Monday, 3 August. We have two projects going on at the same time and the contrasts between them are interesting. In Discovery Bay we are building our house. The "general contractor" is a dropped-out pot smoking gringo who, with his crew of 5-6 Indians has been building houses here for nearly 20 years. The work they do is great - all native hard wood, incredibly over-built, solid and beautiful. Originally, he and his crew would build a house (typically ~1600 s.f.) in 180 working days. Now, that time varied some as Panama has more holidays than any other country in the world and then there are the "I drank too much on Sunday" holidays as well. Since we contracted to have our house built, he has started 6 more houses in the same area. And two years later, out house is still not done, but it is close. With so many projects going on, he has lost control of the processes at times and scheduling has fallen apart. Fortunately we are nearly done and most of what is left is subcontractors. But that too is a problem. The plumber (also the tile layer) promised to come each day last week before finally showing up on Friday. We, of course, were there waiting for him each day. The plumbing job looks good and what he has done for tile so far looks beautiful. If he will only show up, he could finish in 3-4 days. Other subs have not been so good. The "native" (he is Black, not Indian) who did the initial electrical was terrible and did very poor work. The gringo that they hired to replace him was not much better - perhaps competent when sober, he unfortunately never was. I redid the entire job myself. Augustino, the finish carpenter, is an artist. His work is gorgeous, he shows up when he says he will, and his work will truly make our house a showplace. We will be delighted when we move into our house, but 2 years and 100% over-run on costs is a bit hard to take. In contrast, we just contracted to build a dock on our island. We are dealing with two natives (both Black) who speak very good English and have an incredible work ethic. To build the dock required cutting out mangroves from about 40' of shore line. They were maybe 15-20' deep, so maybe 800 s.f. We agreed on a price of $40 to cut the mangroves. Samuel would do that while Rollando went to see about getting the posts. Typical of dealings down here, I had to give him $20 for gas to go by panga (native dug out canoe with outboard motor) to see about the poles. I cannot get the name of them straight, something like "muralli", but with more syllables, but they are "guaranteed to last 100 years in the water." We'll see. We first talked about the project on Tuesday. By Wednesday noon, the mangroves were all cut. Samuel brought his 4 sons (they were supposed to be in school, but it was raining that morning) and even the 8 year old was wielding a machete like a pro. By Friday, Rollando had a contract on the posts, $7.50 each and he needed 32. Please give the land owner a little in advance ($100) and the rest when all delivered. Oh, and $20 more dollars for gas to bring them to the island. By Sunday, 10 posts were not only cut and delivered, but set in the ground, nicely squared and leveled. By the next Friday (the time delay mostly due to my absence) we had a contract with a cutter for the nisporo for the dock itself - at a price, delivered, that was 2/3 what I was paying for the house, not delivered. Yes, a little advance ($100 of 1000) to buy gas and oil for the chain saw, nothing else until delivered. It will take less than a week for 1100 b.f. milled by chainsaw up in the jungle and carried out then delivered by boat (probably more $$ for gas). The stuff is so heavy, it sinks in water and so hard you need to drill it before you can drive a nail, but the insects can't chew it either. For the labor to build the dock, we agreed on a fixed price of $1000, $100 up front, the rest when done (maybe a bit more when all the posts are set) All up cost for 80' of dock ('L' 40 x 40) less than $2500 and it should be done in less than a month at the rate they are going. Oh, and in contrast to the two above examples, there is the true gringo way of doing things. Red Frog Beach development collected $250,000-500,000 per lot from many gringos for villas at "pre-construction" prices and then quietly folded and disappeared into the night.