February 2, 2009 Posting from San Juan, Puerto Rico

Well, after a long day of travel, we are comfortably ensconced in our Best Western Hotel right here on the San Juan Airport grounds. After a night of minimal sleep ( meaning it was almost not worth the chore of making the bed this morning), we got up early at 2:30 to arrive at MFR airport for a 5 AM flight to PDX, which was very foggy; some minor flight delay. We weren't expecting that. MFR yes, PDX no. Despite that, today's flights were how flying should be. No delays, short connections, luggage arrived. Prayers paid off. Thanks to the Skillman's for picking up our car at the Airport.

It is so nice to be back in a warm, muggy climate. The coat came off right off the jetway!

We had some nice farewell phone calls in the past few days, for which we are very grateful. Our love and gratitude extend to you across the ocean.

We are 4 hours ahead of Medford here, only 7 PM Pacific time, but we are pooped after the craziness of the past 48 hours. We're going to bed! Tomorrow off to BVI. We fly a Cessna about 50 min to Tortola, then a cab to the boat! Yeah! We will spend the rest of the day inventorying the boat, meeting our flotilla captain, then off to the market for provisioning. Maybe the chandlery for pilot books, charts, etc.

I will email everyone ( and maybe post or link on the blog) our new email address on the boat, as well as our new blog site. On the boat we will have a satellite-based email and Weblog system called Skymate. This blog site here may not function well with our new communication system. We'll have to wait and see.

Lastly, I have uploaded a few MMC photos from the past 2 months. These are wonderful employees and endearing friends.

Charlie's Angels: Jennifer, Terri and Sarah.


Examining the new 4th flloor. My MA's are envious.

Scott's treasure chest. I could go for a piece of cake right now.

Make sure someone is continuing the beatings. I don't want anyone getting grumpy.

Keith

3 days left in count-down to sun, heat, water

Hello again ! It has been 2 weeks of wonderfully relaxing time to sleep in, slow down and renew friendships. Once again, as we return home from spending time abroad, no matter how exotic, fascinating or enlightening the travel has been, we always realize quickly how much we love living in our Rogue Valley home (at least after Spring break and before Thanksgiving). Sure, there are aspects of life here which are not our favorite. Who likes fog, 20 degree temperatures and scraping windshields, but we consider them a small price to pay for living here in this beautiful area. And while we're at it, we love the USA! This land has been blessed. Since arriving home we've had nice times enjoying a good meal with you at Cafe Dejeuner, Macaroni's or 38 on Central, or attending church together, or at target practice or Liam Neeson movies, or resurrecting dusty, old carpentry skills, or just visiting and a dozen other things. Our tans have faded, but what a small price to pay. Besides, we're getting 'em back again real soon. It has been nice to experience the more normal ( some would say mundane) rituals of being at home...think picking up at the Cleaners, buying milk, paying bills, watching the news on TV, Home Teaching, visiting the barber, buying stamps and sending UPS, etc. But there is a measure of comfort and familiarity in these tasks which we all crave at times, especially without the pressures of reporting to work at 8 o'clock every morning. Besides, by next week our biggest task will be whether to catch fish or look for lobster or scallops for dinner.

We want to introduce some very special people to everyone. Sadly, these members of our family were unable to join us on our Panama adventures due to job requirements, but we kept them in our hearts, and we want to highlight them here. Above are son Marc with Britni and Malia a year ago at Marc's graduation from the Northern Arizona Police Academy.

And below is our "special" son Chris, who graduated from Burger King Academy recently. We are so proud of him. He has now mastered Double Whoppers and is working hard on Fish Fillets.

We are "truly" proud of Chris and Malinda. They graduated last summer from St Louis University School of Medicine, and Chris is now an ER doc-in-training in Tucson.

This photo was from Disneyland last summer when all of our children and grandchildren reunited for a blessed week. What joy ! (and noise and mayhem). We can't wait to do it again. Here are Ella and Eli.

The debate is over. The election has been held. The votes are counted. The electoral votes have been tallied. It was a clean election with no evidence of voter fraud, pregnant chads, or bought votes. We ran a clean, honest, positive campaign. The concession speech has been given. It is now time for my acceptance speech. I proudly acknowledge that I do have the cutest and smartest grandchildren. Kathy has administered the official "Grandpa Oath of Office" (though she said it wrong and has to re-administer it to me during the Super Bowl).

Please meet Ella, Malia, Amalie, and Eli.

Amalie and Suede.

What can be said? Heaven looks like this.

Beautiful Britni, Marc, and the girls in Lithia Park last November.

Grandma Oregon, Ella Tucson.

Father Williams. I miss my Mom and my Dad. I think of you every day.

Kathy's Mom Jo at Cassandra's graduation from Phoenix High in 2007.

So that's some of the rest of The Fam. We love you and miss you. You make it hard to leave and easy to return.

Keith

We came home last night to find ourselves infested with bugs and geckos all over our kitchen. There is only one cure for this infestation. We are getting out of Dodge again in 2 weeks for warmer climes. Our Eastern Carib sailing adventure begins soon.

We came home late last night in sort of the same fashion we left...flying by the seat of our pants, using alternate means of transport after our SLC-to-Medford flight was cancelled by Delta due to terrible, foggy weather here in Oregon. We caught a last minute flight to Eugene, where we rented a Chevy Cobalt for the bleary-eyed drive home. We were exhausted, and Kathy and I alternated drivers 3 times for the usually brief 2.5 hour drive home. We sank into bed at 3 AM, not even bothering to exterminate the kitchen. We were just grateful to Stacy and Mark for getting our home thermostat replaced so we had heat. We cranked on every spaceheater and our pellet stove along with the furnace, and ratcheted up our electric blankets, and still we are cold. To think, just 36 hours ago we were complaining that the AC in Panama City was inadequate ! That all being said, we are so grateful to be safe back home, sans luggage, and having this time to regroup, rebalance, renew. Today we get to shop for food, pay quarterly taxes ( did you know that Panamanians pay only 5% taxes), visit the hairdresser, return our rental car to the airport, run on the treadmill, blog, visit the bank to plead for more money (still waiting for Obama's national vacation coverage), and maybe start to watch some of The Office or The Unit episodes we missed.


The lessons of Panama are still distilling in our minds, and I think we will maybe present a few final thoughts about this recent 6 week hide-and-seek over the next few days, but for now we are just basking in the pleasure of warm water memories, new tan lines, better relationships, and the reward of living life less hurried and more relaxed.

Peter and Dad enjoying a last moment on the beach just before we returned our rental car. Here at Veracruz just west of the Canal next to the runway of what used to be Howard AFB (birthplace of John McCain). Isla Taboga ( see prior post) in the background.

Our trusty steed for the past 4 weeks. Turns out that somewhere along the way we managed to acquire a scrape on our driver's side fender, which we discovered on the last day and added to the unanticipated cost of the trip.

Our next to last day in Panama. We have never, ever done this on any of our past trips, but we decided to try an all-inclusive resort for a day at Playa Blanca west of Coronado. It was listed by the NYTimes as one of the 50 top vacation spots in the world this year. The NYTimes has just lost some more credibility for me. This was the least favorite place of any of our lodging locations of the past 6 weeks...small, conventional hotel room next to construction site, very mediocre food, impersonal, crowded beaches, too many people, no waves. Just nothing special, for a lot of money. But it was WARM, and I'm pretty sure we won't find any casetas con techo de paja back home in Medford.

We found iguanas here. Kathy's happy. Also, watch out for the dreaded garden hose snake.

We found fresh water turtles here. Kathy is very happy. They like cinnamon granola bars.

This was the view from the beach of the Las Olas hotel at Playa Barqueta. This was an impulse stay. We left Boquete after just 4 of the planned 5 nights there. I loved Boquete, but Kathy was missing the warmth of the beach ( actually we all were). So we made on-line reservations and drove southwest an hour or so, less than an hour from the Costa Rica "frontier". This turned out to be the very best beach of our entire stay in Panama. Very BIG waves, great body surfing. Very broad beach, no people( we were the only people for at least 1/2 mile). Clean sand, very warm water. Peculiar absence of any shells. I loved it, and in retrospect would have enjoyed staying here longer. The hotel is pretty average, but acceptable.

The market place in Boquete. I enjoyed photo-graphing the locals.

There were cops everywhere throughout Panama. They use a lot of radar on the roads. We were pulled over several times, sometimes for document checks, sometimes for who knows what. Only once did I deserve it. One cop was going to cite me for going 10 KM over the posted limit of 100kmh, but he lost heart after 5 minutes. The ticket form is very long, and he knew I was a tourist on my way out of the country. And it became apparent to him that I was willing to let him write the ticket without reaching into my wallet on the spot. I never saw a cop follow anybody in their vehicle to stop them. They would just wave at you from the roadside to stop and you were expected to pull over. They all carried side-arms. Saw only 2-3 rifles or shotguns in the 6 weeks though. All generally nice and non-threatening. Almost none speak any English at all. Imagine that in Panama.

Our hotel in Boquete. I liked it a lot. Sat at 3700 feet elevation, cool, windy, lush, verdant. Some skeeters, rained one night. The light in Boquete was amazing. The colors were all so clear and intense. The south of France was always touted as having a special light, but I found the light here remarkable. Made me want to take up painting. Each cabana had two levels. Our room was on the bottom level, and had a bedroom, small kitchen and sitting room. Rio Caldera ran right behind it. It sat in Valle Arcoiris (valley of rainbows). It deserved its name.

From our ATV adventure. This view on top of Volcancito overlooking the town of Boquete. Very beautiful spot, but intensely windy. Our ATV guide took the picture from atop his ATV...hence the movement artifact in the photo.

Another picture of Boquete from same vantage point. Looking north. Highway to David runs to the south. Our ATV adventure was one of my top 2-3 events of the 6 week trip. The mountains were just beautiful. The light was phenomenal. It was so warm. The wind was wonderful. After hiking 5000' up Volcan Baru 2 days before, climbing 2000+ feet without walking was nice. The scenery was just remarkable, despite Peter's sarcasm.

Coffee everywhere here. Juan Valdez is just smelling the beans, Bishop.

Keith

Extreme Zip-Lining & ATV-ing in Boquete!! Kathy and Petter Post..

**Before Peter writes this post, Kathy needs to say one thing: "Yes, even though we were led today to our ATV adventure by wild, teenage, non-English-speaking, testosterone-infested boys...we somehow came out alive to tell the story! We were picked up at our hotel by three teenagers and taken through town to the location to begin our tour. On the way my driver (of course) almost hit a car and a dog going 40 miles/hr and still managed to whistle at all the "chicks"! Never-the less, WE HAD A BLAST!

**Alright, I suppose due to complaints from my brothers, sisters, friends and my own parents that it was time I contributed a small part to this blog. I see that mother here has already said her bit so, less typing for me. However, before I start I wanna let Chey and the rest of the Skillman family know that I shall be calling "ATV-ing" by its proper name of "quading". Furthermore, due to user technicalities, these pictures are slightly out of order, and the pictures of us Quading happened today, whereas the Zip-Lining stuff happened yesterday.

Here is a small look at the scenery that we drove through. This is Mom. (Just some heads up, between my mom's and dad's camera, about 40 pictures were used on scenery. No need to worry though, I didn't put all of them on. Not like scenery is a bad thing but...)

Here is a small peek at the two handsome men on the journey. Well one handsome man at any rate...

And this is... some more scenery!


This is home-sweet-home of some of the Indians of Boquete. I don't mean to be rude but I am rather happy I live in America...

This is an Indian woman and her dog, walking up a very, very long hill back to home-sweet-home.

*GASP*, more scenery.

Here is Mom posing after she almost made it up a particularly steep hill. In her defense, it was a tough one to go up, with a nice 100 foot drop on one side.

Aw, how cute... We were quadding through extensive coffee plantations.


Yeah, that is me inside that fatty helmet.


Me, I thought this one was a pretty cool photo.

Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of the ending journey, but we did get one of this tasty French restaurant. Maybe Chris D could get some of the recipes for his French Bistro idea! Kathy had awesome eggplant crepes and trout almondine followed by a chocolate banana crepe for dessert.

After quading, mom and dad decided to walk 2 miles home and go through the local Fair and I had no choice but to follow. No biggy though, I found a fricken sweet beanie that i could walk around BYU with (Ha)... Oh, by the way did I mention that I got accepted to BYU-I?

Dad tried his luck at the local "Toss the Ring Around the Booze Bottle" game. 25 cents buys you 5 tosses. He said that he was trying to get a ring around the Ginger Ale bottle. Let's put it this way, after playing we had to walk home. Honest, Bishop Gillespie.


This was the road and bridge that was washed out by the recent flood. It led up to our hotel, so we had to take another road to get to our place when we first came here.


This poor hotel was COMPLETELY washed out by the flood. It had just opened brand new a month before the flood. It was just across from the bridge in the previous picture.


This was the beginning of our trip to go Zip-lining. This zip-line was one of the largest in South America. It had about 12 lines, some of which were 400 meters long ( that's 1300 feet for you metrically impaired)and drops of about 200 feet. The platforms were also slatted so that you could actually see how high up in the trees we were! The scenery was great, but the ride up in the truck was VERY bumpy!

This is a picture of the truck that we rode in. There were about 20 of us. The truck was kinda cool. It had been altered to go up steep, 50-60 degree, rough terrain hills, and pulled out on the side for people to step down when they got off.



Here was were our camp/lodge was to get geared -up. We were way-the-heck up on some very high mountain!




WOAH! Mom's sideways!



There's me and my dad with a group of some pretty chill Dutch guys on holiday.


This is the first wire we went on and we were unable to get any pictures after that. It was just too intense!

It was a fun trip and we passed the course, or something, because we all got awarded certificates with the names of Peter Williams, Kathy Williams, and Keetl Williams.

This is a Petter post!
The next post will be written by Keetl =].