Coming back to Panama Dec 2021

After almost two years of not leaving Canada, we decided to “bite the bullet” and be a snowbird again. March 2020 we were in Portugal when we got the call to come home now or “you will have no covid insurance coverage”. At that time, who knew the world would become such a different place?

Finally, we are on the go again.

Booking airplane tickets and renting a house was the easy part. Doing the required documents to get out of the country not so easy… took the better part of two days. Maybe I am just not very savvy, but the information required to be uploaded was totally unclear. After many frustrating hours, a phone call to a real person solved the issue.

We were not able to get electronic tickets so had to go to the counter at the airport, where we were issued paper boarding passes for the three legs of our trip. In hindsight, the frustrating days spent getting all the documents approved was well worth it. The entire trip went effortlessly and smoothly, even arrival in Panama City (except for losing my Nexus card!!).

A word of advice: think carefully about booking a flight that arrives at 3PM on a Friday afternoon in Panama City, if you intend to immediately leave the city. It took us about an hour to get through immigration, our driver was there to meet us and we started our journey to Pedasi. Getting out of the city itself was relatively painless as we took the toll highway, far away from downtown.

However, the next 100 km or so (seriously, I have no concept of distance) was stop and go, stop and go. We stopped for dinner and when we came out the traffic had thinned considerably. Still lots of traffic but mostly we were able to go the speed limit. Our driver gave an emphatic “NO” when asked if he would like to live in the city!

I hate to admit it but I have become a bit of a clean freak in my golden years!! The house was spotless but I still felt like I had to clean every drawer and shelf before putting away my personal belongings. Also I had to organize the furniture to my liking…. that and shopping took two days, but hey, no hurry. Unless our country goes crazy again and tells us to come home we have lots of time to do ‘stuff’. And if we don’t get to come home, this is a great place to be ‘stuck’.

Shopping and cleaning is thirsty work in the heat and humidity, and then it is relax time.

Now it is time to kick back and enjoy life in this lovely back yard…. rain or shine. Trying hard to not think about all the crap going on in the world.

This is our third trip to Pedasi and for the first time ever it really does not feel like vacation, we are just living the life!

Cheers

Ruth