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On Monday, February 22, the Panama band, Afrodisiaco, is competing in a 2016 International Song Festival. They will be performing their song, Coming from Panama (Viene de Panamá )
Led by Miroslava Herrera and Tatiana Rios, they will compete in the folklore category, along with
Comes From Panama was selected from more than 500 songs to participate in the competition folkloric Viña del Mar International Song Festival 2016.
Comes From Panama is a new song with the atravesao drum beat from the Azuero region of Panama. The drum has its origin in Africa. It was brought to Panama during the 16th century when there was slave trade from Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Congo and other territories. European influences that are rooted in the region such as the violin, mejoranera (inspired guitar) are incorporated.
The band members say they chose Aphrodisiac as their name because it evokes the desire for freedom of the black slave in America, says Herrera.
Among long-term goals, the group to record songs representative of the origins of black drum provinces of Colon, Darien and the Azuero region.
I very much enjoyed their song. I hope they do well in the competition.
Viva Panama!
Sources:
PanamaNewsroom.com
Youtube video description of video above
Last year, my 8 year old was NOT thrilled. My 13 year old enjoyed it. My husband (the guy in the photo) liked it alot. And I loved it!
I had the best time dancing to amazing blues music.
Read about our experience at last year's Boquete Jazz & Blues Festival.
It is less than 2 weeks away!
Here's a video preview of this year's Festival
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While the event is fabulous, the festival's website (here) is terrible. It is hard to find information on it.
I couldn't find links to their most important pages, like the festival line up page and ticket purchase page. But I persevered and uncovered those links eventually. I'll put them below.
On Thursday, Feb 25th at noon, the Festival kicks off with a New Orleans style street parade followed by a free concert at the town's central park.
The Festival really kicks into gear on Saturday and Sunday.
Here is the schedule and line up. For updates to the line up and program, visit the Festival's program page here. Acts are added often, especially on the 1st 2 days of the Festival.
If you don't book ahead, it can be hard to get a hotel room in Boquete. Last year, we went on Sunday and then stayed at Ciudad de David hotel (in David) that night. (FYI - David is 30 minutes from Boquete. Puerto Armuelles, our town, is 1 hour and 15 minutes from David.)
We are going to do something similar this year. We could drive home directly from Boquete, but it makes it more of an event if we stay the night. Plus we usually have something we can accomplish in David.
Also, its a good idea to buy your tickets ahead of time. They sell out.
To find out more about your ticket options and costs go to their website here.
To buy them online use this link here.
As you can see, the tickets aren't cheap. For me its a bonus that kids 12 and under are free.
The festival has a facebook page where they share videos and updates.
While I didn't find the official website super helpful, this site has lots of great information about the festival and related info. You might want to check it out.
If you are coming from another country or from Panama City, there are some good things to know about.
Festival goers can get a 15% discount on Copa airlines flights to either Panama City or to David. It is only for economy seats from February 20th - March 4th, 2016. Book your flight on Copa here. Use coupon code C6705.
This is especially good because Copa is now offering connecting flights from Panama City’s Tocumen airport to David's Enrique Malek Airport. International travelers used to have take a taxi from Tocumen to the Albrook airport to catch a flight from Panama City to David.
This development is wonderful, and so much cheaper for travelers. Used to be, if you flew into Panama City and wanted to catch a flight to David, given schedules and time needed to get to Albrook, you often had to spend the night in Panama City. So you had to pay for more taxis and a hotel room, etc. Even if you could catch a flight that day, you had the cost of the taxi ride to Albrook.
With Copa's flight to David you get to skip the taxi ride to Albrook and you are much more likely to be able to catch a connecting flight that day. Plus Copa's flight to David is cheaper than Air Panama's out of Albrook airport.
We love Copa! It is our family's favorite airline.
Technically, you can only fly from Tocumen to David's airport if you are connecting from an international flight. However, I have taken that flight without having arrived on an international flight. But I wouldn't count on being able to do that.
Not flying internationally? Take Air Panama's flight out of Panama City's Albrook airport to David's Airport. There is no festival discount available for that flight.
You can also take a bus from Panama City with other festival goers.
The details are on the flyer for the Blues Bus to Boquete.
I smile just thinking about going. It is my birthday gift to myself.
Maybe I'll see you there. Please come and say "hi" if you see us.
We will be the only family with both a young Chinese daughter and a blondish teenage daughter.
I'll most likely be dancing in front of the stage. 🙂
"When are going to put your Corazon de Oro properties on the market?"
The answer is very soon. In a matter of a few months.
Currently we are building an entry way to the property.
To give you a preview, I put together a short video on one of the beachfront lots.
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Walking out there, I am reminded just how beautiful a spot it is in.
I'll let you know when you can actually buy one. It will be fairly soon.
We are currently building an entry gate.
Find out more about these 19 lots, 9 of which are beach front, here.
January 30, 2016
See photos below.
They are not available to adopt yet!
You can pick your new dog up on February 20th. That is when they will be spayed/neutered.
But you can claim your pup today.
Please call Irma today! - 6230-3623
Irma is one of the volunteers with Los Animales.
The puppies's mom died. They were found homeless and hungry.
There were 6 puppies available, but Pat has already claimed one.
Currently they are alittle more than a month old.
I will update this post with more information, like their gender, when I get it.
Click on any photo to enlarge and start slideshow.
Learn more about Voluntarios Por Los Animales and other ways you can help the animals of Puerto Armuelles.
If you adopt a puppy, please let us know!
The landscape and garden design are certainly beautiful, but are by no means the best out there.
During the afternoon hours, the festival ground are relatively vacant.
In Panama, crowds only begin to filter in around early evening. In order to attain the lively festival experience you may need to sacrifice a good night's sleep in order to drive home, or money on a hotel room. During the evening & night, the festival adds amusement rides, live music and dancing to the mix.
Scroll down to see photos of the festival & Boquete
Of course if you don't mind a slower paced festival escapade or the hot sun, a one day trip to this festival is perfect.
Since this event was originally a coffee fair, it still offers up a large variety of local coffee brands. Boquete is known for having some of the best coffee in the world, so if you enjoy a good roast you should give this event a visit.
The festival is surprisingly small, especially for an event that has been held for over fifty years. Venders occupy most of the fair grounds, selling flowers, coffee, and traditional hand crafted souvenirs.
Though many people come for the coffee and flower arrangements, to me the real star of this event is the town and the scenery surrounding it.
During the 10-day festival there is an explosion of venders outside the festival grounds as well as inside. While in town you you might like to visit the plethora of restaurants, ice cream shops, as well tour coffee farms.
So if you come to Boquete solely for the festival don't forget to stay a little while, look at the views, and grab a bag of local coffee beans for the road.
The festival is the attraction, but in order to get the full experience you have to appreciate the town that puts it on, Boquete.
If you want to learn more, my Mom, Betsy, wrote some about the history of the Boquete Flower & Coffee festival.
This article was written by my 14 year old daughter, Skylar Vayda. Over the next 3 months, Skylar will be writing a Panama-related article each week. She will be picking the topic. We hope you enjoy them.
El Pulpo is on a quiet street. It is close to downtown Puerto Armuelles.So our little family of four ventured out to try the dinner fare at Restaurante El Pulpo (The Octopus).
The restaurant is on a quiet street in the Rio Mar neighborhood. It is just one street behind the waterfront houses.
Which is the street that has the short one-lane bridge going from Pueblo Nuevo/Downtown to Rio Mar. It is about 500 meters past the bridge, on the right- hand side of the street.
That one-lane bridge used to be known as the “bridge over the stinky little slough”, before work on the new and improved sewer system for Puerto Armuelles began early in 2015. While the sewer system is not quite finished yet, the family didn’t notice any odors when we crossed the bridge.
There is a sign out front announcing “El Pulpo, so you won’t miss it. (see photo above.) There is plenty of on-street parking, since this part of the road is off the main thoroughfare.
The owner, Cinia, is outgoing and friendly. She only speaks Spanish.
We went with Cinia's recommendations, ordering a plate of Mariscos Mixtos (Mixed Seafood) in salsa, as well as a plate of camarones al aljillo (shrimp in a garlic sauce).
The four of us weren’t too hungry, so splitting the two meals was plenty of food.
We were quite pleased with our dishes.
There was ample succulent seafood, including shrimp, mussels, fish, squid, and yes, pulpo (remember, “pulpo” means octopus).
The seafood was a little greasy though. You didn't notice the grease so much as you ate it. It just tasted delicious. But afterwards, our bodies let us know we had consumed more grease than we were used to eating .
The side dishes were the usual, meaning french fries and Patacones (fried plantains). As usual, there were no vegetables offered, other than steamed Yucca, a starchy root vegetable, and a tiny garden salad of iceberg lettuce, tomato, and onion. However, the presentation was pretty nice, for a budget Panamanian restaurant.
Click on a photo below to enlarge
It is open 7 days a week from noon to 11pm.
El Pulpo seems like a good quality, economical place to eat lunch or dinner. Overall, our family enjoyed our dinner and chatting with the owner, Cinia.
We would definitely recommend this restaurant as a good addition to Puerto Armuelles’ still rather limited list of dining out options.
Thanks for the tip Victor!
Victor is an ex-pat who lives in the Corazon de Jesus neighborhood.
If you decide to give El Pulpo a try, please let us know what you think.
We’d like to know if it is consistently good, how the service is, etc….
Thanks!
Betsy will be adding this to our site's list of Puerto Armuelles dining options.
People carefully consider how to greet the new year here.
My guess is that many Panamanians, and others around the world, will greet the Year on the dance floor with a glass in hand. Not a bad way start to 2016.
I love to travel. Luckily for me, my family and I will be in an airport at midnight on New Year's Eve.
Read about the many New Year customs and traditions in Panama here. Many are quite unusual, like the one in the photo above.
New Year’s Eve is an big event in Panama.
Everyone is in great spirits and ready to party!
If you will be in Panama for New Year's Eve, you also need to plan ahead.
Often for big holidays you can not buy alcohol in grocery stores for a specific period of time. I'm not sure that will happen on New Year's eve, but it is worth asking about before New Year's Eve. But you can always go to a bar, of course.
My family and I used to consider a trip to Panama City a truly painful experience. At best a necessary evil to get extra pages in a passport or catch a flight.
Now our whole family looks forward to luxuriating in Panama City for a few days. We still wouldn’t like to live there, but now we enjoy, instead of lament, our visits.
In some ways, the changes to David, the 2nd largest town in Panama, have been even more
Conway is only 1 of the many new & compelling stores in Daviddramatic. Whereas Panama City used to be a chaotic "jumble", a big town struggling to become a city, David, as recently as eight years ago, was a sleepy place.
Its feed and fertilizer warehouses catered to the numerous cattle ranches in the surrounding hillside communities. Since then David has exploded in population, buildings, services, and ex-pat residency. In short, David has grown in every direction but up. Its limitation on going up is only because of its soil. For seismic safety, buildings in David cannot rise above 8 to 10 stories.
Here in Puerto Armuelles, we consider David to be a "not too distant" place to do our major shopping trips. You can buy pretty much anything you want in David, which was not true even 4 years ago. But now you can buy anything from an Apple computer to a tea kettle in David. While you can buy all of life’s necessities in Puerto, for luxury items a trip to David is still needed. About once a month we load our two kids into the car to do a "Costco" style shopping trip at "Price Smart", the Panamanian equivalent of a Costco. Of course, there are Panamanians, and expats, who think nothing of hopping in the car to drive to David every day, either to shop, or to conduct other business. If an hour and fifteen minutes in the car doesn't bother you, David is that close, or that far.
For the past year, construction crews have been working double shifts in an effort to complete the 2 lane expansion of the existing 2 lane highway connecting Puerto Armuelles to Paso Canoas at the InterAmericana Highway. (The InterAmericana runs the length of Central America, ending at Panama City)
With four functional lanes for travel, the drive between Puerto Armuelles and David should drop to just under an hour. This would place Puerto Armuelles within the radius of being considered a "bedroom community" to David. This new proximity to David is at least part of the reason for the presence of a whole new wave of investors and residents, both Panamanian and expat, seen driving around the town's various neighborhoods. Many are buying properties that are considered to be undervalued.
To see Puerto's values, browse our listings here.
Currently there are at least 4 expat homes being constructed or remodeled on beach front lots in Puerto Armuelles. Though the local Panamanian builders here are still best known for low wages, and not for high quality, there are several builders, both Panamanian and expat, who consistently provide good quality at a reasonable price.
We even have one builder, Luis Miranda, who has a whole portfolio of homes he has built in Boquete's famed Valle Escondido gated community. Luis is currently in Puerto Armuelles doing an extensive remodel of an existing waterfront home. The current expat community now includes those who can afford to build more luxurious homes than we have seen in the past.
Currently, the only decent hotel in Puerto is the expat-owned Tsunami Inn; located in the beach neighborhood of San Vicente. It is where most international visitors spend the night. Owners, Scott and Bob (not a gay couple) are super friendly, relaxed, and give a good impression of what a low stress tropical lifestyle is like. They have recently completed two new cabanas, bringing the total to six.
Meanwhile, just down the beach from the Tsunami Inn, expat entrepreneur Milton Hutto is also building a beachfront hotel. I not yet been able to speak with him, but it appears that he is remodeling an existing houses, as well as building a brand new section right at the edge of the beach. This project is also in the San Vicente neighborhood of Puerto.
Milton has alot of experience building in Panama, he is likely to create a successful new hotel. Both hotels, given the current surge in interest in Puerto Armuelles, will most likely be full for the entire high season of December through April.
were similarly valued, 8-15 years ago. You can find those same values today in Puerto Armuelles.
For those of us who long ago discovered Panama's only true beach town of Puerto Armuelles, we can only wonder why it took everyone so long to find it.
President Varela & First Lady On Induction Day
Juan Carlos Varela, 50, is from one of Panama's richest families. The family owns and operates the country's biggest liquor producer, Varela Hermanos S.A., which was established in 1908.
Varela graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1985 with a BA in industrial engineering.
He is married to the journalist Lorena Castillo and has three children.
Varela has been on the board of the family business since 1985 and was executive vice president of the company until 2008.
He started in politics in the 1990s. In 1994 he become chief of political campaigns for the Panama's 2nd largest party, the Panameñista Party. In 2006 he became the head of the party and then the Panameñista Party's 2009 presidential candidate.
In a bold move, Varela withdrew his 2009 presidential candidacy to throw his conservative Panamenista party's support behind Martinelli. He did this in exchange for becoming Martinelli's vice-presidential candidate. It was a successful move. On May 3, 2009, was sworn in as Vice-President of Panama.
As Vice President, Varela was the architect of the government’s popular “100 for 70″ program. The program gives $100 monthly to Panamanians over age 70 who do not receive any other pension or retirement benefits.
But the political marriage didn't last. In 2011, Martinelli stripped Varela of his role as foreign minister for refusing to back a plan for a referendum to allow president's to serve consecutive terms. (Note: Panama law requires that a president cannot run for president again until 2 terms (10 years) have passed since he or she last held office.)
Since that rupture, Martinelli and Varela have been fierce critics of the other. Varela has accused Martinelli of many corruption charges including taking kickbacks for a government radar system contract with Italy's Finmeccanica.
It was one of the toughest-fought contests since democracy was restored two decades ago.
Election day began with opinion polls indicating a tight race among the top 3 candidates. However, not one of the pollsters had Varela in the lead. Most gave a slight edge to Arias.
Martinelli was extremely eager for his protege and political newcomer, Jose Domingo Arias to win.
Many people think Martinelli's endorsement of Arias was really a badly disguised ploy to retain his political power.
Although, blood relatives of the president are banned from running for the top 2 offices, Martinelli's wife, Marta Linares, ran as Arias's vice presidential candidate. Technically legal, since Linares is not a blood relative; but not surprisingly, there were many cries of illegality.
In addition, sitting presidents are banned from campaigning for a presidential candidate. Martinelli defied this injunction and campaigned for Arias furiously throughout the country.
Varela was a surprise upset.
Varela won the presidency with 39 percent of the vote, compared to 32 percent for outgoing President Martinell's choice, Jose Arias. Juan Carlos Navarro, a former mayor of the capital, got 28 percent to finish third in the seven-candidate field.
The win is being interpreted as a rebuke to Martinelli.
Verela was sworn into office for a 5 year term on July 1, 2014.
Martinelli's initial reaction was, "May God help us". Since then he has calmed down and mouthed all the usual and expected political niceties.
While Varela won the presidency, his party did not win the legislature.
He takes office with a legislative minority. This will make it harder for him to pass free-market legislation. He will have to negotiate with the centrist and center-left politicians that currently dominate Panama's Congress.
Varela promised upon taking office to take immediately steps to reduce violence and control the price of food.
He did both. On Induction Day, he signed into law price controls on 22 common food items such as rice, milk, and beef. The controls start today, July 7th, and last for 6 months.
He has also granted a one month amnesty for gang members to allow them to turn in their weapons.
During his campaign Varela has vowed to continue Martinelli's drive to improve Panama's infrastructure. Continual progress in improving infrastructure was the most cited reason for President Martinelli's 60 percent approval rating.
But he also vowed to boost transparency. It is a common perception that much of the $15 billion spent on infrastructure upgrades was lost to corruption and poor planning.
Of course he has also committed to maintaining the country's record-low unemployment rate and strong economic growth. Growth that has averaged over 8 percent in recent years.
His biggest theme is his pledge to govern with honesty and transparency.
I hope it is true and I wish him luck.
