how we got here

Around October of 2010 I connected on Facebook with an old golfing buddy of mine from the Canal Zone.  We lived there from 1968 to 1970 while I (Mike) was in the Army.  So I posted that I had made the connection and thanked Facebook for it.  Shortly after that I got another post from a high school friend that wanted to know more because he was stationed in the CZ about the same time.  This was followed by another from a good buddy who had a grandfather who was in submarines in the CZ in WWI and wanted to know if I was familiar with the area around Coco Solo where his grandfather was stationed.  I hadn't thought about Panama much at the time, except to remember some good times when we were young.  Then I started seeing those insurance commercials on TV about the widening of the Canal, and one day Sandy came home from work and told me about a patient who came into the doctors' office where she worked.  She said that he was Panamanian and went on about how beautiful his country was and how we should come and live there.  When she told me that, I said  "Maybe we ought to do just that."  I had seen a website called International Living, and they rated places to retire...and Panama was on the top of the list and also the closest to California.  So we decided to look into it some more, and the more we looked the more we liked.  The next logical step was to take a trip down and check it out, so that's just what we did.  I must say that the Internet made all of this a lot easier, so in May of 2011, we flew to Panama City, rented a car, and off we went.  We stayed in PC for two days and took a tour of the city and the Canal, and then it was off to the interior. 
     Our first stop was in El Valle, a quaint little town nestled in the bottom of a dead volcanoe.  It sits at 2000 feet of elevation, so it's not too hot, and is completely surrounded by mountain peaks that top off at about 3200 feet.  We stayed at a great lodge that is owned by a retired German Merchant Captain, and found our little bit of paradise. After a couple of days we drove west to David, pronounced Da-veed, and then north to Boquete.  Boquete sits in a valley at 3200 feet, under the shadows of 11,400 foot Volcan Baru.  We stayed at a hostal there and I took care of some legal business in David that took a couple of days.  Then it was time to come down from the mountain and look at a couple of beaches.  Playa Palmar fit the bill, and we stayed a couple of days and baked in the sun. But all the while, El Valle was calling us back.  So back we went and stayed with the Captain again.  He introduced us to a Swiss friend of his who has a nice rental apartment, so we made arrangements to write them when we got home...and we did.  A rental agreement shortly followed and we made our moving plans...But first we had to pay off the bills and sell off the excess belongings, and convince our friends and family that we weren't a little crazy.  Having done all that, Sandy retired from her job on March 30th, and four days later we were on the plane headed South. 

     We're in El Valle now, staying at Casa Mariposa and loving it all.  There is still much more of the country to see and explore, and that will be the adventure part of the story. We'll be posting as often as we can, and many pictures to come from  Mike and Sandy's Excellent Adventure.