Last week

And even this fantastic trip, which seemed to last for an eternity in the beginning, has reached its’ final week. It is with mixed feelings we’ll be heading home Wednesday, home is always home, Friskis is always Friskis and a well equipped supermarket is also high on the wish list, but swopping the whole day together for seeing my kids about two hours/day is something I don’t look forward to as much.

Anyhow, this final week we have another fantastic home exchange with a Canadian expat family. Their kids are 3 and 7 and Junia and Alma have looked forward to this stay basically the whole trip - all the toys!!! We spent the day with our hosts today, and had some great conversations and play time. This final week is more vacation-ish than before - playing in the pool, at the beach, just chilling... in a fully equipped home. Fantastic.

One of many toys... an electric Corvette

One afternoon we had a trampoline park basically just to ourselves. Exhausting!

More plastic ..... WTF

Further to my blog post about plastic rubbish some time ago, there is something that really surprised us the first time we grilled sausages. It was in Costa Rica and we used an outside grill. There was not a lot of light when I unpacked the sausages and put them on the grill. After a while, they looked very well and I served them with pride as they were not black as coal. When we cut them however, it appeared that there was still a plastic coating around them! Plastic around a sausages? Who comes up with that and why?  We assumed we bought the wrong sausages and carefully removed the plastic, which survived the barbecue heat surprisingly well. It was a little weird/ disgusting to eat them as you never know. 

When we bought some meat a few weeks later in Panama, we had already forgotten the plastic and just bought some good looking sausages. Only after frying them in a pan, we noticed that they were covered in plastic as well. This time, the plastic was difficult to removed so we threw most of it away. What a waste!!

When we bought some sausages a few days ago, we found out that that almost all sausages are covered in plastic. Just some very cheap American hotdogs come without. So before we started frying them, we carefully removed the plastic after figuring out how best to do that (google/ YouTube among others). 

No comments ....;-))

All the plastic waste...

Yes!! Hutspot, also in the tropics 😀. 

The one that is challenging her bigger sisters who eats most sausages. 

When we buy candy, we avoid wrapped candy in a bag as it is just unnecessary plastic waste. Unfortunately that is exactly the type of candy you find a lot in CR and Panama. It probably has something to do with the low income (less money to spend so therefore buy smaller portions). The result is candy wraps everywhere. Completely unnecessary!!

On a more positive note, the sausages score for this evening. Alma 2, Kiara 2,  Junia 1 1/2, Anna 1 and justus 1/2.  This evening, I found 1/2 a sausage under Alma’s chair so I believe she is cheating....

And no, we are not big meat consumers as we rarely eat meat so we have that environmental challenge covered very well. 

Panama City 2nd visit

Our second to last week (where did time fly?) was spent in Panama City. A capital the size of Stockholm, with an old town, waterfront (no swimming though - too polluted) and lots of skyscrapers. 

Here we spent our time hiking (great rainforest parque metropolitana), eating (malls might be terribly boring but they have good food courts) and also enjoyed the good biodiversity museum. Our favourite animal is now the ground sloth, 6 m high when standing. Unfortunately it was extinct some 10 000 year back. 

Half the week we stayed at the Causeway, close to some good activities and with a fantastic view. We had an armadillo living across the road and a sloth a few 100 m away, and the old town was about 6 dollars/ 10 min away with a taxi. As we also would like to experience the city pulse we moved in to the Trump tower the few last nights. Anything can be found with Airbnb... Apparently the Donald sold the tower, so we were luckily not supporting him. There the girls were thrilled about the pool complex, and their mother about the variety of fika that could be purchased within walking distance.

View from our first place

Spot the sloth

Turning torso Panama style

View from the Trump tower (half way up)

El Valle

After Santa Fe, we went to El Valle and that little town, located in a crater of an old volcano, was yet again another amazingly beautiful place that we visited during this fantastic holiday. The drive up was an interesting one as the road up to the edge of the crater was like a go-carting track with many serpentine curves right through the jungle. Fortunately, none of us got car sick (this time.)

The Airbnb location had a pool and that was something we had all looked forward to as in Santa Fe, we had been without a shower for the entire the duration of our stay. Washing ourselves with warm (cooked on our stove) water from pots and pans was not our ideal way of having a holiday. That the water was a little cold didn't matter that much. 

Although Anna and I do like to hike it is not always easy to get the girls enthusiastic (which is logic when they are at this age). They do join when we promise them some kind of 'carrot', whether it is a nice waterfall to swim in, an Oreo cookie (Junia) or a salty cheese snack (Alma) in advance. So we usually have those cookies and snacks on stock, at least as long as Anna and I haven't finished them the night before. 

El Valle was a great place for hiking. One of the greatest hikes we did this holiday was a hike to the edge of the crater. What started as a short 10 min stroll to a waterfall ended up to be a 90 min hardcore hike upwards. Junia managed to get up to the top all by her own, which was truly impressive! Kiara sat very comfortably in her mother's 'ergo baby' and Alma sat on my shoulders for the last part of the hike. The view from the top was stunning and even the girls seemed to enjoy it. It was a great family achievement and it made a nice picture moment. 

One happy family!

At times, it was rather windy and rainy. 

We didn't do much with Christmas this year. It was a little odd that we didn't have 'physical' presents but we all (some more than others...) realised that the biggest present we got was the fact that we were on an amazing journey with the five of us. Christmas Eve dinner was mashed potatoes, broccoli, frozen vegetable mix and supermarket grilled chicken. Not in accordance to a Hasselrot tradition but it truly was a feast for all of us.  

At Christmas Day, Junia decided that she wanted to spend Mormors Christmas gift money on a canopy zip lining experience. Although she didn't realize what she was up to, she was extremely enthusiastic. Anna and I were both impressed by her fearless attitude. When Junia finished, she admitted that she was little nervous when she saw how high it was, but she was looking forward to the Leksand sommarland day this summer where we promised her another zip line tour. 

We finished our El Valle visit by visiting a mud bath/ natural spa.