Las Lajas

You know, I’ve been laying awake a couple of nights, wondering why I’ve been resisting writing this blog. My last entry was 3 months ago, and I’m shocked that much time has passed. I’m not going to apologize; I’ve done that before. I’m not going to make excuses, as we all know “excuses are like assholes; everybody’s got one”. (sorry for you profane-challenged readers! That quote is not original to me!). But I do have reasons. Part of what kept me laying awake at night was finding a way to wrap those reasons in witty, thoughtful prose that would justify my absence in the blogosphere.

But it all boils down to just one thing: I’ve been busy! Life is busy here. I wake up at 5:30 am and go to bed ultra tired at 9 or 10 pm. As my favorite L.A. morning radio jocks, Mark and Brian, (now retired, themselves) used to say “but it’s a good kind of tired”. It’s a wonderful kind of tired. Because everything I do here that makes me tired is of my own choosing. My freedom to be bored to death or ultra busy is limitless (health issues notwithstanding…of course…).

So enough of the absence bullshit. It is what it is.

For the next couple of semi-brief posts, I’m going to show you some travel pics. Hubby and I took a week to check out three areas of Panama we’ve been wanting to see. We moved in an easterly direction as we voyaged to Las Lajas, Coronado, and El Valle.

First stop: Las Lajas Beach Resort. A Pacific-side beach resort in a tiny little coastal town about a two hour drive from Boquete and due east of David. A couple of guys who own a pizza shop in Northern California built a two-story hotel on a section of beach that is flat, walkable and endless. This is really the only visitable (for a gringo like me) habitation in this town. Here’s a pic:

Las Lajas Hotel viewed from the edge of the beach.

The Bar and Restaurant is the lower right-hand portion of the building. The food was pretty darn good and the service was excellent. Don’t like the salty ocean? Enjoy the pool. Here’s another shot of the rest of the hotel:

The left hand side of the hotel, showing rooms in the single-story section of the property.

All of that is extremely secondary, though, to the real reason we came here:

Toes on the Beach

Vegetation time. Sit and do nothing time. Have this be my view for two days. If I looked left, this is what I saw:

Endless, endless beach to the left.

The same thing, looking to the right towards David.

Yup, my friends, this is what I came for. To do nothing but stare and be hypnotized by the endless waves, crashing to the sand. My biggest effort of the morning was to walk back to our hotel room to retrieve my book for some serious guilty-pleasure reading:

“Will someone please peel me some grapes?”

The interior of the hotel is not much to speak of . I didn’t take any shots because, quite frankly, it didn’t impress me. Suffice it to say, the rooms are okay, they’re fine. They’re clean and we weren’t there for the rooms anyway. Our room had two doubles and a twin. You can tell the rooms were built to accomodate families. In addition, a huge plastic painted map of the world hung across the room from us, so I stared at that in the morning as I was waking up, re-familiarizing myself with my place in the world.

I meandered outside, drawn back to the beach, this time with camera in hand. Here are a few shots I grabbed:

A blue ocean that has NOT been photoshopped.

I never saw a morning such as this

We begin a morning stroll up the beach.

The rest of that day was pretty much like the first. We rented a couple of beach mats for $5 each, but without fins, it’s pretty hard to generate enough speed to catch any waves. After that effort, it was time for a nap and dinner. Like I said, this was two days of vegetating!

The next morning, I caught this shot from the hotel looking out at the beach. When we say the hotel is right on the beach, it’s RIGHT ON THE BEACH!

Saying goodbye.

So, we said our goodbyes to Las Lajas and headed four hours east to Coronado. That will be the next post. Which will be much sooner than the time from the last one, I assure you!

Until then, safe travels!