When a friend suggested that we take an excursion to La Laguna we were chomping at the bit to take a ride. From our condo it was a 45 minute ride to a very secluded mountain lake. The place was described as Jurassic Park in Panama. We agreed that the place was really cool but not a place to entertain our visitors. It was a great place for a hike and quiet solitude. There were very few others there, possibly because of the need for four wheel drive to reach our destination. At the end of the day we agreed that the best part of it was the ride up there. On our return to civilization we stopped at a housing project nested on the mountainside which was too cool not to explore. Sante’ Fe was in the possibility of places we could want to live so we took a look. We could build a new home for slightly more than buying a condo on the beach. This turns out to be a no brainer for us. We have decided that we are beach, rather than mountain people. Enjoy the pictures of this adventure. We had magnificent views of the ocean from the mountain housing project where we looked at lots. It seems that everything about Panama leaves us awestruck and amazed. Every day is a new adventure even if we never leave the condo. The weather here is always interesting and never a disappointment, even when it rains. It is rainy season here now but we rarely have more than a few minutes of rain. Most days we have plenty of quality beach or pool time.
Check in before the hike
Where do we go from here
The trail along the lake
Beautiful Mountain views
Trail through the forest
Mountains across the lake
Unbelievable view across the lake
Trail near the lake
Why they call it Jurassic Park
Dense vegetation along the trail
Jen found the trail impassable
Do we continue through the water or turn back
Our view from Sante’ Fe. This is the road leading to the lots.
We have discovered many great places to enjoy a meal. Unfortunately we rarely take pictures of our experience. We are dedicated to doing better at this. One of the best meals is right here at our condo. The chef at La Terrazas Del Mar is truly amazing. We have been there several times without a bad experience. We do, however, find the fondas the most fun and always cheap. On Sunday we enjoyed the fonda outside our gate. We will return often as we can eat there cheaper than cooking at home.
Traditionnes De La Terra. The fonda outside our gateChulita, arroz, frioles, ensalada, and plaintain $5chickens wander in the dining room
We also have found a great place where the half pound burgers are less than $5. They have birds and a great patio dining area.
This guy chatted us up while we ate
His friend nearby was very pretty
The parrot hung out in a tree nearby
Our best find was one afternoon we took off for a beach lunch. The lobster was pricey, but well worth the trip. It rained while we enjoyed a special lunch under a bohio.
Jen had a lobster split and steamed in garlic butter.
When we are not eating we enjoy our church and have volunteered to teach English to the local community. We have 4 students each and have just completed the 4th week of this awesome outreach. We both feel like we are not quite qualified for this, however it provides us a degree of satisfaction as we see the progression of these wonderful students. They are so anxious to learn and they are all learning to communicate with the many North Americans who live in this community. We are becoming active in the church and look forward to church on Sunday morning as well as Bible study. Our pastor is a great communicator and our knowledge of the Bible is growing. We both feel that Gods purpose for moving us here is buried in the details.
We are looking forward to a visit from friends in less than 2 weeks. We love to share our adventures, and hope that we can show them a great time.
For now we will say adios and leave you with a great picture of a recent sunrise (the feature picture). We cannot express enough how awesome the weather is here. As we wrap up this post we are sitting on our balcony watching a storm come across the horizon.
Recent world events spark conversations daily about how safe it is to live in a developing country. Yesterday a gunman walked into a gaming event in the United States and killed participants before turning the gun on himself. Our dinner conversation last night was interesting. Does this happen here in Panama and we just don’t know it? Are these events isolated to the United States? The short answer is that this is a problem worldwide. We have done research on the safety of life in Panama and have concluded that we have to be diligent in protecting ourselves. We do not live in a vacuum ignoring local news, however it is much less “in our face” than media in the States. We live in a gated community with armed security. Our choice to live here is not as much about security as it is to reside in a place we love and enjoy. The majority of crime in Panama isn’t murder. It is crime of opportunity like petty theft (people helping themselves to something that is easy to take). The prevalent crime victim tends to be people who let their guard down or enter into transactions without due diligence. We do neither of these things and have had no problems. That being said, we don’t want to make this political at all, but believe that the news media often dramatizes stories to keep people watching the news. Our blog is another example of security in a developing country. Some of our viewers will notice that we changed our physical address to Panama today. Some may also have noticed over the past few days that when signing into our site there is a pop-up stating that we are not secure. This is false information. We compose on a secure network and pay for layers of security. We get weekly updates that show no security concerns. We pay big bucks to make sure that all of you can read our blog without concern for security. We have WordPress, VaultPress, and Jetpack investigating the source of our problem and will keep it safe or shut it down. Please let us know if you experience problems with our site.
That is about enough of things that keep people awake at night. It has been several weeks since our last post. We spent a couple of weeks at our home in the States and are returning to normal here in Panama. We love our friends and family, but frequent visits to Michigan are stressful. We have a great deal of interest in our home and are looking forward to turning it over to a new family soon. Our advice in this matter is that you should get your home sold before relocating. Remote care for real estate is difficult at best. On the flip side, we have stated on numerous occasions that you should not purchase property in Panama until you have been on the ground for a year. The real estate market in Panama is quite different from the U.S. and this time is necessary to gauge the market and find a location that suits your lifestyle. Rent for at least a year. We continue to stand by that advice.
Before returning to the States we had visitors at our church from Logos Hope. Logos Hope is a floating mission/bookstore to take Christianity throughout the world. Our visitors shared testimony and told of their experiences aboard the ship. Over 60 countries and nationalities are represented aboard the ship. Many people who live on the ship are from countries where they would be persecuted for sharing Christianity. We were intrigued by this awesome mission so upon our return to Panama we went to visit the ship. Due to persecution, taking pictures was difficult. We are sharing limited pictures from the ship.
Logos Hope
Logos Hope deck
Logos Hope Bridge
The ship left late last week to continue its mission. It will dock next in Guatemala. The wonderful people on board carry their message and bookstore to all parts of the world. Please check out their website.
Since our return to Panama we have been crazy busy. In addition to the Logos Hope adventure we spent a day (including the night before) in Panama City. The purpose of our stay was to complete the paperwork for our Cedula. A Cedula is the national identification carried by all Panamanian people. Most Panamanian people do not have driver’s licenses so this is the instrument that identifies a person and gives credibility for their ability to conduct business. A Cedula is not a requirement for our residency, however it will make it easier for us to conduct bank business and make major purchases. Our appointment was at 7 a.m. Our attorney had a solid agenda and got us finished very quickly by Panama standards. We highly recommend our attorney for all immigration needs. We are happy to provide her contact info to anyone by private correspondence. It has been our experience that her rates are very fair and her ability to get things done are without reproach. The process was entirely done at the Tribunal Electoral. The building was beautiful and well organized. We got our business started at 7 a.m. sharp, and waited the hour for paperwork processing, in a great cafeteria where we enjoyed an authentic Panamanian breakfast. Once the paperwork was complete we waited in line to have a photograph made and pay the fee. As a Jubilado there is a discount for the fee to get your Cedula. We took photographs below at the Tribunal Electoral.
Tribunal Electoral
Tribunal Electoral
Panama City Skyline
We made good use of our time in the city. We made reservations for future travel and paid for our tickets using our Jubilado discount. We also learned that one of the future trips planned would require a vaccination, so we made our way to the Minister of Health and got our vaccination. As residents, we got the vaccination at a substantial discount. The experience was interesting to say the least. No officials there spoke English and we had a few communication issues. Fortunately there are wonderful people all over who know a little English and they helped us be understood. We used our due diligence and read the container which contained the vaccine to be sure we were getting what was required for our travel. They then provided a document that states the time in which the vaccine remains effective. This is called a yellow card and we must always be able to provide it before travel. We have committed to keeping it safely stored with our Passports. We have heard that people have been denied entry to some countries without the proper documentation of vaccinations. We plan to travel extensively in our retirement. We are anxious to explore and Central America is an excellent place to explore from.
Waiting for our vaccination
We also got in a little retail therapy while in the city. We didn’t really buy much but we had a nice lunch at the mall. We have become big fans of Leonardo Pizza. Our lunch for two pictured below was just over $6 with our Jubilado discount.
lunch for two
Yesterday we traveled with friends to El Valle de Anton where we frequently enjoy the fresh vegetable market. We had purchased a huge clay pot for our balcony and wanted to fill it with tropical plants. Our visit was a great success. Our pot now has some colorful plantings that we will enjoy. We also picked up our usual supply of salad fixings.
Lovely tropical plants from El Valle.
Every day proves to be an adventure and it is the most relaxing, inexpensive, and beautiful place to spend retirement. We know that this life isn’t for everyone, but it suits us well. We continue to learn Spanish. The language barrier is only an inconvenience, and most of the time our English is enough to survive daily life. That being said we have volunteered to help teach English to Panamanian people in our community. The people here can get better jobs and prosper with the ability to speak English. We know that God had a plan when he moved us here and in some small way this may be our way to give back.
Since our last post we have been busy getting ready to return to Michigan. We reported that we had a hard lesson buying airline tickets from Copa Airlines. One sure thing is that everything moves along at a much slower pace in Panama. We got an e-mail message from Copa customer service letting us know how to resolve the issue involving our Pensionado discount. The resolution involved driving into the city to a special ticket counter. Terror ensued…driving into downtown is frightening. We made the journey on Monday and we were able to get our feature image along the way. More about the F&F Building (El Tornillo) later. After our arrival at Copa it took the agent almost 2 hours to get our refund credited. The lesson now is that we must never pay for tickets in advance. Once the reservation is made we have 24 hours to report to a ticket counter to make payment. The discount is 25%-40% depending on where you travel. The result for us was a refund of nearly $300. We are getting better about asking for our Pensionado discount. Check out our previous post from November of 2017 to see how to qualify for Pensionado Visa discounts. The discounts are available to us almost everywhere. The government requires participation here. We even save at least $2 on lunch at McDonalds. We usually don’t ask the Fonda’s or street vendors to give the discount. We did get the 50% discount at a movie on Sunday. Regular ticket price at the Cines Moderno is $5 per ticket. We got ours at $2.50 each. We saw Mission Impossible 6. The film was in English with Spanish subtitles. Had we gone at a different time we could have saw the version dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles. The snack bar did not offer any discounts, however the prices were not bad and we had a jumbo Caramel popcorn. It was hot and yummy, but a little sweet.
Cines Moderno
We also returned to the Nissan dealer to get our key-fob programmed. This is another thing that we expected to be only minutes, after all we had an appointment. It took over 2 hours. When getting settled in Panama one big lesson is that everything takes longer here. We are often amazed by how many people working it takes to get a job done or a customer taken care of. Often we find that there are more workers than customers in businesses. When we enter a department store, we almost always have an employee dedicated to make sure we have a pleasant shopping experience. They will help you find things carry your stuff or whatever you may need until you check out. Personally I like to be left alone while shopping, but this seems to work here. If the language barrier is too much to handle the “personal shopper” will go find someone for you with better English skills.
From the file that we will call small world comes a story that many will appreciate. Our home in Panama is in an area of many other Expats, and one of the first couples that we met relocated here from Grand Rapids, Michigan. They are about our age and we find that we enjoy many of the same things. It is nice to have Tom and Patty around because they have been here about 3 years and have been sharing some of their experiences with us. Last night the four of us enjoyed dinner at Las Bovedas Restaurante. It is a nice restaurant in the Ensenada community which lies just to the east of us.
Dinner at Las Bovedas
We wanted to share some pictures of the community where we are living before signing out. Some of you may have seen these on Face Book , but others may not be following on that social media platform. One of the things we learn as we go along is that everyone chooses to receive our blog in different platforms. Facebook this week has made changes in their rules of use. It is our understanding that we will no longer be able to make automatic blog posts to Facebook. We will try to personally share, but not sure how that may work. If you are a reader on Face Book, we encourage you to follow us on Twitter @PanamaGreg89 , Tumblr 2RetireInPanama? ,or Google+ 2RetireInPanama.com. The other option is to sign up to receive our blog by e-mail. We will try to connect other new services as they present themselves.
Entrance to the Beach Club
Small stream flowing beside the drive to the Marina
Marina Drive
Our building is the one on the left
Private Beach
Beach Club Pool
Wikipedia says the F&F Tower (previously known as the Revolution Tower) is an office tower in Panama City. In 2011 Emporis selected this building 7th of the 10 best skyscrapers based on architectural excellence for design and functionality. It is one of the most iconic buildings downtown and we were able to get this picture while on Calle 50 visiting the Copa Airlines ticket counter. The traffic doesn’t appear nearly as bad as it was. Any trip into the city involves traffic gridlock and parking challenges. Fortunately we were able to find a place to park a couple of blocks from our destination.
This is the screw building in downtown Panama City. The F&F Building. Previously known as Revolution Tower.
Thanks for continuing to follow along. We will try to manually post to our personal Face Book pages this time, but we’re not sure how it will work. Please Like and Share even if you haven’t in the past. We want to keep sharing, but will not pay to post on Face Book. We have it set up to go automatically to 2RetireInPanama Facebook page but most of you will not see it there unless you follow it. The best way to be sure to never miss a post is to scroll down and sign up to receive it by e-mail.
It was an easy decision for us to decide to retire in Panama. We continue to learn; and will continue to share. We just renewed our domain for 5 years and will continue to operate under the same address even though it is no longer a question for us. We realize that many of our readers are doing their own due diligence and are reading for information. We have shared our experience and it is mostly positive. For those following along who want to learn from our mistakes, we are trying to share those as well. We have done extensive research so, fortunately our mistakes have been few. We are currently on the ground in Panama. We have completed the visa process and are officially expats in Panama. Our visa is issued based on a pension we receive in the States. The Panamanian government gives us a ton of perks to get us here spending the pension. Please, feel free to check out our archive post from November 2017 Pensionado Visa Process to get a feel for the visa process and the benefits. We are finding that the whole thing is very much as we expected. Keep in mind that we used a very reputable attorney for this process. The government does frequently change things here so when things change we just have to accept it. We also have to learn how to take full advantage of our discounts. One example is Copa Airlines. They offer a 25% discount for expats with a pensionado visa. You have to purchase tickets in person at a Copa ticket counter or a sales office. This was one of our hard lessons. We purchased tickets on-line to return to Michigan in a few weeks and went to a sales office within 24 hours after purchase to receive the discount. Because we had already paid for our tickets, Copa would not give us the discount. Lesson learned…cost $320. We have responded to every legitimate question from our readers. If you are interested in a recommendation about anything we write about, send a message and we will do our best to accommodate.
We are hesitant to say we are fully moved from the States, as we still have our home there so officially we have two homes. The sale of our house in Michigan was solid and after almost six weeks our buyers financing failed. We lost the most valuable window of time to sell lake property in Michigan. With the home back on the market we are committed to making frequent trips back to keep things moving along. In Panama, we are renting. This takes the financial sting out of the fact that our Michigan house is still not sold. To put things in perspective for cost: we save enough on insurances in Panama to more than pay our rent. Really, nothing here costs more than in the States, except maybe electricity. Yesterday I bought 2 pairs of flip-flops and 3 t-shirts (practically all I wear here) for $9.58. Groceries cost about the same. We get a lot of fresh seafood and there is very few preservatives in anything. We find vegetables at the market straight from the farm. We get fruit (pineapples, melons, avocado, bananas, etc) at stands along the roadside. Our lifestyle/diet is better with very little effort.
Deliciosofresh catch of the dayfresh vegetables
We have started settling into the community here. Coronado Bible Church has provided us with relationships that extend far beyond the community of faith. We have been able to find English-speaking people to refer us to nearly everything one needs on a regular basis. Yesterday we had our car serviced at a shop owned by an American family. They did a great job. We have also attended a couple of meetings of English speaking business owners here on the Panamanian Riviera. These meetings are intended to help people like us find local vendors who make it easy for us to live here without speaking much Spanish. Even though it isn’t really a business, the folks in this group are showing a great interest in our blog. We are connecting with our Panama insurance agent later this afternoon. It appears by the quotes we saw, that we will be insuring our car (full coverage) and getting a renters policy for a total of under $600 per year.
We have been able to go into Panamanian businesses and successfully communicate. We bought a 2nd key for our car at the Nissan Dealership yesterday. Some things are not without challenge. The key had to go to a locksmith to be cut. We will have to return to the dealer to have the key-fob programmed. The dealership is over an hour from our house and we had to schedule an appointment for the programming. Our cable speed was 5mb and we were having a bit of trouble streaming U.S. TV programs. A visit to the cable company proved to be a challenge, but we were able to up our speed to 100mb for about $10 per month; problem solved.
CableOnda
In our last post we alluded to having to renew our drivers licenses. We bravely went to SERTRACEN (Panama’s DMV) to renew our drivers licenses. Without an interpreter, we had success. There was no English-speaking people in there, and we were able to make ourselves understood. Jen is much better at this than I, but we are both working on our Spanish daily.
Our visit to SertracenPanapass installedInstallation Center at Panapass
One other experience that merits mentioning is our trip to Panapass. Panapass is the toll tag for toll roads here. There are no attended lanes so it is important to have this for using the toll roads. We had to go to the place in order to have a new tag installed on the car. The story was the same there and we found nobody who spoke English. We got it done and set out for our commute home. The traffic had cranked up pretty bad and it was difficult to navigate out of the place. Using our navigation app Waze, we went right through a transportation hub. There were hundreds of buses, taxi cabs and people walking everywhere. Waze kept taking us around and around until we were nearly crazy. We finally figured out that with five lanes of traffic gridlock all going in the same direction we just needed to be in a different lane to get where we were going.
We find ourselves considering every day an adventure. Most days we set out to do far more than we actually accomplish. It is beautiful here so we love to spend time at the pool or beach. This time of year there are very few tourists here so we have the place to ourselves. Last night we enjoyed fresh lobster at the beach club Terazza Restaurante. There were only 3 other couples in the place. As we complete this post it lacks photos. We will gather some appropriate photos today and publish later this afternoon. We appreciate that all of you are checking back, commenting, and asking questions. We know it sounds like a broken record, but please share and like if you’re reading on Facebook. If you haven’t joined the blog, please do so to get e-mail notification when a new post is available. This also helps us recognize our audience. We will never spam you, and you can unsubscribe anytime.
Forgive us for our lack of frequent posts over the past few months. Our back story is well known by our Facebook friends, however we recognize that our blog followers may not know what has happened since returning to the States in April. Let us fill in some of the blanks…
Immediately upon our return to Michigan we began to interview Realtors for the marketing of our home there. We selected an agent and put our home on the market. In less than a week we had it under contract so we began the tedious process of selling nearly everything we owned to prepare for our move. It is amazing how much stuff one collects over the years. Mitzi Casey, our Panama agent, found us a rental that met all our needs and we signed a lease. With all these things in motion we learned after 6 weeks that our buyers financing failed. We were at the point of no return, so we moved forward with plans for our move. Our big fear was maintaining our home in Michigan from Panama. We contracted for lawn care, housekeeping, and security and moved to Panama at the end of June.
Everything that we brought to Panama is in these 5 checked and 2 carry on bags.
A move overseas has many moving parts. We elected to bring only what we could carry ourselves by air. Many people who we’ve met here, have moved using shipping containers, which is very expensive. We found it liberating to get rid of everything and start fresh. That being said, we did lease a place that was furnished. We also sold both cars and bought a car in Panama. We have possession of the vehicle, however the final transfer of title is not yet complete. We will post later about the vehicle purchase process. It is difficult, but doesn’t have to be. We bought a nice, used vehicle from an individual.
Our Car In Panama
Once we arrived in Panama, we had to complete our Visa process. This required about a half day with our attorney at Immigration. We had to surrender our temporary Visa cards, and have new cards issued. This is our permanent residency card which is issued for an indefinite time. The process is now complete. We have applied for our Cedula which is the ID carried by all people in Panama. The Cedula is recognized for doing business. It is easier to conduct bank business, make large purchases, and other things. Our drivers licenses will have to be renewed before the end of next month, because upon their original issue they were only good as long as our temporary Visas. We can do that right near where we live.
A lot of our research indicates that we can live on a very low budget in Panama. What we are finding is that with our Pensionado Visa we get great discounts and our costs for healthcare, insurances, and taxes are significantly less than in the States. We will be living on the Pacific Ocean in a great condo for around the same price as our home in Michigan.The difference is our home insurance is more than 1/3 the price, and we will not pay taxes for the next 10 years. After that the taxes are very low. In future posts we hope to start laying out direct comparisons for cost of living in Panama compared to the States.
We have spent the last several days getting settled into our condo in San Carlos. Our view of the ocean and marina over the golf course is incredible and our new place checked off all of our needs. It is a rental so we will have to settle for some things that we would do differently. We still stand by our decision to rent for a year until we are sure that we have chosen the right neighborhood. Inquiring minds want to see our place, so we are sharing some pictures.
Las Olascondo living roomcondo kitchencondo master suiteThe poolOur view
That will bring most of you up to speed. We are still waiting on a buyer for our home in Michigan. We are amazed by the interest, and know that God has a plan for everything. We will be making frequent trips back until it sells. We know so many people who maintain two residences, and we have a new respect for all they do.
As we get settled here in Panama, keep following while we continue to develop new relationships, and learn Spanish. We know that some of you follow to see what we are up to and some follow to learn about the Immigration process. We want to continue to mix everything into this and illustrate our experience and best practices. We love to have you all viewing. As always we hope that you will like, share, and comment. If you are a subscriber, please start adding content. We know that there are multiple perspectives to what we are experiencing.
As you all may be well aware, we made the journey home the first week in April. Neither of us was ready for the adventure to end and we both were in agreement that our new forever home would be in Panama. We are in love with the Pacific coast west of Coronado.
Upon our return to Michigan, we met with three real estate agents and interviewed each to find our best option to market our Gravel Lake property. We selected an agent and put the house on the market. Within 7 days we had it under contract and began preparing for our move. Our decision was to move to Panama with a foot locker, toolbox, and 2 suitcases each. We met a lot of people last winter and most told us that it was “liberating” to sell everything and replace what was necessary once settled into their new home. Most homes in Panama are sold furnished.
We put our agent in Panama to work in search of a reasonably priced rental. We decided to rent for a year while we look for our perfect home. Well, in case we haven’t mentioned it before our agent, Mitzi Casey, is awesome. She found us a beautiful condo that checks off all the boxes on our must have list. The unit rent is below our budget and it is for sale within our budget. We are optimistic that this may be our forever home. Once we get settled, there will be plenty of time to make an educated decision. She negotiated first right of refusal for us, in case they find a buyer during our lease. We are slipping in a few pictures here. We signed the lease sight unseen, but we had a great video tour on Saturday. The video tour showed things that you cannot possibly appreciate by just looking at pictures. Everything in the pictures is included except a couple of art pieces.
Las Olas is a condo in the Vista Mar community. The complex has multiple pools, golf course, beach club, marina, meditation garden, and three restaurants. We spent a lot of time in the community, but have not seen our condo in person. Needless to say we are a bit excited. Our official move date is June 26th.
We are now working through all the moving parts of an overseas move. We have everything we own for sale.
Garage Sale 1
The first garage sale is behind us and the second and final sale is Memorial Day weekend. The following weekend is reserved for a rain date and we have the Hospice Thrift shop scheduled to pick up everything that is left on June 11th. Our closing date is June 15th for our Gravel Lake house. We have agreed to immediate possession for our buyers. We have temporary accommodations through the 26th when we will fly out for Panama.
It has been a while since we posted. We hope you understand that our time is at a premium. We continue to be committed to documenting this adventure, and promise you will not be disappointed. Keep checking back and subscribe to e-mail delivery if you haven’t already.
Tuesday was the pinnacle of our time here in Panama. We woke early and met 20 other people at Nueva Gorgona for a tour to the Embera Village deep in the jungle northeast of Panama City. Our group was led by a volunteer from the church where we have been visiting. She makes the arrangements and all the money collected goes directly to the Embera. The Embera are the most welcoming and gracious people that you can imagine. They live completely off the grid, surviving by living off the land, fishing and selling a few crafts to their visitors. By the way, their crafts are incredible.
The band welcomed us.Arriving at the villageGreat sights along the way.
We journeyed by caravan in 4 cars to the dock where we were met by a few men from the Embera Village. They took us in 3 dugout canoes (motorized) on the 1 hour trip up the river into the jungle to their village. We were met by a welcoming committee who were playing small instruments made by the tribe. We gathered for an informal question and answer presentation to educate us on the life and customs of the tribe. The tribe has their own indigenous language and only a couple of the members have learned Spanish so that they can communicate with their visitors and government. The government here respects the tribe, however they do require the children to attend school. The Village has a schoolhouse and two teachers who come from the city on Monday returning on Friday. They spend the week there in their own huts with one teaching the younger children and one teaching the older children. The children are required to wear uniforms to school, as are all children in Panama. We learned a bunch of great information about the culture. We had at least 2 people in our group who spoke fluent Spanish so getting answers to our questions was really easy.
Embera women prepare our lunchEmbera women prepare our lunchFish and Patacone. Check out the plate made from banana leafs
Following our discussion we were invited to a wonderful lunch of fish and patacones. Patacones are slices of fried banana. Lunch was delicious. We were about the only visitors from outside on that day so we were welcome to move about and observe the daily life in the village. Shortly after lunch we were invited to see and take part in indigenous dance.
The Dance
Once the dance presentation ended we were invited by the father of the chief to take a walk through the jungle where he showed us native plants and explained their medicinal uses. The Embera maintain their personal health naturally and have a similar lifespan to the rest of the world. What he shared with us could put big pharma out of business. Our journey through the jungle ended at the school.
We visited the classrooms and interacted with the children. We had a family in our group with children 2 and 4 years old. The children were blue eyed with blond hair and the Embera children were in awe of them. We suspect that not many groups to the village have young children in them. We learned that the USO was there 6 years ago and installed a solar panel to provide lights in the classrooms. The chief told us that the lights stopped working a few days ago. A couple of the guys in our group did a diagnosis and believe that the batteries may have come to the end of their useful life. Some people from our group are raising funds to replace the batteries. This is the only electricity in the village.
We walked from there back to where we had started. We had the opportunity to look at and purchase their craft items, swim in the river with the Embera children, and have tattoos made from the natural dye in an indigenous plant. We boarded our boats for the journey back to the dock in late afternoon. The journey back was down stream so it took only 45 minutes.
Embera Children swimming in the riverJen is getting an Embera tattoo
We hope that you will all have an experience like this some day. We have not put a lot of written detail here in the post; but we are allowing the pictures to tell the story. We want to have the opportunity to return to the Embera Village soon to purchase some of the wonderful crafts to decorate our Panama home.
Steps leading to an Embera Hut. If the steps are turned backward do not bother them.
We will be leaving soon to return to the States. It is and has been crazy busy the last few days here. We appreciate that you all have continued to follow along. We are dedicated to keeping the information flowing as we prepare to move and settle in Panama. Our next post will be a recap once we get back to Michigan.
…and it seems like we just got here. We planned 1 adventure per week and have hardly scratched the surface. The thing we have done is made some decisions for where we will live. We know now that we will reside 1 – 2 hours west of Panama City on the Pacific. We have looked at houses and condos. Our first choice is an ocean front condo; we just have to find the perfect community for us. People here all have opinions about what makes a community perfect. We know that perfect for us is not necessarily perfect for others. We love Coronado Bay, but it is small, loud, and hot in the afternoon. We know that having a west facing balcony is out of the question because we enjoy our balcony to much to be kept off it in the afternoon and early evening. We also need a big balcony, because we would practically live out there if possible. We love to cook, and eat at home so the kitchen is important. We need a garage or covered parking because the sun is hot here and it is hard on the car to be baking in it 12 hours per day. We will be living there as our primary residence so we need a little more space than a glorified hotel suite. These are our minimal needs and you may be surprised to know that these minimal needs allow us to rule out many places. We are trying to find a place that is further away from the tourist and resort areas while close enough to find a clinic, grocery store, hair salon, and a dentist when needed. We also do not want to be more than 2 hours from the International Airport in Panama City. Currently that is the only place that has nonstop flights into Panama. There are other airports that have international service from Canada or by connecting through Panama City, but we want travel to/from the States to be easy.
This past week I had an appointment with a local dentist. He cleaned my teeth and did an exam. He spoke perfect English and his dental office was state of the art. His equipment put my dentist in Michigan to shame. The total cost here was $42. We would be happy to share his contact information with anyone who messages us. We have shared the names of many of our professional contacts privately here and most everyone is reporting similar good results. We also met with an insurance professional to discuss our insurance needs here in Panama this week. Our health coverage will go from $1267 per month to $383. Our homeowners insurance will be less than $400 per year and our car insurance (full coverage) less than $500 per year for a small 4X4 SUV. We are going to have insurance physicals on Monday morning. We will share that experience as it unfolds.
Next week we will also look at a few more condos in projects that we have not yet seen. We will also, return for a 3rd look at our current first choice. It checks off all the boxes plus has a golf course, children’s water park (grand kid thing), miles of walking and bike paths, pools, beach club, restaurant, and much more. Our other goal for the week is to open a bank account. Opening an account here is one of the hardest parts of integrating into the local society.
our view of the mountains north from Coronado
We are going to wrap it up for now. Our time for the next couple of weeks is going to be busy. We will be wrapping up our research for daily life and taking at least one more adventure. We are anxious to check out the jungle and go to a village of indigenous people in the Darien region between here and Columbia. Please continue to check back, follow and comment. If you’re following on social media, consider subscribing to the blog by e-mail. E-mail delivery is much more reliable.
We departed Coronado early on Sunday morning for our 402 Km drive to Boquete’. Our navigation system said it would take right at 5 hours with no stops. At Santiago we found that the brand new InterAmericana Highway was complete and the drive from that point was nice. There were very few places to stop. It was almost like an interstate highway in the States. Somewhere between Santiago and David we did find a truck stop where we had a nice lunch for $6.
Two can dine for $6.
I doubt we will ever find Dona Gladys again
After lunch, we continued to David, the second largest city in Panama, and it is where our journey turned north into the mountains. David has an international airport and a hospital with world class healthcare. This area was one of our of possible relocation considerations. There are beach homes and resorts on the ocean about 20 minutes south. We wanted to see some places which we heard about so our plan is to stop on our return journey. About 40 minutes to the north we reached our destination. Boquete’ is half way between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, high in the mountains, about 60 Km from the border of Costa Rica. There are a lot of expats there and we had no trouble finding people who spoke English. Our plan was to find a coffee farm and take a tour before finding a hotel.
Boquete welcome center
The welcoming committee was a pack of Coate’. These animals are similar to racoons and very friendly.
Chiriqui River runs through the middle of town
Our navigation system took us to a coffee farm. We found the gate locked and nobody around. We would later learn that the tours of coffee plantations are only arranged by a tour guide. We had a nice drive through the mountains on roads not meant for safe passing, before returning to the downtown area to find a hotel.
Gardens surround our room
Our room at the Inn At Palo alto
Gardens surround our room.
We settled on a lovely place just out of town called the Inn at Palo Alto. We were surprised to find many places were already full. Boquete is a tourist destination, and the streets were packed with people visiting from all over the world. The Inn Keeper was able to sign us up for tours on Monday afternoon and suggest a hike for the morning. She also suggested a nice casual dinner place in town. We enjoyed dinner and went back to the hotel to rest for our day of adventure. The climate is cool and we were actually pleased to find a fire on the patio of the hotel bar where we enjoyed a drink.
Getting up early on Monday morning was no problem, because we had a chicken next door that kept us up most of the night. The first income source for this community is agriculture, followed by tourism in a close second. It is interesting to see the two co-exist to create a solid economy. We took it all in stride. By 8 a.m. we were having breakfast so we could get in the hike up the Pipeline Trail before our 1:30 p.m. coffee and cloud forest tour. The drive to the trail-head was a repeat of our drive on Sunday. The roads were narrow and often steep, with very little room to pass. The drive took us more than 30 minutes and we found the trail-head deserted with nobody to point us in the right direction. This hike would take about 3 hours and we were supposed to see monkeys, waterfalls, and rare birds. With no direction and no obvious sign of where to start we opted to forgo the hike. Neither of us wanted to be lost in the jungle, with nobody really knowing where we were. Upon our return to town we found another interesting opportunity for adventure, but I was unable to convince Jen to zip-line. The photos below are from bumming around waiting for our 1:30 p.m. tour.
We ended up at Boquete Tree Trek. Zip-line adventures, hanging bridges, hotel rooms and restaurant. We did not have time to do anything more than eat lunch. During lunch we watched the last 2 legs of the zip-line finishing there near the restaurant. We talked to a guy who had just came from the hanging bridge tour and it sounded great. Jen absolutely would not zip-line, but we nearly decided to do the hanging bridges. It would have to be Tuesday morning prior to the Market. Following lunch we made the drive back to our hotel where we were to meet our tour guide.
Jorge showed up at 1:30 p.m. and off we went to our coffee tour. The coffee farm was roughly 19 acres and employed 6 people. The coffee is all hand picked and processed (dried) to the green bean for shipment to the customer. The wholesale coffee customer will roast the beans to his own specification. The farms that grow coffee are very low tech and this farm was no exception. All of his drying processes were done with equipment made from recycled parts. The farm we visited has a very small roaster for demonstration and roasting beans which he sells on the tour. We found the entire thing very interesting and learned a great deal about the coffee industry in Panama. This coffee grower produces an award winning coffee and we were pleased to buy a couple of pounds at the end of the tour. He also grows the famous Geisha coffee which we opted not to purchase.
The coffee plant. There aren’t a lot of beans as it is the end of the seasonThe fruit being dried. These are in different stages of drying. There are also different ways in which the coffee is dried.The coffee is roasted to light , medium or dark. That entire process takes about 40 minutes with the dried beans.The darker the roast, the lower the caffeine. Here you see our guide taking the dark roast from the roaster.Light roast is on the left, medium in the center and dark is on the right.The small coffee roaster for our demonstration.
Once we finished the tour of the Coffee farm we had a very nice tour of the area up into the mountains and saw amazing views of the Baru Volcano. The summit on a clear day is the only place in Panama that you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from one place. It is, also, the only place in Panama where you may find snow. A hike to the summit is a full day adventure and we probably will never have that experience. For now it was enough for us to see the Volcano from a distance.
Baru Volcano
We spent the rest of the afternoon taking in the sights with our guide by jeep. The pictures below are just a couple from that part of the adventure.
The roads were often difficult to maneuver.The haunted house of BoqueteRainbow over the cloud forest.
We always believe that there is a reason for everything in this life. We decided to have dinner at a grill that was a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Georges Grill was the name on the sign and once inside we met George. There were two other couples in the small smoky place (George was cooking on an open fire). One of the couples was from Michigan and the other from Colorado. Both have spent considerable time in Panama over the past several years. We quickly became acquainted and had a great dinner together. The couple from Colorado, as it turns out, are staying at the Rio Mar, just a few minutes from where we are staying near Coronado. They were on an adventure of their own and headed to San Blas, once they left Boquete. We visited for a while and arranged to have dinner with them next week. We are anxious to get better acquainted. We also hope that they will share some of their experiences in Panama here on our blog. They are professional photographers, by trade; and we have already seen some of their amazing pictures on Facebook.
Dinner at Georges Grill
When we woke on Tuesday morning it was raining. This is the only rain we have seen during our nearly 2 months on the ground here in Panama. Given the weather we did not think it wise to do the hanging bridge tour. We will save that adventure for another time. We enjoyed the Tuesday Market. It is entirely under roof, so even if it had not stopped raining, we would have still went to it. The market is a must see for any visit to Boquete. We bought a few things, and met a few people before embarking on our journey. Our return trip to Coronado was uneventful. We made a stop at PriceSmart in David to pick up a few supplies, then continued to the beach to look at a condo. The condo turned out to be horrible so we easily ruled out living there. We wanted to see one other, but we were not able to find it. We got on the highway and made one stop in Santiago for dinner. By the time we got home it was after dark so we kicked back and enjoyed the evening. Since our return to Coronado we have enough material to easily publish another blog post. We have continued to research our impending move and are learning every day how the economy here will benefit us for years to come. This post was long, and we fear that posts of this length will lose some of you. If you read to the end…THANK-YOU. Check back in a couple of days. We will bring this thing up to date.
Our good friends Ray and Diane left to return home on Tuesday, but not before we showed them a couple of more of our top picks for retirement residences. We have made the decision to make a permanent move to Panama. The real estate market is tough here. Supply and demand are badly out of check and it is a buyers market. We will not buy a home here until we have had 12 months to fine tune our must haves and have not list. Our first step to that end is to find a top pick community and try to rent there for a year prior to completing the purchase. The buyers market is likely to continue because there is a huge supply of new build condo projects on this stretch of the city beaches 1-2 hours west of Panama City. Once we move down here we will be in a better position to find a bargain. Rio Mar was the top choice for quite some time until we faced the reality that the price was above our comfort. Our second choice is Casa Mar and it lies just to the west across a river from Rio Mar. Casa Mar provides almost all the same benefits at a lower price point. In addition there is a 9 hole golf course, walking trails, a children space (splash pool with water slides), and increased privacy. The entire project is on 190 acres and has a future shopping plaza at the gate. It is also closer to Rio Hato where we will find lower prices on groceries and other daily needs. It is close enough to Coronado to easily make the journey if we would need the clinic or a visit to the dentist. We also showed our friends Bahia. Bahia is a 2 building high rise in Nuevo Gorgona which lies just to the east of Coronado. We were able to look at the condo directly next door to the guys from Dallas who bought their condo on International House Hunters. We did not meet them, but you can check out the YouTube video of their house hunt. We shared it previously in our post titled We survived Carnival . We do feel like a real life episode of House Hunters. Our episode would be more like Beach Front Bargain Hunt though. Seriously, The Bahia was a bit loud and lacked privacy. The unit was a bit smaller than we wanted and, while beautifully decorated, it was dark. We have ruled out Bahia. We will not maintain 2 residences even though we will be renting here in Panama. Before we make any decisions here we will be selling our house in the States.
We spend a little time at the pool and/or on the beach every day. We also continue to have our hour with the Spanish tutor weekly. Our Espanol is coming along well and we try to use our skills daily with one another. We plan to continue meeting with the tutor weekly by Skype once we return home. We are making arrangements to meet with an insurance agent in Panama to get actual insurance quotes for health insurance. We are currently paying $1267 per month for health insurance in the States. We think once we get settled here in Panama we will cut that cost by about $1000 per month for similar coverage. We can cover our monthly expenses here with that savings alone. We will share our actual expenses in future posts. One of the biggest reasons for our move is to save money. Everything isn’t cheaper here, but if you get out of the tourist areas you will find the cost of living to be less. I got the best haircut ever in a Barbaria for $5 (I was the only gringo in there). I also have an appointment on Thursday with a dentist for a routine teeth cleaning. It will cost 1/3 of my dentist back home. More about that next time. Jen had her hair done at a very high end salon, that caters to Americans and Canadians, yesterday. Her cost was less than her salon back home and she was thrilled with the result. We had Chinese take out for lunch yesterday. It was delicious and priced about the same as we would pay in the States. Tonight our friends and family back home will be changing the clocks for daylight savings time. In Panama we are only 9 degrees from the equator. The result is that we have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night every day, so daylight savings time doesn’t happen here. We don’t change our clocks.
The crowd inside was drinking beer and watching futball (soccer). The haircut was perfect. No English was spoken. He had a blast.The Dental Office in the Coronado Shopping center is just upstairs from the casinoThere are shopping centers on 3 corners of the entrance to Coronado.The McDonalds is just in front of the Super 99 Supermarket.The biggest shopping center is on the north side of the International Highway. There is a 3 level store in the rear that puts Walmart to shame. Jen found an upscale hairdresser in this plaza that is awesome.Panama style “Walmart” el Machetazo. There is also a casino in this shopping center, right next to the grocery store.
We had a former co-worker of Jen’s here Thursday with her family. Her family was a delight to meet and we enjoyed sharing our afternoon entertaining them on the beach and at the pool. They are staying in the mountains northeast of Panama City. It sounds as if they have had a great vacation here in Panama.
On Sunday we are planning to take off for our next adventure. Boquete and David are about a 5 hour drive northeast from Coronado. We planned this adventure and posted what we are likely to find there in December of 2017. Check out that post in our archive or click the link #InSearchOfEternalSummer . We will be returning to Coronado on Tuesday after we go to the Tuesday Market in Boquete. We also hope to check out more of the country along the way. Panama and its people are beautiful and very welcoming.
Please continue to follow along. A great deal of time goes into this blog, and we want to share our experiences. Please drop us a note or comment if there is something you want to see or learn about Panama. Today’s Spanish lesson is two simple words…Se Vende. Translated it means For Sale. When we return to Michigan we will be putting our home on Gravel Lake up for sale.
