{"id":174,"date":"2023-01-28T09:02:30","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T14:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/?p=174"},"modified":"2023-01-28T09:02:30","modified_gmt":"2023-01-28T14:02:30","slug":"adventures-en-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"Adventures En Panama<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today marks 30 days since I began my trip to Panama, and I have to say that it has gone by really fast.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had a great time these last 30 days, and have learned a lot, not just about this beautiful country, but about myself.\u00a0 I can honestly say that this is the best I\u2019ve felt physically and mentally in several years.\u00a0 My mind is clear and while I\u2019m not doing anything other than living day to day, I am truly loving life.\u00a0 on the days that I don\u2019t play golf I walk an average of 3 to 4 miles.\u00a0 Once I got past being distracted by the view from my home office, I actually manage to work between 4 and 5 hours a day.\u00a0 Tuesday and Thursday are golf days, and we\u2019re usually done by noon which gives me time to get back and reply to emails and return client calls.\u00a0 Once a week, I make it over to Valentino Siento cigar club to hang out and have a cigar and a couple of Mojito\u2019s or some Jack Daniels. A couple of days each week I try to study and improve on my Spanish, but trust me, it\u2019s a work in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people in Panama have to be among the friendliest in the world.\u00a0 They are very welcoming, honest and hardworking people. The city is safe and I\u2019m able to walk anywhere stress free.\u00a0 I\u2019ve walked through what most would consider the worse neighborhoods in Panama City at night and never had a single problem.\u00a0 That\u2019s not to say there is no crime, as I\u2019m sure there is, but it\u2019s rare, and most crimes are what people here call crimes of opportunity.\u00a0 If you leave something of value out, it may get stolen, but that\u2019s true anywhere in the world, but on the flip side, you hear stories of people losing wallets, passports or other items of value and everything being returned unopened.\u00a0 Panamanians are patient (unless their driving), and most aren\u2019t in much of a rush which is both good and bad.\u00a0 If I had to choose the one thing that I\u2019m most surprised by in myself, it would be how patient I can be.\u00a0 I try to live my life at their pace, and I have to admit that it was a bit difficult for the first couple of weeks, but I\u2019ve settled in and now it\u2019s all good. The traffic in and around the city can be hideous, so patience is definitely a necessity.\u00a0 One day it takes 25 minutes for my Uber to get to the golf course, and the next it can take an hour, it just depends on traffic and road conditions.\u00a0 For the most part the roads in the city are good, but once you go a little outside of the city limits, they are pretty bad, and you can see drivers weaving all over the place to miss potholes. Given the traffic, and the way that people drive I\u2019m amazed that there aren\u2019t literally a hundred accidents every day, but somehow, they avoid each other. I take Uber everywhere, and honestly there are times when I think I\u2019m going to die or be seriously injured in an accident. Traffic can be bumper to bumper, and a car entering the street will just nudge their way out in front of the vehicle that one would assume has the right of way. In a 10-minute uber ride, this can happen 10 times, but I\u2019ve come to realize that this is how they drive and that they actually know what they’re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cost of living here is absolutely amazing, although it has to be for the average Panamanian to get by.\u00a0 I live in one of the best neighborhoods in the city, and my 3-month stay will cost me less than $5000 for rent and utilities.\u00a0 I have a view that is one of the best in the entire city and go to sleep and wake up to the ocean waves every day. Someone told me that a dozen eggs back home is about $8, well that same dozen large eggs here cost between $2.75 and $3.50 depending on where you buy them.\u00a0 I think that I\u2019ve cooked twice since I\u2019ve been here because it just doesn’t make sense to cook when on average, I can buy a dinner meal for less than $5.\u00a0 Two days ago, I purchased a full meal, rice, beans, chicken, salad and fruit for $3.48 and had enough left over for the next day.\u00a0 A 1-liter bottle of Jack Daniels is $28.50 at the local Price Mart (Costco) and a 2-liter bottle of Kirkland Vodka is $18. On the days that I want to treat myself, I have dinner at the cigar club where a full meal cost in the neighborhood of $25 which includes the appetizer and some days after golf, I get the lunch special at the Tucan 19th<\/sup> hole which includes the full meal, soup, desert and a drink for $9.\u00a0 Aside from what I\u2019ve listed, there isn\u2019t much else that I want or need that I didn\u2019t already have when I got here.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I absolutely love it here, but there are some things that I miss about being at home, not the least of which is the ability to see my grandchildren, hanging out with my close friends and talking smack at Fauquier Springs several days a week, coming home to that big house every day, and of course driving my truck. I miss things like Woodford Reserve (they don\u2019t have it here) and being able to order from Amazon and getting it the next day. The list of things that I don\u2019t miss is way too long to list, and not worth mentioning.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get used to not readily having the things and people that I miss at some point, and life will go on. While I never gave it much thought until now, I think it\u2019s probably a coin flip as to whether I will someday leave the US permanently, but for now I\u2019m just going to try and enjoy the next couple of months and hope that it\u2019s starting to get warm back in VA by the end of March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the next 2 months I\u2019m going to start seeing some other parts of the country, so be sure to keep up with me on my page at Adventures in Panama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today marks 30 days since I began my trip to Panama, and I have to say that it has gone by really fast.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had a great time these last 30 days, and have learned a lot, not just about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6BTIK-2O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175,"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crobrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}