Tropical Dreaming

A full (but small) house in the expat community of Playa Coronado (locally, it’s just “Coronado”), with a fenced in yard for the dogs and a private swimming pool all to ourselves… Things here weren't perfect but they were pretty great.

Coronado Villa Victoria – while not quite as nice as it looks in the pictures – gave us a really good feel for what life will be like once we buy a house and settle in — and life will be pretty wonderful, indeed! We both became more and more relaxed and felt really content and happy. We went in the pool at least once a day – sometimes 2 or 3 times. We just relaxed, floated around, talked about this or that, threw a ball for TinkerBelle, and watched her and LolaLu play chase. I always took our Bluetooth speakers out - and music just made everything that much better.

Getting up most mornings and not having anything that has to get done is overwhelmingly blissful. I'm actually having some trouble adjusting to it... but it's a nice problem to have.

Things we liked:

• The fenced in yard - we felt safe and didn't worry about the dogs being outside unsupervised. A doggie door would take this to the next level!
• The pool all to ourselves meant we could swim whenever we wanted - and throw the ball into the pool for TinkerBelle without anyone complaining (or being fined for it).
• Close proximity to anything and everything we could want -
  • beaches
  • good restaurants
  • live music
  • roadside fruit/vegetable (and seafood!) stands
  • grocery stores
  • mini-supers (convenience stores)
  • hardware stores
  • even a little two-plex movie theater!

Things that could have been better:

• The road to get there is VERY rough!
• It would have been nice if restaurants, stores, live music, and especially beaches were closer. Although (as Steven Wright says,) “any place is within walking distance if you have that much time”, neither of us would have been inclined to walk quite that far - especially in the Panama heat.
• The house has the tilt up/down glass slat windows (some of which don't fully close) and screens that are damaged - which did a poor job at keeping mosquitoes out.
  
• No water heater (which is not uncommon in Panama; as warm as it is all the time, Panamanians don’t feel a need for hot water - it’s just us silly gringos that think we have to have it!) I could probably get used to this but it would definitely take a while!
• No laundry facilities (there IS a clothesline and Krista did wash out some clothes by hand in the outdoor sink but a washer would have been very much appreciated).
• No air conditioning in the living room/kitchen (no TV, either) meant that we ate our meals in the bedroom.
• A dearth of flat surfaces — side tables, shelves, etc. to put stuff on — especially in the bedrooms and bathroom.
• Likewise trash cans/waste baskets.

It may sound like the Cons far outweigh the Pros but I'm picking a lot of nits. In spite of its many shortcomings, we were extremely happy here and would stay here again. In fact, we tried to extend our stay but they had other bookings so we couldn't.