Bob-Cha off to Panama!

Some People Just Know How to Party! In the town of Cuenca Ecuador the children dress-up as the Christmas story principals and prepare for the "Pase del Nino" parade that lasts all day on December 24th! What a party!   We spent Christmas of 2016 in the small town of Cuenca Ecuador.  Mostly I remember it as a blaze of music  and color seasoned with the constant, softly spoken "buenos dias", "bueno tardes", "bueno noches" from the locals. These people NEVER pass another human being without  acknowledgment.  It may just be a wave or a smile, but the acknowledgement is always there. The Children are so proud to pose for your camera. I'm sure they participate in putting together their out fits.   Getting to Cuenca is an amazing adventure in its self. It was 3 hours of breathtakingly beautiful vistas. Breathtaking is not used lightly her.  Some of the mountain roads are down right scary, but our driver was amazing. My daughter commented that he re...

What a celebration! We never did figure out what these models were made of, but one thing for sure no one tried to deface or destroy them and they were EVERYWHERE. The pics do not do justice to the colors. We decided that our first "immersion" would be in Ecuador. The town of Cuenca Ecuador was ranked #1 as a possible ex-pat retierment location, very safe and very economical. We flew into Guayaquil, (W hy-ah-keel) ,  Ecuador's second largest city, where we would spend a day before taking a shuttle to Cuenca. It was 5 days before Christmas and from the moment we landed it was like a happy celebration.  Not only was it one of the most beautiful days I have ever seen in my life, it was like the whole city was just happy to be there!  Our  hotel had arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport. He and his helper greeted us like we were celebrities who also happened to be family!  No one in our part spoke  Spanish so we communicated with smiles and ges...

A time and place for every season of life! Standing on the equator outside of Quito Equator! Like so many Americans, we spent a lifetime working and raising our children. We often joked with each other about being "caretakers". We promised that we would always take care of each other and, when the time was right, we would relax and just enjoy our time together.  Living in Florida made that easy. In Central Florida you can turn any day into a vacation at a moment's notice! What some people consider the vacation of a lifetime, Disney World, is just 1.5 hours down the road. We would often take advantage of Disney's Florida Resident Specials and vacation at one of their resorts 2 or 3 times a year.  Port Canaveral, which is ranked as the world’s 2nd busiest cruise port in multi-day embarkations, is just an hour away, so a 3-5 day cruise was also easily accessible and often relatively cheap. However, The real magic of exotic places did not truly take hold unt...

We researched the possibilities and talked to many many people. We came to know that moving out of the United States would be the best retirement plan for us. We are excited and ready for this move, but as you can imagine after living in the same place for over 30 years we have some work to do! In this blog, we will share our experiences and observations. When it comes to questions like should you sell your home or rent it out? Store your furniture or have an estate sale or... try and take it all with you? What does it cost to ship your household to your new location? What are the pros and cons of Panama? Ecuador? Mexico? Kenya? Belize? Portugal? We are telling everything we know and everything we find out as we go, but please know this experience and its many divergent roads will be different for everyone! NOTE: We are not selling tours, real estate, transportation... Nothing. This is just about our adventure and nothing more.  A few of the "immersions" we have experi...