Tropical Dreaming

One reason we moved to Panama is because the cost of living is less.  This hasn't held up for some things, but eggs? WOW!  I was in a local grocery store and saw this huge display of eggs. Thought I would make people back home a little jealous.  That's right, 30 eggs for $5!!!

We weren’t thrilled with it from the start — it was very dark inside (even on a bright day), the pool was dirty, all the furniture was uncomfortable and/or broken, and the ‘kitchen” had no sink! — but this morning, tree trimmers showed up early and took things to a whole new level of awful.

The sound of chainsaws would have sucked more than enough — but these guys were dropping huge tree limbs directly on our roof  with a huge CRASH! that sounded like a bomb had gone off!!

Poor TinkerBelle, in her (not quite) 2 years on the planet, the closest experience she had ever had to this was really loud thunderclaps. But huge tree limbs falling on your roof, while not quite as loud, is way more percussive. She was so freaked out.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

As I was trying to get all of our stuff taken out and loaded into the car, I kept coming out to find big tree limbs on the sidewalk. (Along with tools and rope and debris.) So I’d have to wait for them to clear the sidewalk. (Meanwhile the clock was ticking and checkout time was getting closer and closer.)

Eventually, I got everything loaded and away we went… until I realized that I didn’t know how to get to our new place and my phone wasn’t working. (No service/data.)

One of the first-world luxuries that we take for granted is “611” which connects us to our cellular service provider — even when our service has been mysteriously suspended — so we can get the problem taken care of. If Panama has such a number/service, I don’t know what it is. So it was off to the mall to talk to Mas Movíl and figure out why our service had been disconnected — again. (Turns out they had tried to charge my card — the one that was cancelled due to fraudulent charges.)

Happily, this sad story ends well. Our new place is wonderful! Five days will go by much too quickly in Casco Viejo. But more on that in another post — and YouTube video!

we’re having trouble finding places that are in our price range (which we’ve already increased twice) and meet our criteria. (Interestingly enough, Coronado Villa Victoria was instrumental in helping us define those criteria.)

One reason for this is the “high season”. That’s November through March when snowbirds from the U.S., Canada, and Europe come to Panama to escape the cold weather back home. Demand goes high, supply goes low, prices go up.

Another reason is “los Carnavales” - a Panamanian holiday that’s one big party for the first several days of March. Rental prices go through the roof, highways become parking lots, and certain areas become wall-to-wall people.

While we did try to find someplace different to spend March, places that meet our criteria tend to be long-term rentals and, for obvious reasons, we’re not really ready to tie ourselves down to any one particular area yet. (And when we are ready, we’re going to want to just buy an house; not rent one.) Ultimately, our former hosts made us a nice offer and we accepted. Not only did we enjoy our time there immensely, but Coronado checks most of our boxes and we want to look at houses (to purchase) there before moving on to other areas.

When we hired our attorney and began the process of getting our Pensionado Visas, they were shocked to learn that Panama Immigration had somehow forgotten to stamp our passports on entry. (I didn’t understand why; Italy never stamped our passports, either.) They encouraged us to take care of this ASAP since routine traffic stops are legal and relatively common in Panama and, if our passports aren’t stamped, the police won’t know if we’re here legally or if we’ve overstayed our welcome. (We have, in fact, experienced this problem firsthand at this point.)

”Be careful, though,” Will advised, “there’s been protestors at the airport lately and they’ll throw a rock right through your windshield.” As you can imagine, that had a bit of a demotivating effect but eventually we got in the car and headed for the airport.

The trip took about 600 hours (we didn’t realize that, since our arrival, they had moved the airport to Tijuana) but eventually we got there and broke a few traffic laws to get into the parking lot (which only had exits).

We went into the airport, explained our situation to someone standing around who seemed to have some sort of official capacity, and he pointed to where we needed to go. Again, swimming upstream, we went into the area where arriving immigrants were exiting through multiple immigration lanes/booths. We entered through the only exit that would allow “Emergency” entrance and were beckoned over by the nearest immigration officer. In my broken Spanish, I explained the problem.

”Let me see your passports.”

We handed them over.

”You arrived on December 10th?” he asked.

”Yes,” I said, somewhat excitedly, wondering how in the world he knew that just by looking at our passports with their lack of an entrance stamp…………

He pointed…

I’ve never felt like a bigger idiot.

We’re really looking forward to our stay in Casco Viejo. We spent a half day there previously and it’s a really cool area with a great vibe. Lots to see and do with several really good coffee shops! (Up until that point, I hadn’t had a decent cup of coffee since arriving in Panama.) It’s a little touristy but that’s OK; it should be very interesting. Stay tuned for some great pics…

"Our next place better have a bigger bed!"

“I don't know, I think we do more cuddling in a double bed.”

”I don’t think so. I think I sleep with your knee in my back.”

”Ta-MAY-toh, ta-MAH-toh…”

And if we pay cash, we get charged $6.80 for every withdrawal (Panama law). This will change once all of our immigration stuff is settled because the service provided by our attorney is a package deal that includes opening a bank account — but we’re not quite there yet. Anyway…

Credit Card fraud hits us especially hard since A) the card has to be canceled (and now I have no credit card to pay for stuff without getting hit with foreign transaction fees), and B) a new card has to be sent out to me.

Back in the States, not a huge deal. The card shows up in the mail in a week or so; inconvenient but liveable. In Panama, though, “shows up in the mail” is a whole different ballgame. All the more so because the “home address” that the bank has on file for us is our mail forwarding address. Not the package forwarding address, but the mail forwarding address — where things get scanned and sent to us digitally but not physically.

So now, Anytime Mailbox is going to receive my new credit card, scan it, and send me a picture of it. And I’m going to have to get them to send it to someone else so they can send it to our package forwarding address so that it will ultimately get to me in Coronado. (But will it get there before we’ve moved on to our next place on April 5…?)

There’s even a problem with that, though… The people at Anytime Mailbox won’t physically forward mail until I jump through some hoops in which a test piece of physical mail is sent and received/verified. It might be faster to just have them shred the damn thing and ask the credit union to resend the card to the other (package forwarding) location.

What a headache. 🤕