Nuri has been a blessing to us. She has been at Tranquilo Bay since January 2006. She is an amazing woman. Many of you that have visited us here have heard her story. She brought her daughter here with her when she first came to work for us. Several months later she used all of her salary to purchase a plane ticket for her brother to join her in Bocas. We were not sure we would have work for him, but we told her he could stay with her until he found work. Leo joined us our here in April 2006. He and Nuri were our kitchen for a long time. The two of them have since continued to do wonderful things for their family. They have paid for two sisters, a brother in law and two nieces to move to Bocas. They have opened a restaurant in Bocas: Sabor Caribeno. Leo left us in February to go work the family restaurant. Nuri is leaving today.

We have a new chef, Eric Troya, who joined us at the beginning of April taking over the kitchen. Eric has an immense amount of experience and is a great chef. He and Nuri worked the kitchen together for the past month in order to have a smooth transition.

This blog post has a photo of both Nuri and Leo with some of the Athleta crew. It was extremely unusual for them to come out of the kitchen to take a photo as they are both shy.

We have been extremely fortunate to have a great kitchen staff and we know with Eric we will continue to have many a great meal come out of our kitchen. Thanks to you all for your time and energy. We will miss those of you who are leaving or have left, yet we will stay in touch. Good luck with the new restaurant!

Nuri is our wonderful cook. She and her younger brother work together to make all the delicious food we have here at Tranquilo Bay. She is a remarkable person. We are so fortunate to have her here.

Enrique found this baby sloth on the jungle floor one day when he was doing some work around the property. He knows how much we like to photograph the wildlife which surrounds us so he brought it over to the main building on a stick so that we could see it and photograph it. This is closest that any of us had ever been to a baby sloth. We were very careful not to touch it - not because the sloth is dangerous, but because we didn’t want to get our smell on it. We do not know if another’s smell on the sloth would cause its mother to shun it or not, but we didn’t want to take any chances. After we took a few photos of this little guy, Enrique took him back to where he found him so that he could be reunited with his mother.

As you can tell in this first picture, Boty isn’t quite sure what to make of him. You can’t see it in this picture, however, Tres and Scott were both fascinated by the baby sloth. I think they thought they were almost on one of Diego’s adventures where they were helping the baby sloth return to his mother. Very few children have the opportunity to actually “participate” in one of those special adventures.

Okay, so James isn't family, but he sure seems like he is. He has been a friend of our since the boys got down here in 1999. He spends one half of his year in the USA or traveling and the other half of the year or so he spends here in Panama and traveling throughout Latin America. When he is in the country during high season he comes out to Tranquilo Bay to help us out. He is an excellent guide and a great friend.

Dionicio is one of our newer employees. He works on the grounds around Tranquilo Bay.

Mario has been with us for over four years now. He is from Salt Creek. He works on the grounds and helps out with the excursions from time to time.

This is July. He has been working with us for over four years. He works out on the grounds, goes with guests on nearby excursions.

Enrique has been with us for about 2 years. He and July are brothers. Enrique captains the boat for us and he also just completed WFR training.

Lucy has been with us since last November. She is also from Valle de Anton. She works in a variety of roles here at Tranquilo Bay.

This is Leydi. She is from Penenome in Valle de Anton here in Panama. She works in variety of capacities here at Tranquilo Bay. She has been with us for over a year and a half.

Yohany has been with us for several years now. She works in a variety of capacities. She is working her way into other roles as she learns more and has more experience.

Leo is from Columbia. He has been here at Tranquilo Bay for over two years now. He works in the kitchen with his sister Nuri as well as out and about around the grounds here.

Nuri runs the kitchen. She makes all of the delicious food which we eat here on a daily basis. She and her brother Leo work well together.

We had a couple of photographers come out to take photos this week. It was interesting to watch the process and watch how our employees took part in the photo shoot. They really enjoyed it. Here are a few photos Jim took of our crew having portraits taken by the photographers.





I have added a new page to the main website on our employees. It currently includes only their photos, but we will add some information on them in the near future. Here is the page: www.tranquilobay.com/employees.htm