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
