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The owners of our little 6 unit condo complex, who haven't had a family vacation in 7 years, picked this week to take a vacation to Panama. And somehow I became the property manager in their absence. I guess that after having been a tennant for three weeks, that helped to bolster my qualifications.
To make a long story short, the place is still standing. Having been a wilderness guide for lots of years helped quite a lot in certain moments (when there was an iguana in the kitchen). There wasn't quite anything that could've prepared me for the array of plumbing goodies that we're to crop up during the week. I did wear a path to the hardware store for miscellaneous plumbing parts and for anyone else who need to know what drain cleaner is in Spanish: destapa-caños.
Being a property manager meant also that we played concierge; and as nobody else seemed able to speak any Spanish, I also became the interpreter for all sorts of housekeeping and taxi transactions. Great opportunities to practice spanish.
It was also discovered this week that I have this really great Internet phone that can call the US for $0.02 / minute so I also spent the week playing operator for lots of folks looking to call loved ones. Usually I ended up with a cold beverage in return for use of the phone, but much of my tiny allotment of time after the kids go to bed at night was spent socially consuming the cold beverage with whomever was calling. I realized this week that everyone else here is very much on "vacation"; which means long conversations, late nights, swimming past midnight, pina coladas... OK, so you get the picture.
To my surprise this week, I learned that on occasion the water completely fails to run. And after a few hours, voila, it's back. This is due to a sorely lacking infrastructure and gross overdevelopment. Repeat after me, "Not sustainable".
All in all, the other guests were all very patient with me and happy throughout. However, I was quite delighted to retire from my property management gig once the owners returned.
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