Family in country

Hello to all. I am currently typing from Cerro Punta...located on the West side of Panama in the mountains. It is deliciously cold here at only about 60 degrees F. Loving the cool weather which is normal at the 6000-7000 feet of altitude that we are at. See the map at the bottom for clarification.

Kevin's parents, Dennis and Ginna, are here visiting us for about two weeks. We already visited Santiago and the island where we live. We had a very productive time with them on the island - we did english class, story time, planting tree seeds, fixing up the house, building a semillero (a place to sprout seeds), hiking the isla, making insect repellent, and talking to the nieghbors.

Yesterday we traveled to David. We ate in a casino in David last night (best natchos in Panama and they even had a margarita!!! Yum!). We are headed back to David for the night (and another margarita if I am lucky...remember there is no refrigeration where we live so cold drinks are not normal and these may be my only margaritas of the year.) I think that we are all having a fairly good time, but I think that some of the bus ride was a little challenging for Dennis who can sometimes get carsick. Oh...I stand corrected by my editors...they (Dennis and Ginna) say that we are having a wonderfully good time.

Here in Cerra Punto we hiked in the cloud forest a bit and had close encounters with hummingbirds (photos...without touchups later!). We also lucked out and saw a resplendant quetzal....yup...all you birders are now jealous. For those of you who are not birders check this out:
No I did not take the photo...it was on the desktop here in the lodge where I am working. The lodge, Los Quetzales, is where we spent Thanksgiving last fall. See our Thanksgiving blog post from the 4th of December 2007 to see photos of the lodge and bueatiful Cerro Punta.

I would load some pictures for you...but I am working on a Mac and don't know how to do it without it taking forever. The (stupid) Mac only wants to let me download all the photos in my camera and I am not patient enough just now to learn how to do it better. I am still thinking of getting a mac someday...but until then their strange operating system is just frustrating. To all you Mac lovers...no I don't want directions...Macs are not that common here.

I just wanted to say that we are having a good time with family. We will be posting soon...probably some fun photos. We are hoping to put up some of our strange "what is happing in this photo?" kind of pictures and let you all guess what is going on (answers to be posted later). Something to look forward to for when I am not working on a mac.