Destination

Wife and I On our Condo Balcony

This will be a short post because I’m surrounded by a tropical paradise which will only last one more day and I’m fighting a losing battle with a tenuous Wi-Fi connection. I’ve written before about some of my epic battles with the Panamanian bureaucracy and it is with no small measure of satisfaction that I can report final victory in two of the three major wars I’ve been engaged in with them over the past three years.

FBR With Some of the Tomatoes She Grew From Plant Abuela Gave Her

My Favorite Panamanian and I flew down on Monday with a complete absence of the weather or passport issues earlier flights have engendered. We arrived in David shortly after five in the afternoon and shortly thereafter we had my wife’s family assembled for one of our traditional dinners at El Fogon. A significant amount of Atlas beer flowed down range as we prepared to do battle on Tuesday with the land sale and the final bank paperwork for the condo purchase.

We showed up at the bank for the land sale planning to meet our lawyer there. When she didn’t show up after fifteen minutes my wife asked the bank agent if they had the paperwork we were supposed to sign. In a complete surprise that left me somewhat thunderstruck, everything was ready. All we had to do was sign and affix our fingerprint next to those signatures and we finally had sold the land where we originally planned on building a house.

At Show Pony With Well Earned Atlas

Our next stop was our own bank and the final condo loan paperwork. Once again we were taken completely aback when everything was proclaimed to be in order. We were told all I needed to do was add my name to my wife’s bank account so the money could be extracted each month. They sent us next door to the regular bank where we ran into our first complication where the guy said I couldn’t be added to the account because I was a foreigner who hadn’t achieved permanent residence status. An hour later he and the loan officer had conferred and he deigned to admit he had all the background paperwork he needed to add my name to the account. It was a little disconcerting to see my income tax returns coming up on his computer. I had submitted these for the loan.

Wife and I at Show Pony
Our Condo Building in the Distance

Once this last hurdle was breached we were walking out and ran into our absent lawyer who had tracked us down. There had been one glitch on the earlier paperwork which required one more stop at a government office for another of the official stamps that Panamanian officials seem to extract an almost primordial pleasure from. For the very first time there was no line and we were in and out of the office in world record time. A final meeting with the lawyer to discuss our September venture for the final residence status was planned out and we were free.

Our Wake Up View

We didn’t let anything else intrude as we hurried back to my mother in law’s house and then a frenzied drive down to Las Lajas through one of the typical rainy season monsoons to reach our condo. We had the entire condo complex virtually to ourselves as we turned everything back on after a couple months hibernation. We have three new geckos scurrying around the ceilings to handle any bugs that are foolish enough to intrude.

Skin Cancer Prevention Outfit

While we waited for the air conditioning to catch up we wandered over to the Show Pony hotel for dinner. We ended up conversing with a very nice German couple who were vacationing from Panama City with their two year old son. We told them to return in February and we would fix their son up with the FBR. The usually quiet bar actually ratcheted up as additional people wandered in and it was a lively evening that required the donation of multiple Atlas beverages.

This morning we awoke to sound of the pounding surf and embarked on an early morning body surfing expedition. I was outfitted in my latest attempt to battel my predilection for skin cancer – a swim shirt. I really liked it and found it incredibly easy to swim in. I was also much easier to apply than the usual Betelgeuse level of sun screen. Our idyll ends this afternoon when we head back to David to fly back to Boston tomorrow. It felt so good to finally drive a stake into the hearts of the two year battles with the banks though. Now I just hope Deckzilla Dude has finished the floors and stairs in our absence.