The Big Ones

We finally got a car. Not just any car, but my car. My 2019 Suzuki Jimny Sierra with absolutely no options.

You get the point. But I love the damn thing. Maybe more than it deserves. Maybe buying it gave me Stockholm syndrome, since it was so traumatic. Someone asked me what the resale value was. If he had been in front of me, I would have spat in his face.

Despite giving me back my freedom, the Jimny represented another, more important milestone: it was the last of the big ones. The really big hurdles that we needed to overcome, and the dicier ones at that. We needed to get this car. Busses and taxis were never an option. This was much bigger than the car.

Now, this is not to say that our hurdles are over or all finished. We still have a lot to do: complete Taige’s permanent visa, apply for visas for me and the kids, find our final home once our time in Gorgona ends in December, etc, etc, etc. But, we had to complete a few monumental tasks before we could even begin all of that. Before we could start our new lives.

The first was getting our dogs here. This represented about 60% of our overall stress of the move. The 3 days in Panama without dogs were an exercise in trying to forget we had dogs, so as to save ourselves from heartache. Taige was sure at times that we would never see them again, and we would never get an explanation. I think she thought they would just vaporize. You have to understand that every process here is sketchy at best. You can’t really rely on things to be completed when they say, or at all, for that matter. We just needed our dogs to get here, and they did. Big win.

The second was getting our pallet. We made a point to pack our external hard drive with us in our suitcase. We figured that if the pallet sank into the Atlantic, at least we would have our videos and photos. This was another one of those “friend of a friend” situations. Shit, we never even met the guy who facilitated it all. I don’t even know what city he is located in. Colón? Panama City? No clue. It’s not like it was important at all: he just had control over all of our belongings that we couldn’t imagine life without.

Last in line was the car. Coming to Panama, I assumed this would be the easiest of all the tasks. Fuck me. But it’s done now, and that’s all that matters. Maybe one day I’ll go update my last post with the additional money I spent on buying my Jimny between then and now. Probably not. If I had a therapist, he would advise me against it.

The day we got the car, we drove to La Chorrera at 8:30 in the morning. It was about an hour drive, so we chatted with Juan Carlos for a while. He’s a great driver. We recently learned from driver’s ed that driving people for money in Panama without a specific license is illegal. I guess he’s a bandito, also. The car is still not mine. My guy Mark that was helping me with the car buying ended up going to the dealer’s manager and forcing me to just have my fucking car already. It worked. The dealer called and told me his manager was forcing his hand. I didn’t feel bad.

Back to the morning we got it, the transaction went quick. The dealer’s friend Eddy gave me the keys. We got in. the car. He said a bunch of stuff in Spanish. We drove off. We said “hasta luego” to Juan Carlos, and went to our new favorite store: PriceSmart. It felt so great to just shop around and not worry about how we were going to fit everything into a taxi. We ended up getting hotdogs for lunch. These are Costco hotdogs, and that’s the shit I’m about. It was heavenly.

On our way home, we saw a kid at a local BBQ joint get his shit kicked in by his mom. We didn’t see what he did wrong, but we did see her whack him with a broomstick on the head. He was not happy about this, as I imagine most would not be. She was not happy about him. Taige and I were both happy to be in our new car, free to do whatever we wanted. Free to start our new life in a new country together. We had finally conquered all the big ones, and we felt like nothing could stop us. Not even a broomstick.