Playing...

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime! For the first 18-years of life…and a few more counting college the summer is conditioned as playtime. It’s the everlasting weekend! It’s all about good times, adventures and friends. It’s the time for family vacation! It’s all about having fun! As a kid it’s a time for freedom! This is when we got to do the things that interested us. Looking back it is the time I remember most about all of those early  years of life!

Part of our motivation for coming to Bocas is to allow our kids to plant some of those memorable seeds into the timelines of their lives.

This is our second summer at this place and it provides a perfect home-base & playground. It’s right at the end of town so everything is in walking distance, but it’s far enough away from the "discotech’s", that we don’t see or hear any of the partying that goes on in the evening. In the last year a big dive school/hotel was completed a couple doors down and a couple nights per week they have fantastic live music that drifts into our windows: jazz or Caribbean-style funk. Our favorite grocery and utility stores are within a couple blocks. And since we are in town everyone stops by to say hello when they're running their errands. It’s great for the kids, because their friends will just show-up for a insta party!

The entire property is built on a dock sitting over the ocean so a watery playground is below us at all times. It is a regular occurrence for a flock of girls to be over here jumping off the homemade diving board, swimming, thrashing on floaties and the very very popular, fishing!

Xiara and her friend Alice are the hardcore fisherwomen. Xiara has always been into all things nature and Alice’s Dad is an avid fisherman. They live way outside of town in a big house in the jungle and have had a variety of pets such as a sloth, a squirrel, iguanas, bunnies, turtles, a fighting rooster, chickens, dogs and hedgehogs. And with the jungle as her backyard she is frequented by howler monkeys and boa constrictors! Alice and Xiara grab their supplies from a small shop across the street from us: fishing line, hooks & frozen chicken (for bait). They’ve caught parrot fish, snapper, rockfish, grunt, pilot fish and sting rays. Most are catch and release, but one was eaten!

 Cleaning the catch.

 Cooking the catch!

 Below is the poisonous rockfish.....no one got poked!

On one afternoon there were a couple rare jellyfish in the water. Malea and her friend Xia got stung by them. Xiara and Alice then decided to find and catch one! For about thirty minutes they paddled around on a floaty alligator under and around the property until the culprit was found and secured in a plastic pitcher: )

Until next time, peace out!