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We have found a temporary home in Panama

 

Yesterday was the day of our vacation which we had set aside to look for accommodations during our 2 month stay this winter. February and March are high season here and it is a bit more expensive to rent for 2 months. They like long term rentals of at least a year. There are ways to find short term, but the prices are a bit higher. Jen and I have been communicating with Beth McGuyton  at Try Panama for several months. Beth had our budget and knew our plans. Beth is a real estate professional and found us the perfect condo in budget. We were both relieved to know that we have a great place to live here, while we explore the great country of Panama. She found us a place that met all the “must haves” on our list. We will be on the beach in Coronado about 1 1/2 hours (33 miles) from Panama City. The traffic out of the city is terrible. The infrastructure here is excellent, however there are not enough roads to accommodate all the cars. We are anxious to explore the city while we are here next winter, but have decided to use a guide or public transportation. We will have a rental car for our exploration, but driving in Panama City is best left to the professionals.

Our guide yesterday was Marc Vargas. Marc is one of the professionals, whom I mentioned earlier. Our trip yesterday was mostly business, so we saw only small parts of the city on our way to Coronado. Marc used his knowledge of traffic and travel in Panama to safely deliver us to Coronado. The entire trip Marc was telling us about the Panama Canal, and giving us helpful information for our winter adventure. Marc introduced us to a couple of people here, and took us to a great open air seafood restaurant. We found Marc to be very knowledgeable and capable. We believe that Marc will consider us friends, and continue to be at our service when, and if, we decide to put down roots here in Panama.

It is a blast down here, and we are having a great time sharing our adventure. Please like, share, and join the conversation.

The View
This is the view from our guest room balcony
Lunch with Marc Vargas
Lunch with Marc Vargas
roof view
This is the view of the Pacific from the roof of the condo.

Panama Vacation Day 1

We are just starting day 2 of our Panama vacation. Personally I love to vacation  at all inclusive resorts. The cost seems prohibitive when making the reservation, but when you are there you never have to reach into your pocket for money. I am not going to review our resort other than to say it is nice and we are being well cared for. It is the rainy season here in Panama and the resort is less than 1/3 capacity. We relaxed by the pool most of the day yesterday and it sprinkled for about 2 hours in mid afternoon.

Our resort is close enough to the Panama Canal that we are watching the huge ships line up for miles to await passage. I am impressed by the engineering of this great wonder. On Saturday we will be taking a full passage tour of the canal. I am excited to share what I learn on that trip. I am planning to also share some video and fun facts about the canal. If I Google Panama Canal I get Wikipedia telling me it is about 48 miles long. I am not a big fan of Wikipedia so I will refrain from just regurgitating what it says there in favor of waiting until I can see for myself how it works.

Tomorrow we are planning a trip to Coronado to look for a place to spend part of the winter. Coronado is about 1 1/2 hours west of Panama City on the Pacific ocean. We chose to look there because it is closer to where we think we may ultimately want to live. There are also entire communities of English speaking people. We are working on our Spanish language skills, however we realize that it is a slow process. It is important to the Panamanian people that we try to speak a little Spanish. Our server at dinner last night was very appreciative when I ordered in Spanish. She helped me when I struggled for a word for something, and complimented my effort. I have found at this resort there are many employees who speak no English. I encountered 1 employee yesterday who spoke about as much English as I spoke Spanish. He wanted to have a conversation with me in English so he could work on his English skills. It was amazing, to me, how well we could understand one another. Kudos to you Vladimir! You are a great asset to this resort. While we are in Panama this winter we will be traveling around the interior where there will be less people who speak English so we know that our ability to communicate in Spanish is a must.

Please, remember to like and share our blog. We would love to have some participation here in the way of comments and advice. We are so appreciative of our new friends here in Panama who are joining in and sharing. As we grow and become better at this blogging thing our content will improve. For now it is our hope that you find it entertaining.

 

Our Panama Vacation T minus 1 day and counting.

Well the bags are packed and all our pre-vacation tasks are completed. I have been working tirelessly on this Blog. Nobody said that this would be easy…or cheap. I have read countless books and spent numerous hours trying to make this blog the best it can be. I have to be honest. I am a bit of a perfectionist. That’s probably no secret to some of you. I have spent money on domain, hosting, and all kinds of things to make this great. We plan to fill it with everything anybody would want to know about retiring to Panama, from start to finish. We have plans to publish daily posts, pictures, and video while we are on the ground next week. Pictures will appear here in the daily posts, and the video will be presented via embedded link to U-tube. The U-tube thing is the part that we are most concerned. It link is the 1 thing that seems to be giving me problems.We hope that all of you will be able to connect and see the videos that we post.  All that being said, we have also added a couple of advertiser links. Advertisers will help us cover the cost of getting this whole thing to come together. It is your option to ignore the ads, but we hope that if you find something interesting you will click-through to help cover our costs. In the future the ads you see now, will be replaced in our Blog by only tried and true, “best” based on our own experience.

Some of the best advise I read recently suggested that we invite our readers to comment and share our posts. We will be sharing this entire experience on Facebook (2RetireInPanama@PanamaGreg), Twitter (@PanamaGreg89), Tumblr (panamagreg.tumblr.com), Pinterest (pinterest.com/greg_kitzmiller), and Instagram (panamagreg89). If you prefer to follow us in one of these places, great. We hope, though, that you will sign up to get our e-mail and follow us right here so that we can hear from you right here by way of comment. If you choose not to sign up, please check back often. It is important to Jen and myself that you all will enjoy this experience as much as we do.

The Vacation Countdown Continues

With only 13 days to our vacation in Panama I must apologize for my lack of posts over the past 2 weeks. It turns out that hurricane Irma had different plans for me. I took a trip to Florida to spend some time with my dad who has been hospitalized, and ended up evacuating him to safety from a category 5 hurricane that made a direct hit just north of his home in Florida. During the horrible ordeal we were ultimately safe, but had no internet, TV, or proper healthcare for him. The moral of the story is one of the biggest attractions Panama has for a permanent retirement home, in my opinion, is that there is no risk of being in the path of a hurricane there.  In Panama I will never have to install hurricane shutters again.

Jen and I have both got our clear FBI reports for our visa’s. That process is continuing, and we are gathering the other documentation so that all will be ready for our extended trip in February.  We have also finalized arrangements for a driver/guide to deliver us to Coronado where we are promised a variety of rentals to select from for our stay this winter. We have our reservations for the Panama Canal trip and our excitement is building by the day.

I am feeling good about blasting this  blog out to my mail list, so if this is the first your seeing this, please like and share. I am still having some trouble getting all the social media links to work, but for now it is good. Let us know what you think and respond with suggestions. Ultimately we want this blog to be as exciting for all of you as it  is for us to write. Subscribe below to keep our blog coming to your in box or check back often.

Panama Vacation Countdown beginning

Over the past few days I have been working to get this site ready to go live. I didn’t want to go live with no content, and now I believe that the content is sufficient. Jen and I are on the countdown to vacation in Panama. If you started at the beginning you already know that our vacation is less than a month away and we will be packing a lot of rest and relaxation into our time at the resort. In addition, we will be doing a couple of things to get prepared for our adventure next winter. Yesterday I secured the services of Marc Vargas. He will be picking us up at the resort on October 4th, and take us to Coronado where we will be looking at rentals for our 2 month adventure coming up in February. We are excited to be moving forward with our plans and will be keeping you all dialed in to the whole adventure from start to finish. You may notice that I put links to all the social media at the bottom of the this blog. I am sometimes challenged by electronics so do not judge if all of these are not working exactly right. If you are a big fan of FaceBook, click on the link and join our Face Book group. Twitter, Instagram, etc. should work much the same. Please sign up for our notifications at the bottom by leaving your e-mail address. If you decide that following our adventure isn’t for you you can opt out any time.

Searching for a Rental House

Jen and I have made the decision to search in advance for a house to rent while we are in Panama for our February/March adventure. We have found an excellent agent in Coronado who is going to show us properties while we are on vacation there in October. Our criteria is 2 bedroom, 2 bath with a pool. We want to have plenty of room for visitors. We are trying to stay in a central location so that we can easily travel around to look for our ideal place to retire. We are wanting to be in a more mountainous area near rain forest, but not too far from the beach. Coronado is about an hour from Panama City by car, and is near many American communities. This may prove helpful as neither of us has mastered Spanish. We know from our research that there is fresh seafood available on the beach, and as you travel inland, many markets where we can experience the local fresh fruits and groceries. Being anchored near Coronado seems to be the ideal choice for these and many other reasons. We began our search at http://trypanama.com

The Visa Process update

A couple of days ago I learned that my fingerprint cards were rejected by the FBI. They informed me that my prints were not clear enough or had smears. Oh my…I hope that this is no indication of how this will go. Today I returned to the sheriff’s department to be reprinted. The print tech was awesome. She reprinted me and I got the new prints off to the channeler. Jen’s went through without a hitch. Now we wait for the background checks. We are continuing to plan for our adventure and will do our best to keep this page up to date.

Greg and Jen start the Visa process

This week Jen and I started the Pensionado Visa process for our Panama adventure. Step 1 is to secure the services of a Panamanian attorney. We secured the services of an expert in Panamanian immigration law. She came highly recommended, and has proven, so far, to be very responsive and knowledgeable. The process includes FBI background check, fingerprints, documentation authenticated by the department of state, proof of pension and more. All of this must be translated to Spanish and submitted. The process takes up to 16 weeks. The longest part of the process is the background check. Fingerprints must be included with the FBI application. The fine people at Van Buren County fingerprinted us and we have elected to use a channeler. A channeler speeds up and streamlines the process. Holidays in Panama tend to slow the process. February in Panama is Carnival so much of the month is holiday. Our goal is to have as much of this done in advance as possible, so that  we can get our Visas as soon as possible upon arrival. I will keep you informed at we go.

Greg enrolls in Blogging University

It is day one lesson one of Blogging University and my assignment is to write my first blog.  It is to be about me and why I’m here. I would like to direct you all to the page menu at the top of the screen and ask that you read the “About Our Journey” page which describes the reason for the blog and where this whole thing is going. I am also supposed add media and links. Retirement for Jen and I has been a driving force in everything here. The media I am choosing today is an image from an ad that I have been running on Facebook and Instagram. The link is to our Financial Coaching Business,  This link and media is related to our retirement activities. Many of you may know that while our business is a business, it is more often an outreach. Our hope for all of you is that you can retire early and debt free. We are doing it and will enjoy our next few years chasing our dreams. Last, but not least, thank-you for sharing this journey with us. Please sign up below to receive our blog by e-mail. Do this by leaving us with your e-mail addess and clicking the subscribe button. We are excited to share this adventure.