Day 1 – Arrival Day – Thursday - 09/29/2011
We took off out of Houston for Panama’s Tocumen Airport at 9:00am. We did make a call to the shelter to make sure Reese had a good night and that she was getting on the same plane – everything was as planned.
We landed in Panama at 12:45pm, followed the signs to Immigration and Customs. First stop Immigration for a quick look at our passports, a couple of the usual questions (where are you staying, how long are you staying, etc..)(remember you will fill out your customs and immigration forms on the plane prior to landing – the airline gives these to you). Once through immigration we headed for baggage claim to get our 4 checked bags and as we were approaching we saw Reese sitting in baggage claim in her crate, safe and sound. A young man came and took Reese in her crate to the side while we retrieved our bags and went through customs. Once through customs we left all our bags with Reese and went into the office (now this was interesting, a room with no windows, no English, broken down furniture, felt like we were in a Russian Spy Movie and we were being interrogated) The young man told us to sit as he started to go through Reese’s documents and started to type new documents. After about 15 minutes of typing and moving paper he asked for $16.00, then stamped a few papers, gave us those and escorted us to another office. The next office had about 4 people inside and they were all smiling, again no English (ok we don’t speak any Spanish either so it made it fun). There was one main guy in the back with a secretary and he looked over all the paperwork and said PERFECTO! I guess we did everything OK, the girl took the papers from him, wrote out a receipt, stamped up some papers and asked for $130.00. Once we paid we were free to go, gather up Reese, our bags, and out of the airport we went to meet up with our friend who was waiting to pick us up.
Our friend Richard was waiting outside for us in our vehicle that we purchase a month before with Richards help, a Toyota 4Runner, we were on the road in a matter of minutes once everything was loaded and Reese did her business. We stopped in Panama City on our way to Playa Coronado to meet up with Richards’ wife Janet. Nancy rode with Janet, while Richard, Reese, and I followed.
Our location – Brisas de Coronado, 50 minutes west of Panama City on the PanAmerican Highway. Of course on the way you must stop at either Queso Chele or Queso Mili’s for an empanada or two and a small fruity drink for a quick snack- total cost about a $1.50.
We arrived at our new home and finally got to relax a bit and had a few cocktails with our friends before they headed back to the city and we started to unpack. We called it a night by 10:30pm pretty exhausted from the events of the past few days.
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