Casa de Tortugas - Stories
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Our one year Panaversary
January 5th 2025 marks our 1 year Panaversary! One year ago we took our suitcases and boarded a plane to start our new life here in Panama! Last night we had a delicious dinner in town with yummy lemonade and devine dessert to celebrate! On the way home we saw 3 dolphins which was a perfect ending to the day! Feeling very grateful to be retired in such a beautiful place and looking forward to all the adventures yet to come!
It's been a year of high and low points, lots of learning, adventures and some relaxing along the way. Below are some thoughts from Glenn and Tina about how this year has gone.
Thoughts from Glenn:
There have been some days where I let the stress get to me and I turned into a big jerk. Some of my stresses have come from learning to handle the boat. Driving is pretty easy except when we have to cross the shallows. But parking took me a few months to get a handle on. And when the boat won't do what I wan or even what I expect, my fear of damaging things goes up, and I get snarky and snippy. But once I managed to get a handle on parking, my stress levels have come way down, and now I can park just about any place as long as the weather isn't being too aggressive. Now to teach Tina how to park.
The first few months in Panama were a lot like a vacation. Because there was a forced delay between retiring and having all of our retirement funds, we had the opportunity to relax and settle in a bit. We bought a few things for our apartment and we had time to look around in Panama City and David. We were able to take time to simply relax and I had time to learn the boat without dealing with building the house at the same time.
There were some stresses while the house was being built when things weren't turning out quite how we wanted. But as we worked with the crew we learned to communicate. Our Spanish is constantly improving. It seems we learn a little every week. It was nice when the main body of the house was complete and we finally got to enjoy our space. But living without doors got old pretty quick. We learned pretty quickly how to get contract work done. It isn't as simple as calling a worker and having them show up. The trick is to only pay the minimum until the job is complete. It keeps the workers motivated.
After the initial build and the doors were in place, we were got to working on our own projects. I installed the bulk of the plumbing and electrical. Together we put the railings on the porch. Even now, six months into living here, we are still working on projects. It will probably be another six months until we get all the little things done to where we feel done. I am sure there will always be little things to do, both in the house and in the yard.
To summarize, this has been both a joy and a lot of stress. But it has all been worth it. There were a few days that I was worried that this place was going to break us. But after calming down and talking things out, I managed to pull it together. Things are finally feeling like that fantasy life that I had in my head before we moved. It's never going to be perfect, but when is life ever perfect beyond a moment here and there? We have our peaceful space with a nice buffer around our house so we don't really have to deal with neighbors. We have a beach we can walk to any time we want. We can jump in the boat and cruise for a few minutes to get to a postcard perfect tropical beach and because I was lucky enough to find a job that offered a pension, we don't have to worry about money. With Tina at my side, this is the life I had always wanted but never really believed I could have.
Thoughts from Tina:
It’s crazy to me that this is the last day of 2024! We spent so many years looking forward to our new retired island life in Panama that it’s hard to believe that we are just a few days shy of being here for a year.
This year has been full of amazing new adventures, fun, new friends, challenges hard work, and some heartache too. I tried to have minimal expectations of how things would be here in our new life but apparently they crept in anyway.
When we arrived, we lived in Bocas town in an apartment for the first 6 months while we waited on Glenn’s retirement funds so we could finish building our house. Even though it was January, we were very glad to have air conditioning in our apartment. Living in town was convenient for shopping, but it definitely confirmed that we had made the right choice of property with peace and quiet and nature surrounding us.
Navigating living in a new country and building a house off grid on an island 30 min by boat from the nearest store had it’s challenges. There were many decisions to make and differences of opinion on the best way to do things. I found myself feeling overwhelmed. With no support system here I slipped back into trying to “control” everything I could mode. I didn’t want to talk to people back home about my struggles and admit that it was so much harder that I had expected. This put a strain on our marriage that we weren’t used to, which made things harder. I think we were both struggling to find our way the best that we could.
We did have some fun adventures in our boat exploring different parts of Bocas. We went exploring for dolphins and once we got a ladder installed on the boat we found a swimming spot only a few minutes from the marina which was a nice way to relax and enjoy our new “retired” life!
Once we moved into our house on Popa we had to get used to a whole new life here off grid. The hardest part…. the BUGS! Lol! We have little no see-um bugs that love to snack on us. People here have told me over the years on our vacations that my reaction to the bites would get better over time after living here, luckily that is true!
If you’ve been following our story you know that we only had the basics of our house built. I feel very proud to say that we have done a lot of the work ourselves. We are lucky that Glenn knows how to do plumbing and electrical work and the basics of woodworking. This allowed us to take our time and make things the way we want them along with the added bonus of saving $$$. Our kitchen is still only a temporary set up that we built, but I am glad because know we know how we will use it when we build our cabinets. We have done a lot of the woodwork ourselves - porch railing, bathroom counter recently and built a bed frame. We feel confident enough to tackle the kitchen cabinets on our own soon. In February we will be getting a garden started and planting some fruit trees and flowers.
I have missed my family and friends so much, especially my daughter Alisha. We have made some new friends here, I was lucky enough to make 1 really good friend who lives a short boat ride away. She and her husband moved here and built an off grid house on Popa just over a year ago, she also left behind a daughter she was close to and it’s nice to be able to talk things out with someone who understands exactly what we are going through.
Overall I am glad that we made this move and still feel grateful every day that we are able to live this life. We have had time to go to the beach, take the boat out exploring, snorkeling and swimming. We often see dolphins on our way to/from shopping in town. Our porch is large enough for us to “take a walk” around it and be under cover of the roof if it’s raining. We also enjoy sitting on the porch looking out at the ocean and watching the birds and butterflies in the sky and just enjoying the amazing nature that we live in. I look forward to all of the adventures yet to come!
| We built a bathroom cabinet Published 05-Jan-2025 | A handrail is finally on our stairs Published 03-Jan-2025 |
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