Tag: El Alcazar

Merry Christmas From Panama

 

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we are reminded constantly of how fortunate we are to have a wonderful life here in Panama. It is hard for us to believe that it has been nearly 18 months since we officially made our move here. Looking back over the past year we realize how wonderfully blessed we are to experience life in this beautiful country. We have no regrets and are truly living life to the fullest. Our friends Ray and Diane left last week after spending a little more than a week vacationing with us here. They took our Christmas cards back to the States and mailed them for us. If you are on our Christmas card list you may notice similarities in this post to our Christmas letter. As I sat down to make a final post for 2019, it occurred to me that a perfect recap of our year was right there in our annual letter. Those who read our blog regularly may find some of this year end review to be a repeat of some of our previous posts.

Our biggest news of this past year is that we bought and moved into our own place. We made our offer and it was accepted just prior to the end of last year. Things move quickly here and we were able to close the sale and do a minor remodel prior to moving in at the end of January. It is a 1700 square foot condo in the Coronado Golf Community inside the gates of Coronado. Our building, El Alcazar, is one of the most beautiful and well maintained condo buildings in the beaches area. We are on the 11th floor with beautiful views of ocean, mountains and golf course out every window. Every morning we wake to amazing views and praise God for another perfect day in paradise.

Our first guests to visit in our new home were two of Jen’s cousins Robert Buck and Bill Gilmore. they flew in from Pittsburgh to spend a week in April. While they were here we went zip-lining, took a Rum Distillery tour, Visited The Mira Flores Locks and Bio-Diversity Museum, ate a ton of great food, and relaxed on the beaches. We even stopped along the highway where we bought and ate ceviche’. When one lives on the beach, getting fresh seafood is marvelous and convenient. Buying ceviche along the road was a little unnerving for me, but it was very fresh and very delicious.

While our good friends, Ray and Diane, were here at the beginning of the month, we spent the entire time they were here exploring places that they wanted to see. We took a two day trip to a wonderful bed and breakfast on the island of Contadora. Contadora is in the Pearl Island chain which is where there have been several episodes of Survivor filmed. Not only did the Survivor reality show from the United States film on an island nearby, but other Survivor shows from other countries filmed nearby. One even used the island where we stayed to film portions of the tribal counsel. The bed and breakfast where we stayed was home to crew for some of these filming’s. We spent hours enjoying the beaches on this awesome island and the food in the restaurants was unbelievable. After hanging out on Contadora, we took the Rum Distillery tour. and spent a day exploring in Panama City. We also spent a little time on the beach and went deep sea fishing with Lyn and Ty Gilbert. Ray and I even got a little dune buggy time while Jen and Diane went to the beauty salon.

One thing that we love about Panama is how easy it is to explore from here. While we have been settling in to our new lifestyle, most of our exploration has been local. We did however, take two trips to the States this past year, one trip to Costa Rica, and one trip to Jamaica. We went to Key West in February for the marriage of Jens older Brother Bill Jewell to Deb Wilson. In May we travelled to Michigan for our daughter Hope’s graduation with her Masters in Education. The trip also provided a perfect opportunity to see other family and friends. The Jamaica trip has been an annual tradition with good friends and we were able to continue the tradition. In 2020 we plan to travel at least one time to the States. We also will be exploring Israel, Greece, and Turkey in March, as well as Machu Picchu in Peru in May. We plan to continue our annual tradition of vacationing with our friends in Punta Cana Dominican Republic in April. The first few months of the year we will be pretty jet lagged, however when we are home we always look forward to welcoming guests and meeting our readers when they make it to our area. One thing you will not expect is to see us visiting any place where we can not wear shorts and flip flops. We do not have clothes for cold weather exploring.

It is always a thrill for us to connect with readers. Please, leave us a message or send an e-mail with questions and comments. We had a couple who started as readers of our blog and have since become friends, over for dinner this past week. We have frequent inquiries and we always try to provide a quick concise response. The highlighted portions of the previous paragraphs are links to past posts. Clicking on the links will lead you to those posts. We hope you are enjoying our blog as much as we enjoy sharing it.

Feliz Navidad,

Greg and Jen

A New Home In Panama

Often, too much time passes between my blog posts. For this I often feel guilty. I have been attending writing workshops with Lynda Allison. Her encouragement, and that of the other attendees, has been priceless in my decision to continue writing. In the future I hope you all will notice subtle changes in the way information is being presented here. I want our readers to see, hear, feel, taste, and smell Panama in the same way Jen and I do. I am, also, committed to pushing out shorter, but more frequent posts.

In our last post I eluded to our impending move to a new residence. We stand by our advice to rent and explore for a year prior to purchasing here in Panama. We fast tracked our purchase of a home by a couple of months, when we got the opportunity to buy a nice place that met 100% of our criteria. Our research was complete and we moved forward. We absolutely love our life in this Coronado community. There is a huge core of American and Canadian expats living here; with many others spending portions of the year here. There is also a trend of people from South Africa relocating here to escape a deteriorating political climate. We are becoming involved in a local English speaking church and a multitude of outreach activities. We are becoming fully engaged in learning Spanish, even though you can easily live here without knowing a word of Spanish. We have developed friendships that we will cherish for life. All that being said, I think you all may see from where the future of this blog will come.

We bought our new home in late December and engaged in an aggressive, minor renovation. We hired a local Panamanian Electrician for some additional outlets and to move a couple of switches. We then employed a local Cabinet Maker who built some new cabinets to match the existing and add some crown molding. We are sharing some before and after pictures. It feels good to have most of the fine detail done, and be completely moved from our rental. One of our biggest motivations to buy this condo was that it needed very little. We are in the El Alcazar Building in the Coronado Golf Complex. It is within walking distance of beautiful Pacific Beaches, golf, tennis, an all-inclusive hotel, beach club, restaurants, and country club style facilities. Every window of our condo has panoramic views of the ocean, mountains, and surrounding community. For readers interested in the details involved with purchasing real estate in Panama, we will explore them in detail in an upcoming post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last several weeks we have done far more than work on and move into our new home. We had a two day adventure to Colon where we enjoyed an all-inclusive hotel deep in the jungle on Lake Gatun. Lake Gatun makes up a large part of the Panama Canal. We were located only a few minute drive from the Agua Clara Locks, which are part of the recently expanded Panama Canal. These new locks accommodate the largest of ships. We watched as a container ship carrying over 10,000 containers (1 container is the size of a semi trailer) passed into and out of the first chamber. It was interesting to watch. The canal passage for this particular ship was in excess of $800,000. We also got a look at the new bridge over the canal. It is nearing completion. You may remember pictures of it in our post from October of 2017.  

In keeping with my goal to make shorter, more frequent posts I will wrap up for now. Please feel free to go back through our archives. We love feedback and questions. If you have not subscribed to get our posts automatically delivered to your e-mail, please do it now. Like and share our blog to keep them coming. we remain excited to share our experiences and adventures.

Hasta Luego,

Greg and Jen