Life in Panama

Panama is the size of South Carolina with the population of Toronto.

There is one four lane highway that runs whole length of Panama, the Panamerican Highway. Just like Ontario was in the sixties.The speed limit is 100k except 60k in the small towns along the way.

The only difference in Panama is that the buses stop to pick people up. The buses come in all sizes from touring to ones that hold only 20 people. On the windshield of the bus are the names of the town it runs between, e.g.Penanome-Panama. That means you can ride and stop at any town in between and not always at a bus stop just wave and they will stop if they can. Chris and I ride between Santa Clara and Coronado, a 40km trip, for a dollar each. Some times these buses can be crowded but you never notice any body odours from the riders. The Panamian people are very clean and neat. Of course you have the teenage girls wearing skin tight hip hugging jeans, high heels, and their boobs pushed way out the top.

The laws are like Toronto was, more smoking, no recycling and poor car safety checks.

There are plenty of police officers everywhere, in the plazas, along the highway with radar and in the banks.

You can buy beer everywhere for .50 cents a metric can. The speed limit, temperature and other packaging is metric but gas is sold by the American gallon. I have enclosed a picture of the highway and one of my lovely wife so you can see how dark she is getting. I had to wait to get the picture of Chris because she's alway bent over picking up shells.

The picture of Chris at the top was taken outside the Clinica San Fernando, where we had an appointment to get information about health insurance. We are going Dec. 14 to have physicals, which are required. We will go in for the blood work before then. So when we come back to Panama after Christmas that will be in place. The clinica is a branch of the main hospital in Panama City, which you would go to for a complicated illness or a major surgery. Otherwise, you would be treated in Coronado. We can also go there for routine doctor's appointments. For your medical services, you pay the regular rate up front and get reinbursed. So a visit to the doctor would be $50- pensionado discount of $10- $25 (% insured) = $15 cost of appt. Anyway that was our business portion of the day and now we are headed for the beach, 'cause it's a beautiful day. Ciao, baby.