What's It Like to Live in Gorgona Panama?

hi it's Jackie with Panama relocation tours thank you so much for joining me for our Saturday live stream I've been kind of in a rush rush rush mode today because I moved from one house to another house and I just finished about 30 minutes ago and I didn't really have time to get the whole lighting situation set up right so that's why it looks a little bit strange but the most important thing is we've got some great information coming for you from you just a little bit I'm entering I'm going to introduce Tim and Janet who will talk about moving to Panama and where they moved to but before we get started with that I just want to give a little bit of background about me and Panama relocation tours my name is Jackie Lang I'm the owner of Panama relocation tours and since 2010 we've offered all-inclusive six day seven night Panama relocation tours to help people have a super smooth move to Panama we also offer private tours for people that just want to go to one specific area and we also offer something called our online guide or the complete Panama relocation guide for people that are interested in um doing it on the on their set on their own just having the information and doing it without actually going on a tour um and some people tour is too expensive so the online guide is a a really budget friendly uh resource for you to be able to have a smooth move whichever way you go we're right here to help you with uh questions that you might have before you move to Panama in the process of moving and then once you get here you're still going to have questions all kinds of things are going to come up so we do offer ongoing Support also so I see a lot of people are coming in hi Monique from London we've got Minnesota Atlanta Canada um people from Maryland and Virginia California people from all over the place are coming in and then I do have uh Debbie and Chuck are on the line uh Debbie is my moderator so that um Everybody behaves whenever you're here if you don't behave she'll kick shabucha out so you better behave because she's just like a a mom and she's very strict so both without further Ado I want to go ahead and get started uh can everybody hear me okay give me a thumbs up if you can hear me or let me know if you have any hearing problems with the the audio this time okay so I'm gonna bring on Tim and Janet so hi champ hi Janet thank you so much for joining me for the Saturday live stream to share your story about moving to Panama so all right let's start out with where did you move from well we kind of took a long trip we've started out in Washington state and had to move to Arizona and we were there for four years after he got a call from work saying you need to be there and I figured Arizona be perfect for my health everything and it wasn't so great for Tim so he did some research found Jackie online tons of research a year later we ended up well two years later we ended up in Panama after looking at all the other options we decided Panama was going to be it for us yeah so did you check out other countries also or you know did you just kind of zoom in on Panama because Panama as you know is consistently ranked as the number one place to retire in the whole world for a lot of good reasons uh because you know I like the fact that it's a small country that it's not a really big country um we don't have very many crime problems here it uses the US dollar that's a big plus it has a very strong economy actually the strongest in all of Latin America in a stable government it doesn't have a a government like that's real divided like some other countries are um so everything's pretty stable here and a lot of people just love living here so what's not to love right you got the Pacific Ocean on one side of the country the Caribbean Sea on the other beautiful mountain range right down the middle and everything's uh just amazing you know I was a I was a process analyst uh in my real life and so I'm used to doing a lot of research and I actually came to Janet because I knew we were retiring soon and said what would you think about and I gave her a list and I don't think she thought at all about moving out of the country and I gave her a list which included Panama Costa Rica Vietnam Singapore Ireland Portugal and we started doing research and we started to kind of focus in on the things that were important and you mentioned a lot of those but we looked for politically stable economically stable safe good health care and we and all of those factors uh kind of folded into it I'm I get my health care through the Veterans Administration and I'm signed up through the foreign vets program and after after covid there was such a pent-up demand at the VA that to see somebody like a neuro-ophthalmologist as an example is a four-month process here I can get an appointment at an Earl ophthalmologist through the VA within 10 days now it's really important to for you know to be able to keep up with that stuff and to be able to see medical providers so that was one of the big factors but those are the reasons that you mentioned are kind of the reasons no hurricanes and no snow no tornadoes and not 120 degrees thank you not 120 degrees right well and you know I I know that you know this also but the great thing about Panama is you can pick your ideal weather some people love living they want that Ocean View they love the warmer weather I'm not one of those people but some people love that other people like the cooler weather up in the mountains which is what I like and then there's that little bit in between so you can just you know pick the weather that you really like there's not too many places in the world where you can do that so it's an amazing thing that Panama has to offer so um and you brought up a good point we I've heard this from so many veterans that in the United States that veterans would have a really hard time getting an appointment and then you know they rarely do you even see a doctor you might see a nurse or physician assistant and they you're just kind of a number you if you get five minutes with them you're really lucky and I've heard from a lot of veterans that you know the quality of the care that they get you know not only do they get seen faster but the quality of the Care is better I always say that in Panama they put the care back into health care because the doctor you're not just a number you're a person they take time to get to know you and they really I also like that they're not always just ready to say well let's take take this pill or let's uh you know do that surgery they sometimes do a much more holistic approach to Healing whatever the problem is and appreciate that that's what we found as well and I uh you know the the veterans programs that are available here are are really really not either through a very very reputable hospital we also see a local doctor as well that Janet sees and I see for just other things just regular stuff but the but they he is incredibly well trained very articulate speak he and his staff speak English impeccably which is helpful to us and since we're still learning we're able yeah but we're able to explain what's going on and frankly he's bright enough to take a look at the records that we provided and understand exactly what the issues are we've been very impressive with the healthcare here right I I've been very impressed with the healthcare here too um I think you know I got recovered really bad in uh 2020 and was in ICU for nine days and they saved me so you know I'm real impressed with the doctors here that's for sure so when you made the decision to move to Panama um did you come and check it out first or did you just make a move we came in September of 21 specifically to see what the rainy season was like and we were in Las Vegas oh like you said up on the hillside so it was about 70 degrees daily which was really nice overlooking the ocean jungle area it was beautiful um drive down to the Coronado area from there and you can you can tell the difference in the Heat and everything but when we got here and Carlos was our tour guide he's like yeah it's gonna rain and he took us to places and it rained for about an hour I mean just came down rainy real hard but you gotta remember we're from Washington State where it rains for a full month at a time and so we were telling Carlos this and he couldn't get over that I'm like this is nothing compared to the Washington rain so yeah so you took a private tour in the Coronado gorgona area demand for your services yeah that the tours were very very full very very fast yeah and we kept adding more and the sooner the day we'd added and fill up um because people people wanted to go so that and that's that's one of the reasons that I wanted to offer the private tours I didn't start offering those until October of 2020 um whenever Panama opened up the borders again because I knew some people um they were zoomed in on a certain area so there's no need in doing a seven day tour if you know you want to live at the beach in Coronado you can just do a tour there but also because of covered some people don't want to get on a bus Which one of the other people they'd rather just have a more private situation so um the private tours um people really enjoy the private tour so that they can have they can see exactly what they want to see and not things that they don't want to see it's exactly the right price point for them and um just everything's custom tailored to you so you did a one or two day tour with Carl and um I'm sure he showed a three-day tour so did he show you some houses to rent yeah yeah he took us down a lot a lot of apartments and some housing in Coronado all the way to um and this was one of the last places he showed us it's an older building so it's shorter than most of the apartment buildings around here it's only eight floors but and it's what 90 meters 100 meters 100 meters from the beach the view is to die for from the back area where the pool is we've got the mountains I guess to the east coast yeah and um it's just it's just a really beautiful area and we looked it up at an apartment we're here in gargana and for people on the live stream they don't know gorgona is probably about a five six minute drive um east of Coronado a lot of people have heard of Coronado but they don't know about gorgona so Gorgon is a little bit closer to Panama City and literally it's a five minute maybe six minute drive to get to Coronado and all the shopping that's available there but now there's so much shopping that's actually all the way to gorgona all the way to chummy so that shopping is all along there so you don't really have to go all the way to Coronado anymore right yeah Janet's favorite hair salon is at the Do It Center which is halfway between here and Coronado Reba Smith is a little closer to gorgona than it is Coronado there's a raise and a Super 99 in Coronado it is just incredibly convenient yeah they've built a lot of really modern shopping centers right there right on the north side of the Pan American highway from gargones super modern there's even a Cinnabon I heard is that true we're fans I seem to stay away from there yeah right in the Jewish Center there's a Burger King McDonald's Starbucks Cinnabon Pizza Hut there's a lobster place I mean it's not awful to have to go shopping then there's this huge um pharmacy at the end it has everything that you can imagine if they don't then we usually do Amazon anyways and it's very rare that they don't have something the Do It Center is basically an Ace Hardware um there's also a lot more restaurants that are going in in that area close to Arizona too so when you looked I'm sure you looked at some places in Coronado you probably looked at some stuff in San Carlos and riojado and I don't know if you went to chamele or not but you looked in that whole area so what made you decide that gergona was the right place for you was it the specific apartment that you saw or did you like that area better well I'll say that we kind of wanted to slow our Pace down we Coronado is a little bit busier than than this is around some of the areas of shopping areas and some of that what we really wanted to do when we left Phoenix is to get off the main drag in our condo in Phoenix was on the main drag so we wanted to get off the main drag and just slow down the pace what we found here is a really good ability to slow down but very very convenient like say five six minutes in Coronado and all the shopping we want to do we don't have a car yet so just you know you can walk to very quickly I guess there's time just in our area it there's a couple of restaurants really nice restaurants there's a pizza place and there's all kinds of little fruit and vegetable stands alongside the road lots of sandinia right now sandia's watermelon it's watermelon season exactly so right next to the international school in gorgona to the watermelon farm and there's always a table just on the other side of the street selling watermelons that are just ripe and beautiful and gosh it's really good we just really are enjoying it a lot of mom and pop shops uh Hondas um there's one lady down the street that has her she does her own ceramic she hand paints everything she's got a hammocks and pots and everything that she does by hand there so that's that's very nice so you moved to Panama in January right yes yes ma'am yeah yeah and do you already have your residency Visa you're temporary [Music] uh we had our backpack checks FBI background checks done in July of last year unfortunately because I have some health issues the VA would not release us to travel we had intended actually to be here in November and and we would have been fined for the due dates of the paperwork the challenge is by the time we got here our paperwork was outdated by about five days so yeah we had to redo the background checks we flew to Miami redid the background checks there there done there were in the process of submitting those so we should be finalizing that paperwork here in the next week or 10 days and we're really confident about that we feel really good about that so that's good so they can do the fingerprints and but they were going to cost more than a trip to Miami and I never been to Florida so I thought okay let's go see Florida yeah so it's it's so close so tell us tell us about um and you're renting did you you didn't buy you're just renting right yes ma'am right now we're renting we're we're seriously thinking about buying it because it is in a great location we would like the apartment it's a three bedroom two bath fairly large living dating area and has been renovated so it's an open kitchen area but that way once we're established here we know we can buy this place then we can start really doing more traveling and seeing the rest of place if we find something else so be it but and the and the owner's interested in selling but during the discussion about the rental gin it's a much better negotiator than I uh originally the cost would have been 900 and change at the end we ended up paying 800 a month for a three bedroom two bath 90 or so meters from the beach about 60 feet away from the pool or on the first floor we have a view of the mountains to the to out of our patio because we're on the ground floor the patio is huge it just really has turned into a really lovely situation and the owner's anxious to sell it so we're going to start those discussions here pretty quickly that's a really good price eight hundred dollars for gargona for a three bedroom excellent yeah yeah I didn't want to say noticed on the Facebook different Facebook's yours and some others they don't realize you can negotiate and if they say no hey it's no you pay what they want but if they say okay and I don't there was nothing yeah yeah it wasn't hard to ask and you know some of the negotiation um you know I lived in a VA for a couple of months and they wanted um quite a bit of money and I said and I was just going to be there for three months and I said well what if I pay for the whole three months in advance you know will you give it to me for this certain price so sometimes um whenever you dangle some money in front of their face you know that they're gonna get three months in advance or four months in advance and then that helps get the price down but um you know and it's you know sometimes if you're only want to sign a six-month lease the price is one thing but if you'll sign a 12-month lease and the price goes down a little bit more there's all kinds of things you can do and you know you can just flat out say you know that price is a little bit High what do I need to do to get the price to this this point and then you know let them tell you what you have to do you know what's it going to take to be able to get the price to that point right Janet's better at that than I am by far okay I said earlier we don't have a car yet we're planning on it since he can't drive I'm learning all the tricks and stuff from this taxi driver named Sergio love him to pieces and he really takes care of us because once he realized Tim was site deprived I guess he really made sure that he comes on time when we need him or tells us when he can come here uh gets us to where we need it quickly and Sergio has made it a very soft Landing yeah well we kind of over tip him because he's so good but we give him ten dollars for each you know ride to Coronado or to wherever we needed to go to and if he can't pick us up he always has someone else that's able to get us right away so very good so um just that so everybody knows um in after we um after I've talked to Tim and Janet just a little bit and they've shared some of their information then I'll let you know when you can start asking questions but please hold off on your questions until then so that Tim and Janet can finish telling their story about moving to Panama so even and so I'll let you know when you can ask questions so even without a car because you found Sergio you're not having a problem getting to wherever it is that you need to go no and I figure by the time you pay for a car you get the insurance and the gas and everything sergios comes out a little bit less than than having your own car now it's not as convenient right now this works it works great for us yeah yeah right we will eventually get a car Janet we'll learn how to drive it in this traffic and yeah I'm excited in L.A I know how to do this yeah but you know you brought up a really good point because I was um asking you know why did you pick gorgona versus Coronado or San Carlos or some of the other places and you're absolutely right that Coronado can be especially Friday Saturday Sunday it can be so crowded um it could take you 30 minutes um to get into Coronado from gorgona and if you go to merchantazo which is kind of like the Walmart of Panama forget it on a weekend don't even think about going because every single cash register has 20 people in the line yeah so exactly right but you can go to one of the stores right there in gorgona and get in and out and get what you need and there's no traffic and no congestion and nothing to worry about we made the mistake of trying to get into Coronado on the Thursday before Easter yeah that was a nightmare they have everything ConEd off and they only you have to go about two miles down and before you can turn around and come back and the only reason we needed to go there was to pick up mail and get a few more groceries and we were thinking because we're retired now we weren't thinking Easter we didn't think about Holy Week and you know so next time any holidays come up we'll just walk over to the super mercado and yeah we go early yeah I go early so the reason that it gets so crowded just so everybody knows the reason it gets so crowded in Coronado on the weekend is a lot of people that live in Panama City come to Coronado for the weekend they don't really go to cordona they don't so much go to San Carlos or Rio hacho they go to Coronado so that's why the traffic is incredibly um busy in in all those stores you know you can't get a table at a restaurant in Coronado so those are those are some important things that you need to take into consideration whenever you move to another area now there are a lot more social activities um a lot of live music and dancing and things like that in Coronado but you can get Sergio to drive you over there enjoy all of those things things enjoy some alcoholic beverages if you want to then have Sergio take you back home that's right you don't have to live in Coronado to be able to enjoy those other social activities you can go to them and between here and the beach is a little Snack Shack kind of a beer Hut it's right off the the street and we have made great friends with the owners of that they're from Ecuador and they purchased the family purchased this place all the family Works in it and they just they're just lovely lovely people and we have really enjoyed if we really want to go get something deep we can walk 50 yards right down the road here and you know right without a problem another one of the high rises here has a little kind of a little restaurant Cafe in there with a bar so you know you have your options to walk to you don't have to have a car here yeah like I said super mercados um there's a football field over here that they played soccer and yeah pickleball pickleball yeah there's Parks um there's laurelina is a old old restaurant beautiful building when they first said here moved here to Nuevo in the gorgona they opened it here so it's what 16 years old but it's great food great food the beach is so nice and when the tide is in you just have to kind of watch your timelines if you walk to the next place you may have to walk all the way back around if you wait too long but uh it's it's very nice I think of shells so you know so word to the wise and everybody that's coming to Panama to perhaps do a private tour or even on our all-inclusive tours we go to the Coronado gorgona Coronado area on a Sunday um so that you can see what the traffic is like on a weekend but if you come here and you do a private tour like a Monday Tuesday Wednesday um the scene is going to be completely different than it is on a Friday Saturday Sunday in the gorgona Coronado area so before you rush into making a decision to rent something or to buy something you know step back a little bit and don't rush into doing something on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday hold off and wait and see what the traffic's like on the weekend and then if it's a holiday weekend multiply it times 10 because that's what the traffic's going to be like if it's a holiday weekend and we have a lot of holidays in Panama um then whatever traffic that you think it's going to be much much more if it's a holiday weekend for Easter I heard that I'm 72 000 cars full of people left Panama City and could go to the Coronado Area 72 000 Cars full of people so imagine being in Coronado then yeah you know there also they're shutting down gosh just this month the ray store here uh is closing down to be refurbished it's set to reopen in October November time frame but that reduces the number of stores that are available which means you'll have a lot more people in the in the stores that are left gonna be busy yeah well but and you've got a Reba Smith a new Reba Smith in part of my city Reba Smith is my favorite store it's it's a little bit pricey um but anything you could possibly want you can find it there but Super 99 is a great store too really is Hey You Know Reba Smith though has things that we can't find at the Super 99 exactly Baker molasses with us and I'm like okay so when you go to buy brown sugar here it's not really brown sugar it's just from unprocessed sugar it doesn't have molasses in it so I have to go get the Molasses to add to my brown sugar and vanilla in order to get real yeah brown sugar but it works right and that's that's another important point that it does take a while the things that you're used to buying on your grocery list it takes a while to find out who has those things like organica organica they're going to always have molasses um over by it's over by novice so it's a little bit further west than where you are yeah but knowing that Reba Smith has it and you know there's some things that you might want to get at Reba Smith that you can't get at Super 99 some things you get at Super 99 that you can't get at Reba Smith and you just um um that's just the way that it is in Panama that you might have to go to a couple of different stores to get everything on your list exactly right yep now raise a lot of expats like race door because they catered to the English language with signs the signage yeah yeah and so a lot of times and we do a lot of Google translate and that's our that's our that's our friend friend right now and all you have to do is um ask the person you know you show them what is on your phone and they're oh okay and they're happy to go find it for you or show them where it is but we're learning slowly but I have to say that it takes a while that's a huge deficit and I would recommend that people get a level of confidence in terms of at least understanding Spanish when they get here right one of the things that I started doing shortly after I moved to Panama is I would make my list um in English of all the things that I wanted to buy but then I would intentionally look up each one of those words in Spanish so that I had my list in English and Spanish right next to each other so that if I need to find something I would try to pronounce it as best as I could when I first got here and ask people where was the thing in Spanish um and I did that because I made a really huge mistake my the first week I was here I went to the grocery store and I was I had a bunch of hummingbird feeders and I was looking for sugar to buy to make some sugar water for the hummingbird feeders and I saw this great big bag of white granulated stuff and it had Domino on it and I thought oh it must be Domino Sugar and then I got home and I thought you know I better look this up and it was Sal is salt so it's a good thing I didn't and I bought like a five pound bag so it's a good thing that I didn't uh make built water for the hummingbirds I would have killed them all but if I would have just you know looked up uh what's the word for sugar uh before before I went grocery shopping I didn't know the word for sugar whenever I first came here of course I know now but um sometimes you'll see onions but you don't see red onions so if you have that word in Spanish then it's easy you don't have to pull out Google translate or anything it helps you learn the Spanish word for each one of those different things that you're going to be buying yeah and the thing is Janet lived in Germany for seven years a long time ago learned German pretty well I am I have traveled a little bit for corporately for what I used to do I understand French and can speak French okay and so sometimes we'll start to speak Spanish and it pops out German or French Spanish words are very close to some German word so yeah okay wait a minute I lived in Germany for three years and became fluent in German also so I had that same problem that I would try to speak Spanish and German German would pop it up I no but there's people from all over the world moved to Panama so they're they're used to hearing uh weird pronunciations of the Spanish words and you know a German accent to a Spanish word or a French accent to a Spanish word and they're used to dealing with us uh foreigners they're so patients and if you try gosh are they really really helpful they just you know all you have to do is try your best before you know and they're they'll they'll bend over backwards to help you out yes so what about making uh friends in the area have you met some other people that you'd like to go out to dinner with and hang out how's that going so because we're on the first floor and we have this huge balcony next to us we sit out there and everybody that comes back from the beach has to go to the shower first so they don't have to but they come by they stop and they talk so we've gotten to know a lot of the people again in the building uh when we went to Miami I got on the everything Coronado website or Facebook page and I was just scanning through and see someone needing a place to stay for 10 days and I said oh my gosh that coincided perfectly so a lady from Quebec just laying came in watched our cat for us while we were gone she had the whole place to herself she's a lovely lady we got back and she had just left an hour before we got back it was perfect it was perfect yeah yeah so yeah yeah so we go we go down to Picasso in Coronado and we meet a lot of people there A lot of people from Canada that are just now leaving again because they only come down for their winter time um the Gold Coast Brewery the bench there's a lot of people not only expats but also residents that are here that are here full-time that they've just we've discovered that people here generally are just really lovely people at any of these restaurants everyone kind of knows you by sight and they oh hey how you doing and we'll talk for a little bit and right and you know um one of the other things is that I've in Panama is if you go into a restaurant and somebody hasn't seen you before they'll come over say you know you I don't remember seeing you before you just visiting or have you moved here and they'll introduce themselves instead of you just sitting there and they're sitting over there and then they say oh you mind if I join you and then everybody gets together and you just get to know people so that's that's the great thing about the expat lifestyle is people are quick to make friends yeah we when we lived in we were in tornado for a week and a half we met the lady across the street from us Road I guess because they're all kind of dirt roads um her name was Anna and she was from Canada and we invited her to go out to eat and about the only place open everything was kind of really full I guess it was another holiday but we went to a an Italian restaurant Luna Rosa and I'm allergic to garlic so but they were very accommodating and most places I've gone to say oh yeah sure we'll just leave that out you know not very many people in the states the restaurants in the states can do that because they always already have it pre-made here you could say no garlic or no something or whatever you need and okay they're very excited really well yeah they're very nice so yeah so before I start taking questions from people which I'm going to do in just a little bit have there have you had any negative experiences since you've been here anything that uh you know we all have negative experiences sometimes but have you had what it's something that happened that you didn't like you know a lot of listening I'll give you an example when we first moved into the condo there were things that we had discussed with the owner and we said you know these things need to be resolved or repaired before we came in there were water leaks in the toilet there you know the toilet kept running there were you know there were other things that needed to get fixed and so they that yes they're going to do that where our refrigerator leaked all over the ground because it was kind of rotting out the bottom of the refrigerator and they've they've replaced that but it took I'm gonna say two weeks for them to kind of get yeah that doesn't mean tomorrow it means whatever we'll come by whatever you know that it does definitely happen but today I had a surprising experience um you know I was moving into another house and the internet was supposed to be working but I got there and there were no lights on the modem the internet was not working so I happen to know one of the tech guys that I just sent him a WhatsApp and said can you get someone over here you know this was at 10 o'clock in the morning can you get someone over here on a Saturday I said I need it working before five o'clock today he said well they'll be there between one and five so at 12 o'clock I thought okay I need to go pick up the closing documents for my house because you're my attorney sent them Uno Express from Panama City to me so I can go to closing on Monday yeah I was driving out the driveway at 12 and Tigo the repair people were coming in at 12. an hour early I thought for sure I had time to run there and get the documents and come right back um so some you know sometimes it does take longer but sometimes they surprise you too and they show up and they show up a little bit early I was really surprised and I've had that happen twice with Chico that they showed up early it might help that I have um WhatsApp for some of the repair people and I send it to them directly and they know that I'll give them a nice little propina whenever they come so a little bit more juice than we do Jackie yeah there's a little bit more leverage there yeah I've been there I've been here for a while but you know they they appreciate you know they they don't you don't have to give them a tip but if I I gave them there was two guys I gave them each ten dollars and they're going to remember that the next time I need some kind of Internet repair um I have their WhatsApp and they know that if they're going to come right over and that they'll get a little tip so that's good so let me take some of the questions that have come in let's see here's one what's the name of the condo complex where you're staying we're gonna Oceanfront gorgona Oceanfront yes ma'am and another one how did you find Sergio ah our tour guide Carlos who by the way is fabulous we had to move all of our luggage a cat us from the house that we've been staying in for 10 days or so um and we were moving all of that to this condo when we were ready to move and Carlos put us in contact with Sergio who came over with his private insurance private truck very very very quickly uh he loaded everything up and we got from uh Carlos that he was a cab driver we exchanged WhatsApp numbers and it's we just what's happened and say hey Carlos are you available or excuse me Sergio are you available at two o'clock this afternoon to pick us up to go so we give him some a little bit of four you know we we do something right he can kind of get the schedule and he responds very well to that he's usually right on time one time he understand another driver because he was taking care of another client the other driver was an hour late from the time that we agreed and boy Sergio just let him have it yeah texting him so I'm so sorry we haven't seen that cab driver again so I guess he thinks that we don't like him out this is an important lesson for all of the listeners is you need if you don't already have it you need to download what the WhatsApp onto your phone and you need to start watching some YouTube videos that go to YouTube University of course on how to use WhatsApp you know because with WhatsApp not only that's the way you stay in communication with people here in Panama it's how I got my Internet fixed it's how you get a driver um it's how you make a doctor appointment you just all kinds of things you do it with let's talk to the stories senior attorney now you're lucky because where you are you can say oh we live we live in the oceanfront condo and they'll know where that is but if you live out in the boonies like I do with no address um you share you can share your location with WhatsApp you know whatever understands that there's no house numbers there's no no street names but more likely the street names are not posted on the street so you have yeah you go by landmarks yeah you know your daughter that red Mercado and you take a ride there until it goes into the world and then you take a left and keep on going and so you can do that or you can just share share your location with WhatsApp and then it'll drive you right to it so everybody before you move to Panama you need to start using uh WhatsApp start getting familiar with WhatsApp there's a lot of YouTube videos about how to share your location how to share contacts now how'd you do video calls voice calls how to add two people on a voice call at the same time all kinds of things you can do with WhatsApp the great thing is it's free uh you just need to have Wi-Fi so that's why people use it here instead of making a phone call with their phone they'll make a phone call with WhatsApp instead and that and that works well for the folks back in the United States it's a great way for your friends and family to stay in touch with you so much your friends and family how to use WhatsApp also there's actually um there's a way you can send everybody on your contact list you can say hey I'm using Whatsapp download it right here so we can stay in touch so definitely use WhatsApp so I'll take a couple of questions so our police reports required for pension Auto Visa um now are for obtaining an FBI so a police report won't work it has to be a national criminal report so if you're from the United States that would be an FBI report but just your local police department that's not acceptable uh when I first moved here in 2010 that's all they required was a police report and then um there was a problem I think in 2011 with this crazy guy in Bocas del Toro that killed a bunch of people and um they you know and he got he had a Visa but they didn't know that in another state that he had you know a bunch of criminal stuff so it wasn't until 2012 here in Panama that they changed it where it had to be a national criminal report wow wow by the way that by the name everybody calls him Wild Bill he's still in prison um so let me take some more questions here is there still a property tax benefit for houses under a certain dollar amount or has that gone away um so that is definitely still available first of all if you buy a property that was built before 2012. um then you have a 20-year tax exoneration um but it doesn't necessarily include the land so that's one uh tax benefit right there the other one is if you buy a property that the Improvement value is less than 125 um then you have no property taxes for the rest of your life so wow um so that's and so that's and that one of the things that you need to do if you do decide to buy a property because so many properties here that you get the house the furniture and you get everything in it and so they write one contract for the total sales price which would often put that over 125 but if you'll separate it out and have two contracts one for the real property that's 125 or less and then one for the personal property the furniture the refrigerator or the ceiling fans all those other things just separate contracts and then you can keep your property taxes low as opposed to just one big contract that puts everything all together there's also whenever you sell property here there's a two percent tax and a three percent tax um it's kind of a capital gains tax that you have to pay so the seller if they're a contract you only have to pay that on the purchase price of the property so if the purchase price of the property is just the real estate um then their five percent tax is going to be less than if you put the real estate and the furniture and the appliances and everything all together so there's ways that you can keep your taxes down if you have a good immigration attorney that will educate you on little tips like that that will keep it low so once again if anybody has a question for Tim or Janet you can put three question marks in front of it and I will I'm looking through some of the other ones um so Jackie can you compare costs between gorgona and bokete so um you know there's I can't really compare the cost between gorgona and bouquete because in gorgona you can get an 800 condo or you can get an eighteen hundred dollar condo in boquete you can get a 800 house or you can get eighteen hundred dollar house um the the so the prices are all over the place so you can't really do that you know going out to restaurants gonna be about saying buying groceries is going to be about the same the big difference between the two was in gorgona you're going to need air conditioning at least some of the time you're going to need air conditioning in most rentals do not include electricity which means that to that eight hundred dollar rent you can add so much for your electric bill so what's your electric bill Ben Tim and Janet we only use our air conditioning in the bedroom at night the rest of it is open doors because there's such a breeze that blows through here to the ocean off of the ocean we found that it's we all we just need the ceiling fans to be alone so it ranges between 32 and if we're really closing up the doors and using the air conditioning 110 hundred dollars somewhere in that neighborhood right but we're learning that you know it's going to get humid here in a little bit is going to be a little bit important and I'm going to pick up a dehumidifier pretty soon because oh goodness those little bags The Damp bread bag yeah you might have to get a dehumidifier so that's a big difference between gargona and bouquete because in boquete um the houses don't even have an air conditioner because you don't need one so your electric bill is usually going to be depending on the size of your home um like my electric bill is usually about 20 25 a month um but if yeah if it was a much bigger house it might be thirty dollars a month so the fact that you need air conditioning in the gorgona area drives your cost of living up a little bit more in gorgona but regardless of what your budget is I mean I saw really cute um single family home that was advertised on Facebook Marketplace three bedroom two bath furnished for 8.50 nice big yard in gorgana that same property of it we're in Coronado would be 1500 if it were so that's another big difference between go gona and Coronado the cost of living in gorgona for apartments and condos and single-family homes whether you're renting or buying is going to be a lot less than it would be in Coronado so that's another reason that a lot of people pick gorgona versus Coronado it's not just how crazy traffic is and how crowded it is in Coronado but it's just you get a lot more for your money we notice differences Condo building to Condo building the Bahia over here and the Royal Palm they tend to be more expensive for a three-bedroom we also noticed a square footage is much smaller than it is here and of course this is a little bit older building so uh the you know the I mean it's it's still lovely the the issue is we went to look at a condo at the Royal Palm and that was a one bedroom condominium for about one bedroom one bath and it was was dramatically higher in rent Than This Is Here Yeah you know and it would have had to have air conditioning all the time yeah I think it was on the 11th floor yeah not the breeze that we're getting here for some reason it's different I yeah it just that's a really good point um that some of the condo complexes um whenever you're there you have to use air conditioning there is no Ocean Breeze there's just no Ocean Breeze at all so that's gonna that could get into a 300 dollars 400 electric bill um but if but that's something that you need to really think about is what is the breeze like now whatever the you had the breeze in January February and March that was the dry season and it's just more windy then but it's going to be a lot different once you get into September October and November uh whenever we don't have any wind and there's more rain and it may be necessary to use your air conditioning more right and we that's I think we're going to anticipate that coming up in August September time frame here so that's something that you need to take into consideration if you're moving to the beach area um is if there's a if there's a good Ocean Breeze or not and sometimes the breezes so much that it's I'm it can literally knock you over um it can be quite a bit but um if you go to the complex the condo complex right down the street they don't have wins like that so or one has a really nice Ocean Breeze and then a block away that other one doesn't have a nice ocean breeze so these are little things that you have to investigate whenever you're looking for a place to stay and it can be the difference between I'm having a pleasant experience in Panama and having being miserable all the time and also having a 50 electric bill or 150 electric bill so it's just little little things can make a great big difference so Brian wants to know if you're going to see me next week um so I'm assuming you're coming on a tour and yes I'll be at the farewell dinner that you're going to have on Thursday night so I'll see you then once again if anybody has a question if you could please put it in I put three question marks in front of your question so that I can easily identify that it's a question let me scroll down here a little bit go ahead I just wanted to say we brought our cat with us and she ended up costing more than our tickets here because of all of the rules and you had to get the special vet in the States before you know to serve certify that she was healthy enough to come on over and then the fees when we got here so you need to find a really good vet in the states or wherever you're at and was she able to go underneath the seat in front of you on the plane okay okay and we gave her what was it we gave her drugs Gabapentin that that gave us and it just calmed her down enough that she she didn't mean a lot that we let the people in front of us know that you'll hear me owls it's not your imagination it's underneath your seat but they didn't really hear her very much so she did she did better than we thought she would but she was expensive would you use anybody to help her get into Panama we did we used the frog the golden frog yeah outline he you know we managed to get everything done and he we came in late yeah and so the the folks at the Panama airport were already gone for the day she had to spend the night in quarantine jail and we had to go back to the airport the next day to pick her up we just spent the night at a local hotel and uh we got you know they boost we we sprung her the next morning and or Jose did I guess and we got it I have to tell you too one of our suitcases stayed and I guess they had to check it out because we had her litter and kitty litter in it okay they open it up to make sure there wasn't something weird in there I guess they cut the kitty litter out next time I'll take a smaller bed yeah so um in your in your area in the gargona area um are there any bird watching groups or anything all right I think most people would probably drive up to Valle um to do bird watching and nature things you know the the nature stuff out on the water there's a lot of that uh the bird watching and that sort of thing I'm not from I I haven't heard a lot about those sorts of organizations or those sorts of clubs but there are traveling groups that you can associate yourself with that go out on weekend outings so you can choose to join or you know just associate yourselves with them they give you hey everybody we're getting together here and everybody's gonna go up to wherever and we're going to do this activity or this thing there's lots of things that expats do in terms of creating Community here which is very very nice and it gives you the opportunity to explore a little bit outside of your out outside of your parking lot so that's helpful we're also very close to fishing yeah oh yeah that's right a lot of fishing fishing on the beach here and they go out every what is it four days four days a week it comes in you can buy a fish straight from them they clean it slice it all up for you fairly cheap I think it's two dollars a pound two bucks a pound but they will also you can also hire them to take you out if you want to go fishing and there's some islands I just let them go fishing and they can fillet it and I'll buy it for my two dollars I think you know tuna's in season right now on June is about four dollars a pound but it was just caught that morning and so yeah delicious yeah so um someone asked Tim how did you get connected with the veterans organizations and let me answer that a little bit first if you go to our website Panama relocation tours and type veterans um in the top uh then it has a whole article about the veterans medical benefits that are available um if you're retired or if you were discharged with a disability then there are veterans medical benefits available to you and also there's a website called vso overseas.com and that has a list of all the veterans service officers throughout Panama so that's how you can get connected with the veterans the vso website also gives you instructions about how to go through the process for the foreign veterans program it's essentially an application that you send in to your doctor they sign off on it and send the medical records forward and then they review it and you tell them what country you're going to and they they approve it you bring that certificate with you and you make the appointment at the local veterans medical facility let them know that you've got the certificate and and your they review the certificate in your record so they understand what's covered by the VA and and it they just get you they just start to get you taken care of right and then whenever you connect with the veterans service officers in Panama they really hold your hand and make sure that you get the to the right doctor the right Hospital the right whatever it is that you need um deliver medications to you whatever it is that you need your vso who are all volunteers I might add um but they they're just dedicated to helping veterans have a smooth transition to Panama just like I help you move here they help you handle the veterans things so someone asked if your condo came furnished um well so so I'm going to let Janet tell you about the furniture okay well it did come furnished the the couch was more like a loveseat when they got when we got here and it was so well used we said you know just take that one away we'll buy her up so we have this the chair and a coffee table and we bought our own mattress because the mattress was as hard as Stone so and the other thing was the TV was about the size of your com your your iPhone Monitor and and I can't boy I couldn't have seen it so we basically went out to uh the um price smart 55 inch TV to replace it and it it's a lot better for me and I but I have to say that uh for the most part all the rest of it all the all the cooking stuff now we bought knives and we bought pots and you know that we like there was a few here so but we but all of the dishes all the glasses all the silverware you know all of that came with the condo all the bed linens although we bought some of our own we bought our own mattress for the bed but you know for the most part it was it was furnished and it it'll be great it's it's been really really good well and you know no matter which rental that you move into you're usually going to want to change a few things for you might want a different bed spread or you might want some different you know better quality towels or or different pots and pans you know a lot of them come with aluminum pots and pans and you might want stainless steel but price Mark which is Costco basically you can get whatever you want there so um did you have to well someone wants to know if you had to pay two months rent in advance whatever you rented we paid one month's rent for the deposit and then that month's rent or the the month that we were staying so we paid two months but it was only one month as a deposit and then we began to pay the rent for our stay okay um and someone asked uh what's the name of the company that you can bring your pet so to bring your pet into Panama you're gonna normally you're gonna do most of the things in your country yourself you can't hire a pet relocation company to help you with it but it's much more affordable if you and even then it's expensive um if you do it yourself on and that's getting your pet out of the country that you live in whenever you come to Panama you can use a company called goldenfrog.net and Jose and the owner of that will help you get your pet into the country um he's the guy that broke Nancy out of jail yeah so we did you have to get a USDA certified event foreign yeah so one of one of the things you can do in the United States because after you get the health certificate for your pet then it has to be authenticated by the USDA that has to be authenticated by the Panama consulate you can actually go to the USDA website and they have a list of veterinarians that are certified to do International Health certificates because not all just you know the methods you've been using for the last 10 years they may not be able to do an international health certificate and even if they say they can maybe their certification has expired and they didn't realize that it had so it's a good idea to double check before you use one [Music] almost 200 for the health certificate we had a friend whose daughter interned with a veterinarian in town way down so we paid less than 100 bucks for that so that's good yeah that's good but you know that and then um the you know all the documentation the USDA I think they used to charge 38 I don't know what they charge now and then the Panama consulate charged with thirty dollars per documents all right sorry about that and then you know and then like 150 dollars to get them into Panama so it adds up yeah we'll do it for our fur babies yeah that's why uh for Jackie we have our pensionado Visa how do we get the airfare discounts when we're coming in or out of Panama so you have to have your permanent Visa if you just have a temporary Visa you don't get any discounts but if you have your permanent Visa you can get discounts the best thing to do is to contact a travel agent in Panama and then they can help you get that discount um and we have in our complete Panama relocation guide we have a list of three different travel agents that we recommend that are really good at finding great fairs in helping you get those discounts so I don't know if this is going to be possible but someone asked if they can show us if you can show your view can you turn your your is it possible to turn your computer around well yeah gosh I would do that yep well bear with me just a minute it's my phone so oops down there we go this is our view of the mountain if you can see that yeah and there's trees up there and now we're headed toward the beach those trees that you see in the distance are between us and the beach uh that just that other building is the pool Casita and when you stand at the pool Casita you can look right down at the beach from there but we have the view of the mountains over here and kind of the tops of the trees and the jungle and we don't get the direct sunlight because we're on the right side of the building did that help yeah that helps thank you very much so um you know I didn't realize that we've already been talking for more than an hour so Tim and Janet I want to thank you so much for joining me for the live stream and sharing your experience about moving to Panama and um I'm really excited for you to get your visa and and get the next step and just excited for you because I know you're just you're going to absolutely love living in Panama yeah yeah you can go next door and pick up um mangoes papaya bananas plantains pretty nice from Neighbors it's for free I mean that we every day we have mangoes yeah right now it's mango season and they have big baskets out by the road that say you know take them please take them yeah thank you Jackie for all of the resources that you've given us to I'm telling you we would not have had a soft Landing without Panama relocation tours and the guide and we really appreciate the work and effort your team have put in in order to give us a soft Landing it's really really worked well thank you so much for joining me and thank you to everybody from all over the world that joined us for this live stream to learn about Jim and Janet's experience moving to Panama and I'm so glad that Panama relocation tours help make you have an easier move a smooth move to Panama that's what we want to do that's our objective so have a great weekend have a great weekend thank you you too all right goodbye everybody

Channel: Panama Relocation Tours

Views: 11,558

Keywords: Panama, Retire in Panama, Move to Panama, Living in Panama, Panama Relocation Tours, Expats in Panama

Id: oVeoCutS2Uo

Length: 67min 47sec (4067 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2023