Weekly Newsletter
May 9, 2005

So you want to retire to Panama.
Paradise Services
Newsletter #7 Volume #1

Electricity and Puerto Armuelles

Electricity

Shortly after we moved into our modest home in Villa de las Acacias back in October 1982, one night the lights went out and I heard what I thought was a gunshot from up the street. After a few minutes, and hearing no commotion, I ventured outside to see if I could determine what was going on. Everything was peaceful, but I did notice that only a few blocks of my street were dark. After a couple of hours, the lights came back on. This became a fairly regular occurance; lights out, loud bang, and one hour to eight hours later the maintenance truck would drive by shining a light up the poles. Strangely enough, they always ended up at the same pole, where a transformer was located. As I learned, the loud bang was caused by the fuse on the 5,000 volt side of the transformer blowing. Now today, May 2, 2005 the scenario repeated itself, as it has done dozens of times since October, 1982. I calculate that first IRHE and now Elektra Noreste have expended at least 250 manhours, close to 100 gallons of fuel and somewhere around 90 high voltage fuses since I moved here. just replacing the same fuse every few months.

Now, I'm not sure how they do things in the electric company, but the last 10 years of my working life I was a maintenance supervisor with the Army's telephone company in Corozal , and a skilled electronics tech for the 30 years before that, and I know a little bit about keeping and how to use historical maintenance records. It just seems incredible to me, that in the over 22 years of which I have personal knowledge, no one in the electric company noticed that the same transformer keeps blowing its fuse every few months. I suppose its a lot easier to get a few bucks for fuses every month than to get a whole lot more bucks to replace a transformer that works just fine most of the time. Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to the point of telling this story.

If you're seriously thinking about moving to Panama, you should get used to the idea that there is no good reason to fix something until it won't work at all, because that is the approach most folks here take to maintenance. Once, years ago, I had a mechanic advise me that I should have the rear brakes on my car replaced in 1000 miles, because they were almost worn out. This, after having taken the car in for a thorough inspection, and requesting them to fix whatever needed fixing. You will see this attitude reflected in the condition of automobiles, taxis, buses, trucks, streets and highways, indeed almost every kind of machinery in use.

Gas prices

It has now been one month since the Government of Panama announced a $.40 per gallon reduction in gasoline taxes. In that time the price of a barrel of oil has dropped from over $57.00 to about $50.00. Can anyone give me a simple, logical explanation why the price of a gallon of gasoline has decreased by only $.14 in that same time period? Can you spell 'windfall profiteering'?

Puerto Armuelles

Take the Inter-American highway from Panama City, through David, and keep going until you see the border station at Paso Canoa, then turn left and follow the two-lane country road for 38 kilometers to Puerto Armuelles. Now, let's go ahead and get the nice stuff out of the way first. You can reach some of the world's finest sport-fishing grounds on day-trips from Puerto Armuelles and bananas are $.10 a pound. But there are other places in Chiriqui Province from which you can day-trip the same fishing grounds and bananas are $.10 a pound all over the Republic, plus you don't have to go through Paso Canoa for the fishing or the bananas.. Paso Canoa is a blight, and the Republic should be ashamed to allow visitors to get their first glimpse of such a beautiful country in such a pesthole. It's filthy, shabby, crowded, noisy, the streets are in terrible condition, and the hordes of big trucks make driving a nerve-wracking experience. On the plus side, it's small, so you don't need to spend much time there, but you can't get to Puerto Armuelles without driving through Paso Canoa. The road from Paso Canoa to Armuelles is in good shape, but you will share it with big, fast trucks and big, slow farm implements, so drive carefully.

Puerto Armuelles is a company town that lost its company, and looks it. Labor Union demands drove the Chiriqui Land company out of Armuelles and lower banana prices in countries without such contentious labor unions lured away United Fruit. One memory I had from my trip to Armuelles over 20 years ago was the vast numbers of banana plants I saw. I realize the memory can play tricks, but it seemed to me that not nearly so many bananas plants were in evidence as before. Driving through town, I was struck by the generally detoriated look of the many company built houses, with most needing new roofs and paint. The old banana dock is in bad shape and one look was enough to convince me not to venture out onto it.

Although we arrived in Armuelles close to lunch time, Nora refused to consider having lunch in any of the eating establishments we saw, nor did I try to persuade her otherwise. I've learned to trust her judgement.

As long as we were there, we decided to check out Playa Tortuga, which we learned about on the web. The first problem we encountered was that no one we asked about it had ever heard of it. Finally, by being persistent and asking different questions (Do you know where anyone has lots on the ocean for sale?) we located what we believe is the development, or at least what fits the map and looks like some of the pictures we saw. We travelled down a very dusty dirt road for about a kilometer, past some government offices and a small community of very basic, very small cinder-block houses to arrive at what we were told was 'Finca Tortuga'. We honestly do not know if we found the right place or not. The only reasons I even mention it is because this place was portrayed as having some rather impressive services and infrastructure in place when I first saw it on the web in March, and any place commanding over $20.00 per square meter in a severely economically depressed area like Puerto Armuelles should be pretty impressive. I expected at least a sign or two.

We didn't even bother to try to reach the other Puerto Armuelles 'development' beyond Petro Terminales, because it can only be reached by 4X4 at low tide.

Maybe it was the lingering unpleasantness of Paso Canoa, maybe we were just having a bad day, maybe I'm being totally unfair, but I cannot imagine why anyone would choose to live in Puerto Armuelles.

We made our way out of Armuelles, through the ugliness of Paso Canoa, and up the mountain to Cerro Punta where we had a completely different experience. I'll tell you about that in a later newsletter.

For pictures of Puerto Armuelles, click the following link. http://www.panamaretire.net/pix_armuelles.html.

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