The Panama Adventure

According to this Wikipedia article, “Ageing and mortality of the individual organism became possible with the evolution of sexual reproduction, which occurred approximately a billion years ago. The sexual organism could henceforth pass on some of its genetic material to produce new individuals and itself could become disposable with regards to the survival of its species.” Since we aren’t single cell organisms, this is our fate. We are disposable.

What does this mean? If we are disposable does this make our life more meaningful? People say the Buddhists are always thinking about death. Yes, and that teaches us to value every day that we are alive. But, as we get older are our lives less valuable, as society seems to tell us?

I ran across this article that talks about musicians. There are many senior musicians who are playing as well, or even better than before like The Rolling Stones, The Who, Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Roger Waters to name a few who are still actively playing and performing. I even see this with Joel who turns 70 next month. In the 27 years I have known him, I’ve never heard him play and sing so well. As the article says “ if you’ve got your health, if you’ve got the desire, if you’ve spent decades refining your craft, then there’s no reason you can’t still do great work.”

I also found the Ageist website, dedicated to studying people over 50 who are living active, productive lives. It is time we respected the older generations for their wisdom, energy, and continued valuable contributions to society.

The article that led me there was this one on Dr Connie Mariano, white house doctor for George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. She says presidents visibly age while in office, but they also live long lives afterwards. She thinks it is the sense of purpose, the feeling that your life is significant, that you look forward to every day and have things to contribute.

I love this paragraph  There is an old saying that we have engraved on our wall in our home in Colorado: “It’s never too late to live happily ever after.” Never too late. When I bought my wedding gown 5 years ago in LA, I asked the lady, “How old was your oldest bride?” and she said, “My oldest bride was about 75 and she had to call her mother who was 96 to ask her about the dress, to tell her about the dress.”

Dr Eleanor (Connie) Mariano has a Wikipedia article if you want to know more about her, and she has written a book The White House Doctor. I might have to read that one myself.

What does all of this mean for those of you who are reaching your third stage of life? Of course health is a big deal. If you are sick or disabled that changes your options. But, if you are healthy and functioning, what do you do with this stage of your life?

For me, it’s a gift. I’ve spent my life in service to others which was very satisfying, but I don’t feel that need now. This is my time and I want to use these years to strengthen myself physically and mentally. I want new experiences, to learn more, understand more, and develop new talents and skills. I believe in being generous and putting positive energy out and I certainly want to continue that, but it’s also a privilege to follow my own inclinations and spend my time as I choose.

It’s an interesting time. The body sags and the hair gets gray. As the Doors said in Roadhouse Blues “The future’s uncertain And the end is always near.” But every day is sweeter because of this.  I see as more and more of us age, we aren’t going to be treated as second class citizens any more. We are going to fight to be recognized, fight to contribute, and to live fully. We can start with ourselves by staying engaged and involved in life, and by refusing to retreat to the rocking chair for as long as possible.

Many people read this blog because they are interesting in living in Panama, or they are already here. For me, the biggest challenge of relocating was the language. I’m not good at languages and teaching me is like pounding information into a stone head, and with holes because what goes in is likely to come right back out again.

It’s not too late to make resolutions for 2017. If learning Spanish is one of them, here you go. Yaira is an experienced teacher, and she has the patience of a saint (I’m not only slow to learn, I get frustrated and whine.) You can have your own private teacher thanks to Skype, and she is flexible about times, number of classes, goals, and anything else you need.

Here is Her Website. http://www.yairatutoria.com/

Teaching privately has allowed Yaira to go to university to further her career as a teacher, and to also spend more time with her young son. I thank her every day for my ability to communicate and I’m happy to recommend her to you all.

There is a blogger who I don’t know, but she has touched me through her words.

There are many things that need to be fixed in the USA but homelessness has found a place in my heart. Last spring I got to feel homelessness first hand, the fear as I approached people, their wish to avoid me, the inability to get anyone to stop and help me. I talked with many homeless and I heard so many sad stories of unfortunate circumstances, no family or friends for help, and no resources with which to get going again.

Read this post written by an articulate, educated, intelligent, creative, and well spoken woman. If you really want to know what it’s like to be homeless, read the whole blog.

https://warriorsandghosts.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/the-homeless-chronicles-what-i-hope-to-achieve-with-this-blog/

This could be you. This could be me. This could be any of us.

She has a GoFundMe page too.

Summer in Panama means many things are flowering and fruiting. At this time of year we see flowers that we usually don’t see at other times, and I see fruit trees covered with flowers everywhere I go. The bougainvillea are spectacular and I need to spend a day pointing my camera at them very soon.

Mangoes are one of my favorite fruits. If a little dog (perro) is a perrito, is a little mango a mangito? We have mangitoes everywhere so it might be a bumper crop this year. Last year I picked up enough to freeze and enjoy all year, and I plan to do the same this year.

This is one of my favorite trees. The fruit is smaller and yellow, but doesn’t bruise as much as some of the bigger fruit when it falls. This tree is also on a vacant lot and the fruit just rots on the ground, so I feel no guilt for picking it up and bringing it home.

Many baby mangoes! It might be a good year for fruit.

People are remarking on the avocado trees too. They are covered with an unusual amount of flowers so we might have a bumper crop of avocados too. It’s a bit too early to see many fruits but you can already spot an occasional one. They don’t freeze well like many fruits, but frozen avocados can still be used in smoothies and other recipes. If I get a lot I will freeze the extras and experiment.

This is one of my neighbor’s two trees. When she has them she shares, so it might be a good year for avocadoes too.

Can you see the baby fruit right in the middle of the photo?

The start fruit or carambola is flowering and starting to fruit again. It seems like the last round of fruit just slowed down a month or so ago. I like to eat them fresh, and they are great in fruit smoothies. I still have some in the freezer and it looks like when I run out, new fruit will be ready.

You can easily see the two young fruits in this photo

This is harder. The fruits look very much like leaves but if you look closely, maybe you can spot quite a few fruits by looking for the ridge along the sides.

The cashews are very cool! I never realized how they grow until we found them here. There is one nut on each fruit. The nut must be roasted or heated to neutralize the toxins before it can be opened to get the nut inside. No wonder they are so expensive. I wrote a post about them in the past where you can see the fruit, and there is video of people roasting the nuts on an open fire. The fruit has a very unusual,  almost pungent smell and flavor. It is very delicate and doesn’t transport well at all which is why you never see it in the markets. People here use it to make drinks, and it is really good chopped and cooked with maybe a bit of sweetener and/or some vanilla.

Trees are covered with little pinkish flowers now, and a few nuts are just starting to appear.

You can see a green nut in the center of the picture. Eventually the fruit will form from the dark purple stem looking thing, and the nut will turn gray.

Guandu, or pigeon peas are very important to Panamanians. They are pretty much required for holiday dinners for the traditional arroz con guandu (rice and guandu). They can be expensive though, especially around Christmas so they are a very common sight growing in people’s yard. I have found that they freeze well, and they can also be dried and cooked like beans.

My neighbors have a number of beautiful plants covered with flowers and developing pea pods.

My plant with flowers and young pea pods. They are a bit of work picking and shelling the peas, but I like the plants and especially like the flowers. This plant produces black peas and the flowers are beautiful yellow and purple.

Here to finish up are photos of a number of other random plants and trees.

One a coconut gets going, it seems to produce continuously. This one has young green coconuts, small ones to the left, and flowers above just starting to form into little coconuts.

This is not a baby. This is a lemon bigger than a grapefruit. It has a flavor much like the lemons we are used to in the US. I have been freezing the juice so i can have lemonade for a long time.

I have another bunch of plantains coming

We have a guanabana (soursop) tree that produced quite a bit of fruit recently, and now I see a lot more baby fruit so there will be more coming soon.

We also have a bunch of red bananas coming

I still think these flowers and way of fruiting is so interesting

These are mariñon corazon, so called because they look like the cashew apple but the seed is inside like a heart. They are light, white, and somewhat bland raw but cooked, they are very much like apples. If all those bunches of little green things develop into fruit, there is going to be a lot of it!

Our limon tree has a few baby fruits

This almond tree is also flowering

I spotted just a few almonds but I’m sure there will be more soon from all the flowers

A few notes on the fruits above. The huge lemons are great! I have been picking them up from two trees nearby. I wrote about them in the past.

The mariñon corazon, I can’t find any information about them. The people in Nicaragua call them peras, but that didn’t lead anywhere either. The trees are tall, nicely shaped, and when they flower they make feathery purple blossoms. Soon there is a beautiful carpet of purple under the tree.

Our limon trees are usually loaded with fruit by now, but we had a brush fire come through here last year. The heat from the fire even outside our fence was enough to cause the trees to lose all their leaves. They have recovered nicely but there were very few flowers, so we have very little fruit this year. Hopefully we will have better luck next year.

“I’ve heard that Panama is great so I’m moving there. Where should I live?”  People ask this question in one form or another quite often. There is no answer that will fit everyone. Panama is a small country but very diverse. There is city living, country living, beaches, mountains, pretty much everything except winter climate.

When trying to figure this out, the first thing to ask yourself is what do you need? If you are working remotely, you need a good internet connection. If you have health issues, you need to be close to medical care. If you have children, you need to figure out school for them. If you need shopping and daily needs close by, you don’t want to be in a remote area. What you must have is going to determine what areas are possibilities.

Bob Adams is a very knowledgeable and sensible man who has made many videos. Here is a one on this subject.

A few other things to consider are, what is your budget? Panama City is expensive, especially the housing. Coronado, Boquete, and other areas with many expats also tend to be more expensive. Do you speak Spanish? If not, you may be more comfortable in an area where there are more English speakers. Do you want to be close to other expats, or do you want a Panamanian immersion kind of life? Do you like warm (hot) weather, or would you be more comfortable in the cooler mountains? Once you have taken a careful look at yourself and your needs, you should be able to narrow down your search to some areas that meet these needs.

Another question that comes up is – should I rent or buy? Everyone (at least everyone who isn’t trying to sell you something) will say rent first for at least 6-12 months. You need to spend time here living the daily life to be sure it is a good fit. You may find that one season is great, but another is too windy, wet, hot, cold, or other problems. Maybe you want to be closer to something, or farther away from something. It’s hard to know what your new life is going to be like until you have lived it for a while. I know if we were going to buy, our choices and priorities would be different now after four years than they were even after living here for a year. Once you buy, it may not be that easy to change your mind and sell so proceed carefully.

Then, after location and housing, the question is – what should I bring? Again, this is an individual choice. People ship whole containers, and others come with only a suitcase. It is hard to know what you will need until you have lived your life here for a while. Will your furniture hold up in this humid climate? Will you wear those good clothes when you live in shorts and t-shirts? The general opinion is, if something is hard to impossible to replace here, bring it (like my husband’s guitars and musical equipment). Many find it worth it to bring their good quality tools or kitchen equipment, and other recommend bringing sheets and towels because they can’t find the quality they want here. I’ve known people who have shipped containers, partial containers, come with stuffed suitcases, made multiple trips to bring things here, and even a relocation cruise is a possibility if you can find one.

That’s all the words I have on the subject for today. Many people are happy to offer opinions, but only you can decide what will work for you. Oh, and I highly recommend you never, ever even think about buying anything under development or pre-construction. The reality is likely to be quite different from the glossy sales brochure and the sweet words of the salesman. I’ve heard stories from people who have done that, and you don’t want to be the next story.

I guess I did have a few more words 😉

What do we need as human beings to survive? food, shelter, reproduction, connection. We are social beings. Babies literally die without human touch and connection. Adults don’t do well either, mentally or physically, without human connection.

I saw this video recently HERE. Amnesty International conducted an experiment. They put refugees from Somalia and Syria in front of individuals from Europe and the instructions were to just look into each others eyes for four minutes. They were hoping that this looking at each other would be the start of a connection and a realization of shared humanity. As you will see, it worked.

I have said many times that I am so happy here in Panama, and the main reason is the people. I feel like they really SEE me. When they look at me, talk with me, and smile at me I feel that connection. Of course I had friends in the US but people you don’t know, they don’t see you in the same way. The checkout person at the supermarket says “have a nice day” but you know it isn’t for you, really. It’s just what they have been trained to say. Here though, even people I don’t know, they look me in the eyes. They are curious about who I am. They want to make a connection and it’s a really nice feeling.

The US has been so terribly divided and it seems to be getting worse and worse. We are losing our realization that we are all humans, we are all people. We are losing compassion for our brothers and sisters suffering within and without our borders. A Syrian refugee may be just a drain on our resources, a problem to be avoided. But, when you make eye contact with a refugee, see who they are as a person, hear their story, understand their journey, how can you not feel their humanity.

I try to stay away from the news and politics, but it’s impossible to not know what is going on. It affects my family, my friends, and the entire world. Now more than ever we need to see the humanity in each other. We need to stand by and support each other, especially those who may feel pushed aside and disrespected. I hope that where there are negative forces gaining strength, there will be positive forces gaining even more strength. I see that happening already.

I saw a bit of news about this in my favorite Facebook group (Expats in Panama). There are bus stops now in Panama City with free WiFi. How cool is that!

This basically says on Monday, they started “Smart City” to connect people with internet for free at 50 bus stops around the city.

These are bus stops that will have internet.

We don’t have this in David, but we do have many places with free internet such as schools, the bus terminal, and Cervantes Park, to name a few. http://internetparatodos.gob.pa/  If you get within range you will see internetparatodos on your list of possible connections. Connect, sign in on the browser page that comes up, and you’re good to go.

Panama can be backwards in some ways, but also very forward in many other important ways.

Panama immigration issued a decree a week ago that resulted in a lot of confusion. I posted about it here. It said quite clearly that tourists will now have visas for 90 days, instead of the previous 180 days and we all got nervous. What does this mean for people here as tourists?

There was confusion everywhere. US and Canadian citizens were being told that they still had 180 days. But, there were also stories about people boarding planes to Panama being told to change their return tickets to a date less than 90 days out. There were discussions on the usual forums and Facebook groups as people tried to figure out what is going on, but nobody had any definitive answers from the authorities.

Immigration must have gotten too many calls because yesterday a link was shared to this TV program where the director of immigration was explaining the recent changes.
Director de Migración aclara decreto sobre visas para turistas extranjeros

Any of you native Spanish speakers who have the time, please check this out and make sure I understood it correctly.

First, he talks about the part where people who have submitted applications for residency get 6 months instead of the previous 1 year. He said this puts the responsibility on immigration to process and respond to the applications in less than 6 months. I think they are already doing this, but this is a guarantee that they will continue to get it done quickly.

Then, the more important part. Panama has reciprocal agreements with many countries such as USA, Canada, UK, and Latin American countries. Their citizens can visit Panama for 180 days, and Panamanians can visit those countries for 180 days. Nothing has changed with this. Other countries who don’t have an agreement, those citizens must apply for a visa before they can come to Panama. These visas will now be only 90 days, not the 180 days they were before the decree. This is the only thing that is changed by the recent degree.

There is a Wikipedia page HERE that list the countries with reciprocal agreements. I noticed that on this page also, they mention that visas are now 90 days, not 180. But, below, they list the countries that do not require a visa. I think there is where we all got so confused! If we aren’t required to get a visa, then the length of the visa doesn’t affect us.

Whew! I think we have it straight now. But, TIP (this is Panama), and Spanish is not my first language so I give no guarantees that these are the absolute facts. Even if they are, everything is subject to change at any time.

This is not an unknown state for me, especially living in another country and culture, and especially as disorganized as I can be at times.

Recently I posted about the decree decreasing tourist visas from 180 to 90 days. This is being discussed a lot in the usual forums and Facebook groups, and there are a lot of unanswered questions. One of my readers said a response from the US embassy indicated that we still get 180 days. Our embassy warden also asked for clarification and will post information on his blog at chiriquichatter.net I went to immigration on Saturday, but they are only open Mon-Fri so I wasn’t able to talk with anyone.

The decree sounds quite clear. Tourists get a 90 day visa. But, does this apply to all of us? Are tourists still able to do “border runs”, come back into Panama with a fresh stamp in their passport and get another 90 days? People who came in before the decree, are they still allowed 180 days or are they also limited to 90 days from their passport stamp? I try to only post official written information, not rumors, and it may take a while to get all this sorted out but I’ll post answers if and when they become available.

Then, there is me. Sometimes I leave interesting but unimportant email for “later”. You all know how that goes. It piles up, gets pushed further down in the mailbox, and sometimes important stuff gets lost along with it. Or, I want to give something more thought or write when I have more time, and I get distracted and it gets buried. I try to be good about answering emails within a day or two so if you write me and don’t hear back, please poke me and remind me.

I also correspond with quite a few people on line, and often it’s hard to keep everyone straight. If I meet someone and have a face to go with the name, that helps a lot but usually I only have black words on a white screen. I save correspondence in a folder, but sometimes even with that I can’t remember what we talked about. And, if you change email addresses, then in my mind you are an entirely new person.

Not everyone is a good candidate for moving to another country. Often it’s hard for me to determine what is going on with a person after only one or two emails. If it sounds like you have believed those “come live in paradise” publications, have never spent time here, don’t speak any Spanish, don’t realize the differences and challenges you will face, but are packing and buying plane tickets then I will definitely rain all over your dreams and try to slap you upside the head with reality. Sometimes I do this unnecessarily and I’m thankful that people have responded positively anyway. But, I’d much rather discourage someone early than have them move and find out it isn’t want they thought or can live with.

But, sometimes I meet with people who have come to Panama to check it out, and almost always it’s a really nice experience and many have developed into lasting friendships. This is one of the things I really enjoy about the blog. We have met so many interesting people!

UPDATE! This information turned out to be incorrect. The change is only for people from countries that have to apply for a visa before being allowed in Panama. It does not apply to people from the US, Canada, and the many other countries who have a reciprocal agreement with Panama. See the later post here. 

President Varela published a decree on January 10th that stated the tourist visa would be 90 days (it used to be 180 days). If you are applying for residency you can get permission to be here for 6 months (it used to be a year).

What does this mean? TIP (this is Panama) and no one knows exactly. But it looks like Panama is trying to discourage the permanent tourist thing.

Up until now, it has been possible to stay in Panama for 180 days, leave for a while, then return and get another 180 days. “A while” is ambiguous. It used to be that it could be done in a day, checking out of Panama and into Costa Rica, and then immediately reversing the process and checking out of Costa Rica and back into Panama. Now it is usually at least overnight, or sometimes 72 hours before the officials will let you back into Panama. 72 hours is said to be the official rule but nobody can find where this rule is written down.

Now, however, tourists get a visa for 90 days. What happens after 90 days? Can you make a “border run” and get another 90 days? (not a change for many since your foreign drivers license is only good for 90 days) At first it looked like $50 would get you an extension for 6 months but on careful reading, it looks like this only applies to people waiting to get their residency application processed so it wouldn’t apply to tourists.

The decree is here.

Article 1, in my best attempt to translate says –

The immigration authorities of the National Immigration service will issue a tourist visa valid for a term of no more than ninety days, if the foreigner complies with the requirements (loosely translated) of international agreements with Panama and reciprocal principals.

The National Immigration Service will issue a card of transit for 6 months for foreigners who have presented a request in the categories and subcategories of temporary residents and permanent residents. (article 2 says this costs $50)

There is a news article in English here.

Is this a good thing? There have been a lot of people coming here from Colombia and Venezuela and Panamanians are afraid of that effect on the country, especially if they are poor and don’t have means to take care of themselves of they get into trouble. A tourist also isn’t subjected to any background checks. Even expats from the US have gotten sick without the means to pay and then became a drain on the health care system, or there have been criminals, or people running from creditors.

I’m glad we are legal residents here. I know the process is tedious and costs money, but now we don’t have to worry about any of this. I feel good that we have made this commitment to the country we love. If you plan to live here as a permanent tourist, it is probably a very good idea to have a Plan B in case this becomes no longer possible.