Tag Archives: Retirement

April 21, 2011 · 9:49 am

Panamá Wrap Up

I finished my trip to Panamá shortly after six p.m. last night when I unlocked the door to the house on the side of the mountain. I accomplished everything I wanted to do in a whirlwind of activity.

Sunday took the bus to the city and checked in to La Jungla House Hostel at the edge of the El Cangrejo (The Crab)  neighborhood which is where I have always stayed when in The City. It’s full of good restaurants and it’s probably one of the safest areas there, too. I can’t find a home page for the hostel but just Googling it will bring up dozens of hostel booking sites where you can check it out for yourself.

Hostels aren’t hotels and you have to accept that by hotel standards hostels are generally dumps. However hostels have some advantages over hotels which is why I prefer to stay in them. They are generally less expensive than hotels, especially if you’re willing to take a bed in one of the dorm-type rooms which I’m not. Dorm room = $10 Private Room $28. But I had A/C and a ceiling fan. The bed was comfortable and being at the back of the facility it was quiet.

Downside: shared bathroom. It was very clean but only cold water shower and sometimes when you REALLY gotta GO, someone else is using the place so you search for one of the other bathrooms which might be empty.

La Jungla is on the sixth floor (5th by their reckoning) and on Monday afternoon and evening the elevator was out of order. HUGE bummer!

They have a big kitchen and a lot of the really budget guests cooked their meals there. They have a GREAT, FREE, pancake breakfast. A local girl comes in and cooks them for everyone between 7:30 and 8:30. There is also a cooler where you can purchase a variety of cold drinks, sodas, Gatorade, beer, at reasonable prices or you can go to one of the “super minis” nearby and keep your stuff in the refrigerator.

What I like most about hostels is meeting the other guests. In a hotel you get your room, and unless there’s a bar/lounge in the hotel you never get to meet anyone else, and I’m not a bar/lounge habitue anyway. At La Jungla there were people from all over the world, but only one other old fart like myself. Here’s the lineup of guests I met there. They came from Brazil, Argentina, Israel, Australia, England, Wales, Sweden, Holland, Canada and a couple of other gringos who were in PC studying Spanish. The Canadian had ridden a bicycle from the US/Mexico border all the way to PC. He had 25 flat tires on his journey.

I got the the bus terminal Wednesday morning a little before 8 a.m. to find the line to the ticket counter for David stretching, no exaggeration, more than a city block long. It took an hour and twenty five minutes to get up to the counter to buy my ticket. I was absolutely positive that with all the people in line I wouldn’t get on a bus that would be leaving before the middle of the afternoon but was pleasantly pleased to be leaving on a bus only an hour later. One thing to remember on these nice, shiny new buses is that they are air conditioned and they love to crank it up full blast. Knowing this from previous trips I always carry a small travel blanket and it saved me yesterday.

We pulled into David at ten to five. The bus for Potrerillos Arriba leaves the terminal on the hour and there’s only one each hour. Fortunately my bag was one of the first unloaded and I was able to scramble up to my local bus gate and get on board about three minutes before it took off and I arrived back home at just after six o’clock, tired but satisfied with my little trip.

1 Comment

Filed under Living Abroad, panama, Retirement Abroad

Tagged as

April 19, 2011 · 3:17 pm

Paperwork Done

The first steps towards acquiring my Panamanian driver’s license was accomplished yesterday.

First stop was to the New American Embassy, out in Clayton in the old Canal Zone. Unlike the old Embassy which was an attractive building in downtown Panama City Bay facing the bay, the new one reflects today’s realities of mad bombers and terrorists. To my eye it had a bunker-like appearance with more in common with a super-max prison than anything else.

What surprised me was that there were no marines on guard at the entrance where you check in but instead it was a private Panamanian security company with people of limited English fluency.

Inside the Consular Services section people waited patiently for their numbers to be called and a loudspeaker was in constant operation directing people to one of 14 windows to address whatever business they had at the Embassy. It was surprising how fast people were dealt with.

To get the affidavit I needed to get my driver’s license I was directed right to the 15th window. The girl checked my current Florida driver’s license for the expiration date and my Panamanian-issue “carnet.” While I was filling out the form an American woman took her place at the window with a stack of papers at least two inches high. Something to do with the sale of a house or property somewhere. The girl behind the bullet-proof glass went through each page and putting little Post-it tabs on each one that required a signature. I had to wait patiently while all this going on. Her fee was $300.

When I got my shot again I had to pay $51 for the affidavit to be notarized. But the girl didn’t do that, she took my money and said I would be called by name to window 13 which didn’t seem too auspicious to me. There was a man and a woman at the window when I took my seat nearby. He was an older gringo and she was a young Panamanian. They were married and there was some issue with paperwork they were having a problem with. I couldn’t follow what was going on too well, but I believe it had something to do with getting her a visa to live in the States. It went on and on and on and on with the gringo digressing into stories that seemed to have little to do with the problem that needed to be addressed.

I was next up, was given the affidavit  which I signed and in less than a minute I was done. All together I was there for less than an hour.

The next stop was the Panama Foreign Ministry office (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores). I had about a 10 minute wait before my number was called. The girl at the counter (NO bullet-proof glass) glanced at the papers, gave me some kind of a form, told me to go to the Banco National directly beneath their offices and purchase two $1 stamps (timbres) and return at 4:30 to pick up my affidavit.

One of the nice thing about Panamanian banks is there’s a special line for “Jubilados” like myself.  There was a man at the counter who left in less than a minute. I presented the forms I’d received upstairs which were stamped with a rubber stamp. They love those things here and the wielders bang them on the papers with as much force as they can muster. I was out of the bank in less than five minutes.  It was just past 10 in the morning so I returned to the hostel.

The Foreign Ministry Office official closing time is listed as 4:45 so I showed up a little after 4. There was only one other customer there so I went directly up to the counter, presented the rubber-stamped forms to a young man who came out with the Embassy affidavit. I attached the “timbres” to the back of the form which were then whapped with another rubber stamp and I was finished. Total time at the Ministry was no more than five minutes and I was back out on the street. It took me much longer than that to catch a cab bck to the hostel.

In the cab I looked at the form that had been attached to the affidavit. Essentially it said something like “yeah, this looks like it comes from the U.S. Embassy but we aren’t going to vouch for its authenticity.”

So now I have  free day in Panama City. I just returned from lunch with Omar and his wife. He took me to the nearby Popeye’s Fried Chicken place nearby (at my request) and after work hours today I’ll be meeting with my lawyer, Lizi, for drinks. Early tomorrow morning I’ll get on the bus and head back to the mountain. I should be home before it gets dark.

1 Comment

Filed under Living Abroad, panama, Retirement Abroad, Uncategorized

Tagged as

April 12, 2011 · 9:12 am

Another One Bites The Dust

In the last month I’ve encountered three people (that includes a couple) who are packing up and returning to the Great White North. Their stories illustrate some of the common things that happen to people whose retirement dreams turn sour.

The three came to Panama and settled in Boquete on the other side of the valley from Potrerillos Arriba. In the last couple of years Boquete has been heavily promoted as being one of the premier spots for people to retire to when the wish to retire outside of the United States. It’s a place that was described by a sixth grader at a school in David as “Gringolandia.”  There are a lot of expats who have settled in and around Boquete many of them in gated “communities” where they are insulated from the reality of Panama and way too many of them don’t learn Spanish and are often an embarrassment when I see them in the local stores pissed off that the locals haven’t learned English so the expat’s lives would be easier. They’ve been taken in by the misinformation publications and sites like “International Living” who say “many of the locals speak English. NO THEY DON’T! Nor should they. The language here is Spanish and YOU should learn THEIR language, not the other way around.

Dealing with the language for the monoglots who only operate in English is one of the biggest reasons so many people leave. Of the three people mentioned earlier not learning to speak Spanish played a great part in their decision to return north of the border. I talked to the single man who was leaving. He is doing it for health reasons which is a valid excuse but part of his problem is he “can’t find a doctor, here, who speaks English.” Well, MY doctor here speaks near-perfect English. Also this gentleman is from Mississippi and his accent is so thick you can, as they say, cut it with a knife. Now, not to put down anyone from the great state of Mississippi, I had a problem understanding his speech and I’ve been speaking English since I was able to speak at all. He said he’d tried to learn Spanish but he was too old, which is another weak excuse although I’m sure that with his accent no Panamanian would have been able to understand his Spanish anyway.

The couple fall into the biggest category of quitters. Though they say they did all their “due diligence” before committing themselves to living here I think they deluded themselves. They read all the propaganda about how this is a paradise. They came down, looked around, found “Gringolandia” and bought a house. Then, not speaking the language, they became disenchanted and when “culture shock” landed on them with both feet they succumbed and are selling their house at a loss. Besides not learning to speak the language they didn’t do one of the most important things of all which is to have come down here and rented a place for at least six months to see if they could actually make the transition.

Not everyone can, nor should they, pack up their old way of life and move to a different country where the customs and language are so different. It takes a special kind of person to pull it off. It take a commitment that most people don’t possess. Of all my friends, relatives and acquaintances in the States I only know ONE who could pull it off and that’s because he has at various times in his life. Because of circumstances beyond his control he’s living in the States now, but in the past Bill’s lived for at least six years in France, three or four in Spain and spent, literally, years in Mexico and Guatemala. He speaks both French and Spanish. He’s a few years away from retirement age but it wouldn’t surprise me that when he hits the magic number he’ll drift south of the Rio Grande and be successful at it.

The big hurdle for everyone who leaves their comfort zone in the States is, of course, culture shock. It WILL hit you. Just how long that will take before it hits varies from person to person but it is inevitable. Your success depends on how you cope with it and whether you can work your way through it or not. It hit me in France at about the six month mark and that’s about when it gets most people. I really wanted to leave, but I’d committed myself to doing a job and so I stuck it out and am glad I did. In fact, I was hit twice with culture shock. When I returned to the States after being abroad for nearly four years again at about the six month mark I wanted to clear out and thought seriously about returning to France. I didn’t, of course, but the determination to leave the States stayed with me until I could actually get things together and do it. I haven’t had a problem with culture shock here in Panama and I don’t think I will, having gone through it twice I know how to roll with the flow now and deal with things as they are.

It isn’t just moving to another country that can be a problem for people in their retirement years. Want a great deal on a nice sailboat? Go to places like the Virgin Islands, the Rio Dulce in Guatemala and other “destination” ports. There are plenty of boats there that are owned by people who dreamed of sailing around the world, bought a boat, sold everything and took off only to abandon their dream at their first distant port of call. Reality bit them in the pooper and they discovered that the “cruising life” is little more than repairing broken gear in exotic locations without the proper tools or the skills to actually do the job. Usually, though not always, it’s the woman who gives up first. I remember one woman in Guatemala who was forcing the end of the adventure because she couldn’t cope with the lack of shopping malls and places to get her nails done. I’m not making that up. That’s exactly what she said. Of course I think that’s stupid, but for her it was a valid reason for going back and who am I to ridicule her reasons. There hers and not mine.

I feel sorry for those people whose dreams lie ship wrecked on the bleak shores of reality but that’s how life goes sometimes.

Things are changing here in Panama recently. The 29th of this month will mark my first anniversary. The seasons are changing. After a long dry spell we’re starting to get rain on a nearly daily basis now. Not the drenching frog-choking gully washers of last year, but a couple of hours of the wet every day. Gas prices are over $4/gallon now which is driving up the cost of transportation and as a result food prices are rising and it’s hard for the ordinary Panamanian. Yesterday I took the bus down the mountain to do some grocery shopping. What used to cost 90¢ for the one-way trip is now $1.05.

3 Comments

Filed under Culture Shock, Living Abroad, panama, Retirement, Retirement Abroad, Uncategorized

Tagged as

April 8, 2011 · 8:22 am

An Arrrrrgh! Moment

And that’s not pirate talk.

This morning, as every morning, I got up and fumbled around in the kitchen. Ground my Finca de Ruiz Tuesta Italiano beans to brew my morning eye-opener. Add water to the bottom part of the mocha pot, grounds in the funnel and set on the burner. The stove is gas and has an automatic lighting function. Click, click, clickclickclickclickclick. Nothing. Zero! Zip! Nada! Rien!

Minor irritation because I’m not caffeinated yet, and there are two 100 pound tanks out in the shed (it’s called a “deposito” here. I like that word. A place where you “deposit” the detritus of your life.)

So, I go out, switch from one tank to the other. Back at the stove…Click, click, clickclickclickclickclick. Nothing. Zero! Zip! Nada! Rien! Again!

Now THAT’S an Arrrrrgh moment.

It’s only 6:20 a.m. so it’s too early to call the gas people, but thank goodness there’s a microwave and a French Press and at least the electricity is working so I was able to get that first cup of coffee.

An hour later I called Tropigas and made arrangements to get the tanks changed. While I enjoy talking to the locals in Spanish I HATE talking on the phone. You don’t get the body language signs that you do when talking to someone face-to-face and waving your hands around in the air has absolutely NO IMPACT when you’re talking on the  phone.

Anyway, we got things worked out and supposedly Señor Kenny will be here around 2:30 this afternoon. I didn’t ask if that was ACTUAL time or PANAMANIAN time. Those are two entirely different things. We’ll see.

2 Comments

Filed under Living Abroad, panama, Retirement Abroad

Tagged as

March 2, 2011 · 6:24 am

The Difference Half A Century Makes

I LOVE the dawn. Seeing the world wake up. Listening to the roosters calling up here on the side of the mountain in Panama.

When I was 18 I used to stay up all night so I could see the dawn. At 68 I turn in early so I can wake up and see it.

I KNOW I posted this video before but I like it.

The dawn is such a precious thing there are several words in the Spanish language for it: La Alba, La Madrugada describe the time and amanecer describes the process of the dawn.

Of the two words, La Alba is used most often in poetry.

1 Comment

Filed under Living Abroad, panama, Retirement, Retirement Abroad

Tagged as

December 4, 2010 · 3:31 pm

Learning Curves Can Cost Ya!

As my readers know the house here in Boquerón doesn’t have an internet connection so I got a USB modem so I could stay connected. I signed on to a 2 gig plan meaning I can up/download two gigs of information each month.

After two weeks I couldn’t sign on any longer. There were all kinds of theories as to why. One was that Cable and Wireless hadn’t been paid, but a quick check while signed on from the Info Plaza showed this not to be the case. Then it was thought that perhaps in disconnecting the modem without first having clicked the tiny, microscopic icon one is supposed to use to safely remove such things as modems and thumb drives. This, too, wasn’t the problem.

On the sixth day with no connection from the house I went with the modem to my agent who happened to be on the phone with the C&W people in Panama City who said that I had gone way over the monthly limit and had racked up 1.35 gigs of overtime to the tune of $138.76! I couldn’t believe it, and though I’ve been playing around with computers since 1995 I learned a heap yesterday.

Most of the blogs I like to follow daily are extremely photo intensive and most of them aren’t “compressed” so they gobble up a lot of megabytes each time I click on one. Bummer. Things like Yahoo and MSN Hotmail are compressed and don’t jack up the usage at nearly the same rate. But still, I had downloaded a bit over half of my monthly allotment in just two weeks of use.

What really killed me was posting to this blog. I, too, like to post a lot of photos and since they aren’t “compressed” you can almost hear the meter running. Just two of my most recent post chalked up half a gig alone. Reluctantly I went to the C&W main office in David and forked over the dough and have rethought how I will have to approach my internet experience until I get back to Potrerillos where I’m not limited in my usage.

In the past and even here using the Info Plaza I would go to the sites I like, copy them and past them into a Word document and place it in a folder marked “Read Later.” The only disadvantage to that is on blogs I’m not able to make comments immediately. For news items and such it doesn’t matter.

So, I can’t use my modem until the middle of December and will have to rely on the Info Plaza for posting new items to my blog. I’ll just have to write my posts at home first and paste them from the Plaza restricting my home usage to emails as much as possible.

4 Comments

Filed under Living Abroad, Retirement, Retirement Abroad, Uncategorized, writing

Tagged as

October 18, 2010 · 6:10 pm

A Quick Peek At Boqueron

I rented the house in Boqueron without the slightest idea of what the town looked like. In a lot of ways it really didn’t matter. What DID matter was that I needed to find a place that would give me a six month lease. It had to be furnished with a functioning kitchen consisting of at least a working refrigerator and a stove with an oven. It had to have easy and close access to transportation and fit within my limited budget.

One place I looked at would actually be in sight of where I’m living now if it wasn’t for a line of trees in the way. It’s right across the street from where I catch the bus to go down to David and Dolega.

I’ve always liked this house with its attractive landscaping and when I was told that it was furnished and available for $175 a month I couldn’t wait to take a look at it. Well, it gives meaning to not judging a book by its cover. The interior left a lot to be desired. What pass for rooms are more like cubicles. The walls, made of painted cement block, extend up from the floor to a height of about seven feet and there are no ceilings. In fact there are no ceilings at all, simply the tin roof topping everything and there’s no telling what it must sound like in the nearly daily deluges we get here. The kitchen, such as it is, consists of a refrigerator that probably saw better days a couple of decades ago and the cooking arrangements are a two-burner contraption similar to what I kept in Fort Lauderdale for hurricane emergencies. To get to the toilet you have to go out the back door to a facility that could only have been an after thought. Not exactly an out house but pretty damned close. The front and back doors are secured with padlocks.  And there is no hot water, either.

Fortunately I was able to beg off giving an answer right away by saying, truthfully, that I had made an appointment to see the house in Boqueron the next day and since I’d given my word I had to go.

Today I decided to go check out the town where I’ll be living. The transportation situation is a bit better from David to Boqueron than it is to Potrerillos Arriba. Here there’s a bus once an hour. The buses run from the terminal in David to Boqueron on the hour and half hour. It costs me 90¢ to take the bus from here to David. It’s 45¢ down to Dolega. From David to Boqueron is a half buck with the Jubilado discount. There are some alternatives if I wouldn’t want to wait for the bus that goes directly into Boqueron. I could take the buses that go to La Concepcion, Puerto Armuelles or La Frontera and get off at the intersection where the road from Boqueron meets the Interamerican Highway. But then I’d have to take a cab to the house which is about two and a half kilometers from the main highway.

I was pleasantly surprised by what I found Boqueron to be. It’s slightly smaller than my favorite, Dolega, with a population of about 1,500. Like Dolega, the place is clean. The residents obviously take pride in their town. You won’t find huge, gringo-style homes here. Rather they are generally medium-sized, well maintained and, once more, would fit right in with most middle-class residential neighborhoods in southeast Florida.

As in Dolega, the streets off of the main drag have a rural feel to them.

Incidentally, about an hour later, waiting at the bus to go back to David, I talked with the girl in the photo. Her tee shirt said something about being an English student. She’s been studying for about a year and does quite well. She says she writes English very well but has a problem with the spoken word since none of her fellow students want to speak it outside of class. She wants to be a teacher and apparently it is now a requirement in Panama for teachers to be able to speak English.

I kind of like the idea of City Hall being called a Palace…

There were two paintings on the face of the building:

God – Country – Work

For the Benefit of the World

In the first crest there’s a reason for the machete. The things are everywhere. Riding on the bus the Indian men often have one as they go to and from work. And they are artists with them, too. Over the weekend two Indians chopped back the vegetation around the house and they accomplished it in about a third of the time, or less, than it would have taken me to do with the weed whacker. A while back there was a youngster on the bus going to some pageant, apparently, dressed in traditional country garb and sporting a toy machete stuck in his sash. But I’m wondering if the book over the machete in the crest is trying to send a subliminal message like: “get an education or you’re going to be using one of these for the rest of your working life.”

The central picture on the second crest is obviously the Canal the country is so rightfully proud of, but what’s with the Hell’s Angels motorcycle patch in the lower right?

Right next to the Town Hall is a covered basketball court. As it was noon time when I was there, several municipal workers were sitting on the bleachers having their lunch.

Down the road aways, and though I didn’t visit it, there is a baseball stadium.

Naturally the center of every town here in Panama has a church. The one in Boqueron is modern and, I think, quite attractive. Unfortunately there was no way to get a shot of the whole church and its bell tower without those damned electric lines in the way.

Of course no town would be complete without a central park and I think the one in Boqueron is pretty nice.

Down a pretty steep hill, which I didn’t try to negotiate today. is the town’s Fair Ground but I’m curious what Club Lazo is about. Anyway, they’re waiting for us.

There are a couple of small “tiendas” in the town as well as the local “Chino’s.” Most of the small markets in Panama are owned by Chinese. Here you can get most of the staples you need, a limited supply of veggies and meats. For major shopping you need to go to David, or, most likely since it’s closer, La Concepcion.

Naturally, since Boqueron is only 300 feet  above sea level it’s going to be a lot hotter than it is up on the side of the mountain. But not to worry, there’s plenty of cold suds at Bar Beny. Wonder if the Jets drink here?

Overall I think Boqueron is equally as attractive as Dolega, but there are warts to every thing of beauty. In this case I found it at the bus stop waiting to go back to David.

I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in Boqueron today. It was clouding up fast and I wanted to get out before it started raining. I managed to avoid it until I got back up on the hill, but I never leave home without my umbrella. I’m looking forward to spending the next six months in this pretty little town.

 

 

 

2 Comments

Filed under Boqueron Panama, Living Abroad, panama, Retirement Abroad

Tagged as

August 22, 2010 · 10:57 am

A Stroll Around Dolega, Panama

In a little more than two months I will have to leave this delightful location in Potrerillos Arriba.

The owners will be back and I have started to consider where to go next. I may try to find another house sitting gig but I might also just start renting somewhere. My original plan on moving to Panama was to build a houseboat and settle down in the Bocas del Toro archipelago. That’s still a possibility but that dream, for many reasons, is starting to fade.

I know I don’t want to move to Panama City. If I wanted to live somewhere with high rise buildings surrounded by people speaking Spanish I would have just stayed in southeast Florida. I sometimes think of trying one of the beach communities on the Pacific Ocean an hour or two west of Panama City.

But, quite frankly, I really like it here in Chiriqui province. I like the city of David. It has pretty much everything you could want in the commercial sense: banks, shopping, good transportation and, probably, the best hospitals outside of the capitol. Growing older and carrying around three stents that’s an unfortunate but important consideration.

One of the few advantages of living in Potrerillos Arriba is the climate. At 2,600 feet it’s constantly Spring time. Right now, at 9:00 a.m. it’s 76F. In Fort Lauderdale it’s 82 and predicted to top out in the low 90s whereas we’re predicted to hit a hair above 78. Down in David, though, you get the hot and sultry temperatures one would expect situated only a little more than eight degrees north of the equator. It’s 80 there now and expected to hit a heat-indexed high of nearly 90 degrees.

I am lucky to have had the opportunity to live here just as I had the good fortune to live on the French Riviera. But Potrerillos Arriba is a bit too isolated for me to want to stay. There’s not much to do here so I’m going to move. I DON’T want to go to Boquete which so many publications lately have been touting as one of the best places to retire in the world. I don’t want to move there precisely for that reason. I have an aversion to such hyped up places. I also don’t want to move down into David itself. It’s not the heat and humidity. I can deal with that having lived in Fort Lauderdale for the previous 17 years. One of the big downsides of David is they often have a real problem with water. Last week, for instance, more than half the city didn’t have any for several days which is a sad state of affairs for a city with a population of about 150,000. It seems that all the rain we’ve been having up here along with the collapse of a dam being built for hydroelectric production below the town of Dolega caused silting problems at the water plant which was shut down and the spare parts needed to repair it had to come from Germany. Not a good situation.

I’ve been thinking about the possibility of trying to find a place to rent in Dolega, which is about half way between where I am now and David.

It’s certainly not a major metropolitan area but it has a bit more to offer than Potrerillos. First of all, transportation is better which is a major concern for someone without a car. Up here a bus comes by about once an hour. I just missed one last week meaning I had to wait another hour. Fortunately I always bring my iPod along with me so I spent it sitting in the sun listening to a book I’d downloaded from Audible.com. In Dolega buses leave from the terminal about every ten minutes making getting back and forth much more convenient. There are several small grocery stores in the town as well as several hardware stores and at least three internet cafes.

Yesterday I took a stroll around Dolega and this is how it looked to me.

Off of the main road that leads down to David there is often a rural feeling.

Most of the houses are middle-class and would fit right in to many southeast Florida communities.

While there are McMansions to be found on the road up to Potrerillos Arriba and around Boguete, there are houses in Dolega that seem to subscribe to the tiny house philosophy taking root in the States.

Many houses here in Panama, especially those owned by the less affluent, not only are small in size but it’s common to only paint the side of the house facing the road.

And most people in Dolega still dry their laundry the old fashioned way.

It’s common for people to keep chickens around their homes. When I have my morning cup of coffee as the sun comes up I hear roosters crowing from all points of the compass.

The majority of houses here in Panama are built with concrete block since termites are a huge problem and wood houses are nothing more than food. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

This one seems to have been abandoned quite some time ago.

Because it’s only 900 feet above sea level Dolega is noticeably hotter than Potrerillos Arriba. Much more like David, but scattered around town are tiendas where you can stop and get a cold soft drink or a beer to go.

There were also shaded places alongside streams flowing through the town offering a nice respite from the heat.

Some have benches beside the water; a good place to sit and contemplate how wonderful life can be.

If you’re looking for something more active, Dolega features a very nice baseball stadium.

Baseball is extremely popular in Panama as it is wherever Americans have been an influential part of a country’s life: Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and here. There are several players from Panama playing in  major league teams in the U.S, Carlos Ruiz plays for the Phillies, Manano Rivera wears Yankee pinstripes, and Carlos Lee for the Astros just to name three. The big newspapers in Panama carry MLB stories, scores and standings and cities throughout the Republic have stadiums and very good teams. Panama’s own version of the World Series is as closely followed as any World Cup Soccer matches. This year the Panama City Metros whipped Bocas del Toro in four games.

There was a Little League game going on when I stopped by the stadium. The little guy at bat is the catcher for his team and made a world-class catch of a foul ball while on his back a few minutes earlier to end the inning. I wish I’d gotten a picture of that. Good stance, no?

Naturally, soccer is HUGE here. The reason it’s so popular around the world is that there really is only ONE piece of equipment needed…a ball. Lots of things can delineate the goal: a pair of rocks, a couple of wadded up tee shirts, whatever the mind can imagine. I’ve seen a lot of small courts around for pick-up soccer games like this one. And if they get tired of kicking the ball they can throw it through the hoops.


This play area is at the bottom end of a nice park with benches around the edge. There were several groups of older men gathered to solve the world’s problems in case the church at the other end of the park isn’t able to.

As I was heading back to the bus stop several of the men on the benches moved along with me and headed to the jardin as I did for a cold sixty cent bottle of Panama beer.

Though you can’t really tell what it is in this picture, just behind the car there is an arena for cock fighting. I asked one of the men at the bar when the fights were held and there was one last night. I seems they are a weekly occurrence here.

I finished my beer and then sat across from this bus stop to wait for my ride back home.

Avicola Athenas is a huge agricultural corporation that supplies much of the province’s poultry and beef. Their main headquarters is about two kilometers below me. There’s a very small market there with excellent prices for, surprise, chicken. On the outside wall of their restaurant for the workers is a sign stating that a blending of capitalism and socialism is the best combination for peace and prosperity.

Most of the bus shelters in the area are “sponsored” by one or another corporate entity such as Avicola, Citrico and large citrus grower or one or another of the cell phone providers like Digicel.

I quite like Dolega and in the next few weeks will be seeing what might be available to rent come November.

5 Comments

Filed under Living Abroad, panama, Retirement Abroad

Tagged as ,

August 3, 2010 · 5:49 am

Learning A New Language

Having retired to Panama I’m having to deal with learning a new language. My third, actually. And while it’s a challenge it’s quite fun.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a blog by a French girl living in Australia describing the challenges she’s facing dealing with a new language. Now, Australian is sort of English in the same way the language of the U.S. is sort of English. They both derive from the same roots but each has veered off slightly and have become distinct in their own ways.

Also, yesterday I stumbled across this post in Bits and Pieces which came from A Public Flogging and there’s no telling where he might have appropriated it from. But I think it’s hilarious and is a good example of what people go through when they travel outside their linguistic comfort zone.

In 1965, in a noble attempt to help the rest of us understand Australians, Alistair Morrison published Let Stalk Strine, a glossary of terms used Down Under:

air fridge: average
bandry: boundary
dismal guernsey: decimal currency
egg nishner: air conditioner
garbler mince: a couple of minutes
marmon dead: Mom and Dad
rise up lides: razor blades
sag rapes: sour grapes
split nair dyke: splitting headache
stewnce: students
tiger look: take a look

“Aorta mica laura genst all these cars cummer ninner Sinny. Aorta have more buses. An aorta put more seats innem so you doan tefter stan aller toym — you carn tardly move innem air so crairded.”

The book went through 17 impressions in one year, a sign the problem had gotten completely out of hand. Just a few months before it appeared, the English author Monica Dickens had been signing copies of her latest book in a Sydney shop when a woman handed her a copy and said, “Emma Chisit.” Dickens inscribed the volume “To Emma Chisit” and handed it back. “No,” said the woman, leaning forward: “Emma Chisit?”

2 Comments

Filed under Learning a new language, Living Abroad, Retirement Abroad

Tagged as ,

July 15, 2010 · 4:20 am

Whacked By The Staff of Life

My neighbor and fellow blogger, Joyce, in a recent post in Living in Potrerillos, decried the lack of decent bread here in Panama…http://joycepa.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-staff-of-life/. I couldn’t agree more. What I have tried was simply inedible. Even my four-legged garbage disposal, Charlotte, wouldn’t touch the stuff and I’m hoping the remains won’t damage the compost heap. The only thing I like about bread in Panama is the name of the largest bakery – BIMBO Bread. (A big conglomerate, I guess, because I’ve seen Bimbo bread in Spain and Mexico as well.)

One of the things I truly miss about France is the bread. If happiness is a warm puppy then a crispy, fresh from the oven  French baguette is a mighty close second. It’s also a fact that no baguette ever makes it home from the boulangerie with the ends intact.

Recently I’ve made a couple of attempts at making bread myself. Previously I’ve only ventured into bread making a couple of times. One of my favorites, and enjoyed by everyone I know, has been cranberry bread. Actually this is more of a cake than a real bread and was something my mother made every Christmas time as I was growing up. The recipe is found on the back of every package of Ocean Spray whole cranberries. Around the holiday season bags are usually found in the produce section of the supermarket but the rest of the year you can often find them in the frozen food section.  Cranberry bread is easy to make and absolutely delicious but you’d never use it to construct a tuna salad sandwich with the stuff.

This is not a photo of MY cranberry bread but shamelessly ripped off from:

http://christines-cuisine.blogspot.com/2009/12/cranberry-orange-nut-bread.html

If you want something yummy, here’s the recipe from Ocean Spray:

CLASSIC CRANBERRY NUT BREAD

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
2 tablespoons shortening
1 egg, well beaten
1 1/2 cups Ocean Spray® Fresh or Frozen Cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped nuts

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a medium mixing bowl. Stir in orange juice, orange peel, shortening and egg. Mix until well blended. Stir in cranberries and nuts. Spread evenly in loaf pan.

Bake for 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely. Wrap and store overnight. Makes 1 loaf (16 slices).

PER SERVING (1 slice): Cal. 211, Fat Cal. 54, Protein 3grams, Carb. 37grams, Fat 6grams, Chol. 18mg., Sodium 313mg.

Richard’s Rating: Ease of preparation A, Satisfaction A+

The only “real” kind of bread I ever made previously was a family recipe my maternal grandmother used to make for “Shredded Wheat” bread. A light, wonderfully nutty-tasting bread that doesn’t require kneading.

I’d love to make this again, but none of the four supermarkets in David stock shredded wheat cereal and I have no idea what could be used as a substitute.

Richard’s rating: Ease of preparation A, Satisfaction A+

The other day I decided I’d try my hand at producing some of the real stuff and went online and Googled “bread recipies.” The search engine came up with approximately 2,900,000 hits. Okay, narrow it down a bit and add the word “simple.” THAT came up with 3,250,000 hits! How is that possible?

Being basically a lazy, lay-about I next tried “no knead bread” and knocked it down to only 305,000 possibilities. Here’s a video I found:

Needless to say mine didn’t turn out like that in the video even though I followed the instructions to the letter. The New York Times recipe, (click to link to it) as well as others that are basically the same, all say “dough will be shaggy and sticky.” Mine was, for, oh, maybe three milliseconds and then it turned into something else. Not knowing what I could do to change the situation other than just starting all over again I decided to just let things develop and see what happened.

The next day this is what I got:

Looks pretty good, but it would have made a better discus than a loaf of bread. One problem, I think, was that the Dutch oven I used was probably too large so the dough spread out and gave me a loaf about 2-1/2″ high. On my next trip down the mountain to David I’ll buy one a little smaller. I need to build up my kitchen items over the next few months anyway for the time I’ll leave this house.

Richard’s rating: Ease of preparation B, Satisfaction D -.

Tuesday I had a go at what was supposed to be an easy recipe for generic white bread complete with kneading. I went through all the steps required and it turned out a lot better than my first attempt and I came up with this:

Again, it’s not something I’d use to make sandwiches with, but still warm with a little butter it was heads and shoulders above Bimbo bread but still lacked a little je ne sais quoi. It did make excellent toast the next morning.

Richard’s rating: Ease of preparation C+, Satisfaction C.

I’m not going to give up yet, though.

3 Comments

Filed under Living Abroad, Retirement Abroad, Uncategorized

Tagged as