God did not grant me the gift of being handy with tools. Maybe my long fingernails prevent me from holding a hammer correctly, or maybe I just don't want to get dirty. Potatoes, po-tah-toes. I'm not a handywoman. I admit it. And neither is my oh-so-beautiful Brazilian fiance. 

Whenever something needs to be hung or repaired, we hire a handyman. One of the great things about Panama is that labor is cheap. You never think twice about hiring someone. After all, why do it yourself when you can help out someone who wants a little extra work?

We hired a handyman this weekend to install our new flat-screen TV on the living room wall and to hang a hammock on the balcony. In my naive un-handy brain, I thought both chores would take about an hour. When the guy came into my apartment with a drill, a big level, a wall pencil, I knew we'd hired the right guy. He looked briefly at the instruction booklet and quickly started measuring, marking and drilling. 

I figured he'd done this a thousand times before, and I quickly lost interest. I poured a glass of wine, relaxed into my plump balcony chair, and immersed myself into a book. After all, he had it under control.

What I hadn't considered was that the average Panamanian laborer doesn't have a 60" flat-screen mounted to his wall. In hindsight, I now realize that this was the very first big flat-screen TV that my handyman had ever installed. Although he was a whiz with measuring and drilling, he lacked real-life TV-hanging experience. 

The TV connection cable didn't fit correctly behind the TV, so he had to come up with a solution that involved a trip to the hardware store to buy metal braces that would act as spacers. Kudos for creativity and out-of-the-box problem solving. Then, the TV had be mounted off-center, which screwed up my perfectly positioned paintings. Those holes had to be filled, mortared, sanded, and eventually repainted so the paintings could be moved to accommodate the off-center TV placement. 

The first real mishap was that the TV attachment was mounted upside down, which almost resulted in a piece of super-glued art nouveau that would be great as a conversation piece but unusable as a TV if it had continued it's slide down the wall and shattered into 21 million pieces. Ooops. Thankfully, they caught it before it hit the ground. It took almost an hour of grunting and hoisting before the unhandy Brazilian and the handy-but-inexperienced-with-big-TVs Panamanian realized their mistake. (I'm pretty sure I'm the one that pointed out the upside-down issue. Even after a glass of wine, I excel at reading the directions.)

What I thought would be a few holes drilled and some brute force to lift the TV, turned into a six-hour ordeal that entailed two separate trips to the hardware store. Thank goodness for cheap labor. The handyman charged $40. We gave him $50 and then drove him home. Everyone was happy, and we were able to see our new big-screen TV from two rooms away. As you can see from the photo, even my dog was entertained. 

The hammock installation is a blog for another day, so stay tuned.

Panama has two season--dry and wet. Dry season, also known as summer to the Panamanians, is considered high season because Canadians and Americans who are fed up with feeling like icicles flock to Panama. They come wearing winter parkas and shed their winter gear at the airport like thousands of lizards molting their skins in a mass transformation. 


High season in Panama lasts from December to April and encompasses four major holidays: Christmas, New Year's, Carnival and Easter. If you come during any of these holiday weeks, expect to pay ultra-premium prices because every beachfront condo is rented, and every hotel, hostel and hammock is full.

During high season, it rarely rains--which keeps the humidity low--but the sun is very intense from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The best part of summer in Panama is mornings and evenings. The cool, dry breeze makes sitting outside an absolute must. Plus, the breeze is just strong enough to keep most insects away. Coffee on the balcony in the mornings and wine on the rooftop social area is a daily ritual during high season. Pools and social areas can become crowded, though, as everyone wants to be outside enjoying the great weather. If you're a social person, high season is the time to catch up with old friends and make new friends.

Rainy season is considered low season in Panama because June through November coincides with summer and fall in North America, when the weather there is the most enjoyable. Renters in Panama can get better deals on apartments, and many owners are noticeably absent. One big perk of low season is that beaches and pools are practically empty. 

Rainy season doesn't mean monsoons, though. It typically rains 10-20 minutes per day most days during rainy season in Panama. There are only a few days when it rains non-stop, and when those days happen, it's fun and refreshing. Because the equator sun is shielded by a nice cloud cover, rainy season feels much cooler but it's also more humid. The morning and evening breezes are still there but are often very light.

Although I love summer evenings, I prefer rainy season for two reasons. First, it's cool enough most days to keep your windows open all day long. Although baking bread can be challenging in the humidity, I love to sit outside on my balcony and enjoy the warm rain. My second reason for loving low season is that tourists and snow birds are noticeably absent, which means I often feel like I have the whole resort to myself. It's six months of the Robin Leach lifestyle of the rich and famous, and I love deluding myself every minute of those low-season, somewhat rainy months.

Which will you like better? Only you can be the judge. Just throw a dart on your calendar, book a flight, and let me help you find an amazing condo. Once you step off the plane, Panama will seduce you with it's warm breezes and tropical climate.

When I moved to Panama, I knew less than ten words of Spanish. In my blissful naivete, thought I'd learn Spanish by osmosis. After all, I'm breathing the same air as Spanish speakers, why shouldn't I just inhale their language?

In my first few months, I learned some important words that helped me communicate what I wanted, but it was typically easier to find someone who spoke English than to try to pretend that I spoke anything resembling Spanish. 

After a year in Panama, I realized my grasp on the Spanish language was about that of a toddler. I finally realized my osmosis-learning-process wasn't working and got into a Spanish class, something I should have done this the moment my plane landed in Panama.

Group Spanish classes were fun because we could laugh at one another's mistakes while still learning key words and phrases. After a few classes, we moved from basic phrases to verb conjugation. Although group classes would have eventually gotten me there, I knew I needed serious coaching. I moved to private lessons with a tutor who allowed me to set the pace.

What do Spanish lessons cost? My group lessons were $15 for a 90-minute class. My private lessons are $25 for a 1-hour class. Although the teachers think you need 90-minutes, I'm a proponent of a 60-minute class. One hour is long enough to learn one or two key things without going into overload. 

Here is the interesting part. I thought learning Spanish would be a horrible process, but it's actually quite fun. I do my Spanish homework in the morning while I sit on my balcony sipping coffee. I give my brain a rest by watching the ships enter the Panama Canal and practice my accent with the parrots in the forest. Surprisingly, the hour I spend each morning studying Spanish is the most enjoyable parts of my day. 

Not only do I get immense gratification from my new language skills, but my maid rewards me with motherly smiles every time I learn a new word or phrase. Perhaps I'm moving past the toddler phase after all. 

Techno-geeks love to buy new gadgets. It puts a smile on their face bigger than the Grand Canyon. I envy them because buying a new electronic anything makes me feel like I'm trying to have a meaningful conversation with someone speaking Martian.

I'm a normally decisive person. When asked to choose the color of a leather couch that I'll keep for the next decade, I'll make a snap decision. If I need to choose a great wine for people I've just met, no sweat. But ask me to choose a TV from the thousands of TV's on display, and my natural ability to make quick decisions gets fried by all the gamma waves.

I don't know why I thought buying a TV in Panama would be easier than buying a TV in the US. The stores have different names, but the sensory overload is the same. Instead of Circuit City and Best Buy, Panama has Panafoto and Multimax. Like their counterparts in the US, the bigger-than-life images and louder-than-natural sounds poke and prod at you until you're either mesmerized into plopping down a credit card or overloaded with so much stimuli that you run screaming from the store.

If you were in Panama recently, that crazy white woman in stilettos and a big hat that you saw pushing her way out of the store was me. I wanted a new TV, but I was hoping that Panama would only have 3 choices... small, medium and large. Now that's a decision I can make. If it were that easy, though, I would have bought a new TV a year ago instead of anguishing over techno jargon that I didn't understand and punishing myself with a dozen trips to the electronics store.

 When I finally bought a TV in Panama, my decision came down to three things: 

1. Is it smarter than a fifth grader? (I love TVs that label themselves as SMART. It takes the guesswork out of the already-too-tough decision.)
   
2. Is it big enough to see Brad Pitt's pretty face without a pair of binoculars while I sit in my favorite chaise two rooms away?
3. Can I pay for it without jeopardizing my retirement, pimping out my fiance, or going into coronary arrest?

Happily, given this criteria, there was only one TV that fit the bill. I didn't hesitate. I whipped out my credit card and checked this gadget off of my list.

If you're a technology junkie considering Panama, you'll love the choices of TV's, smart phones and other gadgets you can get here. If you're like me and you don't speak techno-Martian, either bring your own geek or consider buying a hammock and investing in a stack of used paperbacks.