwhelming to my senses. All those flowers. The howler monkeys roaring in the trees nearby. A morph butterfly goes by flapping its enormous blue, neon wings looking like it belongs in an animated movie: Finding Mariposa. 

William and Julian come down to greet me. These are the Guaymi Indians we employ. They each have their own house on the property, and live there with their families. Every morning they clean out the sheep pen, make sure the little ones are getting their milk and scrape out the abono that we mix with sawdust to make fertilizer.  After that, they’re pruning the trees. We have about 7 hectares (about 17 acres) of tropical hardwoods planted at the back of the farm that are in a government-approved forestry program.

My horses Rosa Pinta and her son, Fuego run down the hill, expecting a free feed. Fuego at two and half is still my baby. I rode his mother in her last trimester having been told by the vet that she had five months more to go. A few days later I found a baby horse inside the paddock. I walked closer, and saw the sheen of afterbirth still clinging to him. Rosa’s a pinto, and he was chestnut, but the blaze on his nose and his wide-set eyes, were an exact duplicate of his mother’s. Surprising, unassisted births in the field are a regular event around here. 

After a few hours in the garden - my current project is a big rock with hundreds of nooks and crannies I’m trying to fill with fern, wild begonias and violets - it’s time to head to town. I’m sweaty, dirty and happy.  Elvis and Lucy watch me from their perch on the stairs; the horses watch me from their paddock. Are they waiting for a song-and-dance routine?
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Bocas Town A hundred years ago, this little Caribbean town had 25,000 inhabitants, five embassies, and the first phones in Panamá. In 1890, the Snyder brothers from Boston established the first banana plantations here with their Boston Fruit Company which later merged with two other companies to form The United Fruit Company. After Panama Disease hit in the 20s, and most of the bananas died, thousands were without work. Most left. A town that looked like a colorized postcard from another era with a population of around 3,000 people was what Paul and I found when we came here in 1994.  Times have changed. Bocas has some of the most biologically diverse eco-systems on the planet. We have turtle nesting grounds, reefs, beaches, jungles. The Smithsonian Tropical Institute recently moved its center of Central American operations here. The tourists are arriving in droves. Land is still cheap, compared to the eastern Caribbean. And there are no hurricanes.

Nevertheless, shopping in town can be a challenge. Today I want a beef filet, and have to go to three different supermarkets before I find one that isn’t the size and shape of a hammered sausage. There are carrots, green beans, eggplant and cabbage, but no romaine lettuce. There is butter and cream, but the fresh milk hasn’t come in on the ferry, yet. So I pick up my copy of the Miami Herald (delivered to my office by a 50-year old paperboy) and head to Le Pirate for a diet coke to wait. It’s nice waiting. I greet the townspeople I know, who love to tease me. “Where you been, Cin?  Thought you ran away when it started rainin’.” I enjoy the breeze and the view across the channel to Carenero. I read the funnies first. 

I cover a few more essentials. We’ve got a few houses we rent, and a couple of properties for sale. But mostly, Magdalena, the sweet Bocatoranian I employ, pays the bills, does our small payroll, and stands in line at the bank. There is only one bank in Bocas, which is run by the state. It is roughly a quarter of the size that it needs to be, and is under-staffed and dysfunctional. Living in Latin cultures (we lived in Spain for 15 years before coming to Central America) has not improved my patience about banks. 

I gather my supplies, and head for home on the lumpy dirt road. It’s time for lunch. 

Cecilia has baked the bread I left out this morning. Every two weeks or so, I go and buy 6 lbs of masa from the local Italian baker and come home, divide it into loaves and freeze it. Cecilia, more often than not, puts it in the oven, and we have fresh bread every other day with the vegetable soups I make. Today it’s carrot/ginger. 

We are like a little family of three inside this house. Cecilia knows almost everything that goes on here and has a wonderful lightness and sweetness to her personality that makes it a pleasure to have her around. If she finds a dime under a sofa cushion, she gives it to me. I pay her social security, her cab fare out here and back. She is well renumerated on the scale of things in Bocas ($40/week), and is happy to have steady employment. I give her clothes, a refrigerator, money for her sick mother, presents for her grandkids, and hormone pills. We giggle together like sisters over town gossip: who’s running around, who landed in jail for not paying child support, how long a sentence the mayor is supposed to get. She knows all about the medicinal quality of plants, too. Her parents raised her in the bush on Isla San Cristobál where they made charcoal from mangrove trees and sold their carbón and plantains in town. Today she tells me that the juice of the sour sop fruit is a wonderful antidote for intestinal parasites. She makes a chicha out of one of the big mushy fruits Paul brought home from the farm and adds sugar and milk. Paul drinks it down like it’s a vanilla milkshake. If he had any parasites, they’re history.
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Afternoon Delights I got into the habit of an afternoon siesta living in Spain, but to be honest, my family is genetically-predisposed to napping, and I fit the mold. So, after lunch, I close the doors, turn on the fan, and lie on my bed. I sleep for almost an hour, wake up, and start writing. Generally, I write for a couple of hours, and then go for a swim.  I put on a hotskin so the fish and jellfish don’t tickle my legs. The dogs sit on the beach and watch, waiting for me to come out and throw them a stick, like the entertainment committee. Paul made me a shower garden at the back of the house. It’s a concrete slab shaped into a circle and surrounded by plants. I peel off the hotskin, and shower outside surrounded by orchids, greenery and flowers. It’s a wonderful tingly feeling having warm water run over you when there’s a fresh breeze, and the sun is just starting to set.

View from the Hotel Bocas del Toro

I look out the window at the sea. It's pink and orange now, almost seamlessly serene. There might be rain tonight, but it promises to be a beautiful, sunny day tomorrow. However it looks - rain or shine - I’ll be in bed looking out through the sliding glass doors, waiting for the horses to show up.

The following are the previous articles that Cindy wrote for the magazine:

Going For Broke, Or Going Bananas? - How To Leave Home Without Losing Your Sanity
Does Money Grow on Trees? - Growing Teak Wood In Bocas Del Toro, Panama

To contact Cindy Click Here
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Cindy Cody, a Boston-area native, has lived in Isla Bocas del Toro with her husband Paul for the past ten years. Her novel, Banana Bay, a steamy tropical mystery set between Boston and Panamá was recently published. For more info go to http:www.cindycody.com

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