Just a Little More on Animals

Steve has written a detailed account of the process of getting the required certifications and having them apostilled in the comments sections of Bringing In Animals.  That's exactly what we did.  We were lucky that our vet was an APHIS vet so that I didn't have to go through the extra stage--which a friend of ours had to--of getting the certificate from (in our case) Olympia, which would have added a minimum of at least one day to our process.

These days, you'd have to live in a really out-of-the-way place for your vet not to be aware of what it takes to ship animals internationally.  Always a good place to start.

But as I added in the Comments section and wish to emphasize: the rules for bringing in animals may have changed.  ALWAYS check with the Panamanian Consulate or Embassy, always.  Make no assumptions.

Also, for those who may be interested, Steve has given José Saenz's email address.  Again, you can do it on your own, but especially if you are bringing in animals in pet cargo, it is advisable to go through an agent.

I should mention, too, that if you arrive when the official vet is not there, your animals will go into quarantine overnight at the airport, for which you will pay (I have no idea how much).  Those with whom I've talked who had had to go this route say that the people in charge are kind and courteous, and helpful.  Panamanians love animals.  Steve's comment about drawing a crowd because of their dog's unusual breed is right on.

As for Eugene Malek International Airport in David: yes, they are lengthening the runways so they can use larger planes, but I have no idea when that's going to happen.  Perhaps they will then add animal immigration but I doubt it.  The airport itself is small, and while it's touted as being 'International", it just means routine flights entering from Costa Rica and I think, at this time, Columbia, but wouldn't swear to it.  My guess is that the Panamanian government will still funnel all formal immigration through Tocumen for the foreseeable future.  With immigration to Panamá from the US (and quite possibly soon from western Europe) dropping off, they don't have a lot of reason to expand services to David.

All great information.  Please send any additional, and I'll post it.

A Little Amplification on the Short Version

In my previous post, what you got was the short story, believe it or not, of our 36 hour odyssey of the actual physical move to Panamá.  I should mention that what carry on luggage we had was filled with what we needed for the cats we brought on board, including medications for the one cat who had cancer and who had to be medicated while we were in flight.  What luggage we checked had the rest of what we needed for the animals; all we packed for us was the equivalent of a toothbrush and a change of underwear.

I also want to amplify on the story of my little scene with Alaska Airlines.  I actually am not a confrontative person and will allow people a great deal of leeway if I see that they are trying to do their jobs.  But I had been warned by a Panamanian woman whom I met during my last trip to Panamá before we moved about getting confirmation of having the animals on board.  It was she who gave me the idea of standing at your seat, because she, as it happened had the same trouble I did--no formal confirmation.  She urged me to be firm and keep pushing until I had it.

I may not be confrontative, but no one needs to urge me to be "firm".  Especially where our animals are concerned.

The crew was in the final stages of preparing for taxiing away from the gate, and I had yet to receive confirmation.  I asked the flight attendant about it, told her I hadn't had word, and she just kept on strolling down the aisle, checking for upright seat backs, with "Don't worry, I'm sure they're on board", never even looking at me as she continued on her way.

That's when I stood up.  Believe me, I had everyone's attention, even hers, finally.  I said in a moderate but firm voice (waiting for some US marshall to jump out at me!) that I'd not had confirmation, that we were moving internationally and had to catch another flight, that I had heard stories about animals being left behind, and that I was frightened to death, and that I would not sit down until I knew the animals were on board the plane.  Every single word was true, especially about being frightened to death.  I never stopped being terrified until we landed at Tocumen and I saw those three crates .

The flight attendant was clearly furious but indeed it would have taken a US marshall to get me back into my seat (more likely, to carry me off) until I was sure Lucy, Ethel and Tulip were with us.  She came back and gracelessly gave me the confirmation slips that somehow had not made it on board.

I sat down, heart pounding, and the plane left the gate.

Bringing in Animals

This is in answer to a request.

Re animal importation regulations: absolutely the ONLY way to go on this is to contact the Panamanian consulate nearest you and get the information on requirements. The rules regarding immigration and visas have changed and go into effect I believe on August 1. My friend knew about the proposed regulations some of which were quite severe, and among them, she said, were much stricter rules on bringing in animals. BUT--there are always lots of proposed regulations; always at least some do not get finalized.  So it is vital that you ask the people who should know--at the Panamanian Embassy or Consulate nearest you.

Second, what is likely to be more restrictive is the airline regulations on how you travel with your animals. There are deadlines for final vet examinations, shots, etc. When we brought in our animals, you had to have a certificate from your vet stating that the animals were free of diseases and fit to travel which then had to be sent to the Panamanian Consulate for certifcation--stamped or apostilled--and then that document was what you presented to the airline to get your boarding pass. The rule used to be 10 days from the time your vet signed the document to date of arrival, I think, in the foreign country.

Check with the airlines, for these are their regulations, not those of Panamá.

Also, check with the airlines on rules for pets on board.  Many people--us included--wanted to bring their animals in the cabin with them.  All US airlines that we knew of at the time limited the number of animals on board in the cabin to a total of two for all passengers.  In other words, two animals per flight.  And, as I recall, one per person.  Since we brought 5, two of the cats came with us on board and the other three were shipped in pet cargo.  Airlines vary in their handling of pets in pet cargo and in their prices.  I believe, Will, you are only bringing in one cat, so you stand a  good chance of being able to bring your buddy on board. 

 BUT you MUST make a reservation and get it in writing!!!  Especially if you are dealing with COPA.  We found that COPA was very good with the animals.  But friends of ours, who had made arrangements to bring two of their cats on board with them, found out at the very last minute that COPA had lost their reservation and were about to allow another animal ahead of them on that flight.  Which meant that they would NOT be able to bring both cats on board and had not made any arrangements for shipping the other cat pet cargo.  The two requirements are very, very different.  Fortunately, they had an email document from a supervisor confirming the reservation, and so by persistence and presenting this document at JFK, I believe, they were able to get their two cats on board with them.  The other person, who evidently had not made arrangements was flat out of luck.  He/she could not fly with the cat or dog that day.  

These rules are absolutely rigid--RIGID--and you MUST make sure you are going to be able to board with your cat.

But you're not through yet.  You have to make an appointment, basically, with the official government vet who is on duty at Tocumen only until noon.  When we emigrated, this and other paperwork had to be done in advance because the vet was not there all the time; he only made an appearance when animals were coming in that day.  There are these hoops you must go through vis-a-vis paperwork, and I don't know what they are because like most people, we went through an agent who specializes in bringing animals into the country.  If you do not go through these hoops, believe this like you believe the sun rises in the east--your animal will NOT be allowed into the country.  Depending on the situation at that time, if you--not the Panamanian government-- can't arrange for immediate shipment back to Ireland or wherever, they will put the animal down.  Also, get out of your minds instantaneously any notion about the folded $20 dollar/euro/ruble bill slipped under the table and the vet will look the other way, allowing the animal in.  At the time we moved, there were horror stories about what happened when stupid Americans who had seen too many Grade Z movies or read too many comic books tried to do that.  It will not work.

We used an agent in Panama City who filed the required official notification and made arrangements for the vet.  There are two whom I know of.  We used Allan Pittí (whose family turns out to live in Potrerillos); the other one is José Saenz.  I do not have current information on either one of these people.  I know we were more than satisfied with Allan, who showed up with his wife at Tocumen because she had never seen anyone bring in 5 animals before!

Related to the use of an agent:  because of the heat on the tarmac, there are severe airline restrictions as to when you can ship an animal cargo.  If the predicted temperature will be over 85 degrees Fahrenheit at ANY stopover or at Tocumen, you will not be allowed to ship your animal cargo.  Animals have died of the heat after hours waiting planeside.  Allan and José are licensed to go out to the plane and facilitate the unloading of the animals, getting them into the air-conditioning of Tocumen.  In fact, our two quite thrilled dogs (who were ready to hop the next flight to Berlin or Rome, they didn't care where) and one very disgruntled cat made it into the cargo area at Tocumen before we did!  One of the happiest sights of my entire life was that of those three crates, waiting for us as we cleared Adoana and Migración.

By far and away, the worst part of the whole move was everything involving the animals.  When some of us get together and trade horror stories, we are right there with June 2-3rd, 2004, getting to Seattle from an island off the coast with the menagerie, getting them on Alaska Airlines flight to Los Angeles, and then the nightmare wait until the midnight flight to Tocumen.  On the Alaska Airlines flight, contrary to airline protocol, I received no word confirming that our animals had made it to pet cargo.  I had heard too many stories of animals being inadvertently left behind.  We had absolutely no leeway for error because of the difficulty of getting the documentation to the LA Panamanian Consulate back in time to avoid the Memorial Day holiday, and running against that 10 day deadline.  US marshall or no US marshall on any flight, I stood up at my seat and refused to sit down again--thus paralyzing the plane at the gate--until the flight attendant (vastly annoyed) brought me confirmation personally that the animals had made it on board.  They were supposed to give me a piece of paper that said that the animals had made it and they never did.  I would have preferred arrest rather than leave without that confirmation.

The flight was ok, but the 7 hour wait at LAX in the cargo area of Alaska Airlines with two dogs who were dying to get out there and meet all these new friends and three utterly miserable cats was a nightmare.  There are situations where you simply endure, simply suffer through them, and this was one.  

If you bring animals on, you must have regulation size carriers that will fit under the seat.  Do NOT make the mistake of hard-sided carriers.  The soft carriers are best, as they can be the regulation 9" high (at least that was the situation when we flew) in order to fit underneath the seat with no problem.  The woman ahead of us tried to get on board her flight with a non-regulation carrier.  She was turned away and had to buy at the airport a regulation carrier.

Be very careful in this arena.  Check with the nearest Consulate about the rules, and then check again, since the rules have changed and it may take time for the word to get out.  get absolute clarity with the airlines.  We split up the work.  Mary dealt with the airlines and I dealt with the Panamanian Consulate.  It was the single hardest aspect of our move.

Also, remember that the rules change all the time here, and as I warned in the beginning, there are rumors of rule changes involving animals.  Be very, very careful.

Addendum:  I forgot, and this is important:  if you are bringing in animals by means of pet cargo--and with multiple animals you almost always have to--then check with the airlines about possible "blackout" dates--a period of at least 3 months when the airline will refuse to carry pets in pet cargo because of excessive temperatures at any--I repeat, any--airport the plane lands at during its flight.  One of the reasons why we flew the way we did is that we had to choose a route that would meet these requirements.  There were cheaper and less hair-raising ways to go, but we wound up having to fly to LA from Seattle, then wait for a midnight flight to Tocumen because at that time (and it has since changed) Copa always allowed animals in pet cargo because the flight arrived so early in the morning.

Everything we did, including the schedule for our entire move, revolved around getting our beloved family to Panamá.  As soon as you have even a rough idea of when you want to move, start checking into both airline and Panamanian regulations.  Also, be prepared to spend a bundle per animal.  There are vet fees and other fees here in Panamá, but the cost of flying your animals can vary really wildly from one airline to another.  We had to do what we did but we chose Alaska Airlines over Northwest, for instance, because the cost of flying the animals varied well over $100/animal at that time.  With five animals, that was no mean consideration.  Both airlines had pretty good reputations for treating animals.  Alaska had one of the best reputations, but I frankly was far more pleased with Copa.  I don't care how annoyed that flight attendant was with me, Alaska did not follow their own protocol for confirmation.  You can not depend on any one and don't even bother making the assumption that you can.  There are plenty of horror stories--and I have confirmed several--about animals dying thanks to the idiots at the airlines.  Like pilots forgetting to turn on the environmental control in the pet cargo area.  Imagine your animals dying because the plane went to 30,000 feet with outside temperatures and an unpressurized cargo area.  I corresponded with one woman who had that happen to her with her dogs.

I hate to be this grim, but these are real worries.  If you ship cargo, demand confirmation--demand it, it is your right--and ask politely but confirm that the captain knows that he has live animal cargo on his flight.  If you love your animals, worry and be fanatical about details.  I called the LA Panamanian Consulate so many times, checking, that the consul there recognized my voice on the phone immediately.  He was truly kind, truly compassionate, and treated me with all courtesy and kindness, even though I must have made upwards of 20 calls to him, many times checking the same thing, since I was getting contradictory information.   It turned out that, at that time anyway, the State of California required an additional certification that had to be apostilled and I wanted to make sure that, since we were stopping over in LA, I didn't have to go through the CA certifiation as well.   This would have delayed us, since we were working around the US holiday of Memorial Day when all government offices, including foreign consulates, shut down.

I hate to be this alarmist, but the incident about Copa losing the reservation for bringing pets on board in the cabin happened less than a year ago.  The people involved were nervous wrecks over the whole animal immigration thing.  All I could do was empathize from a distance because there is good reason to be worried.  Mostly, it goes smoothly.  We really had no trouble except for confirmation about the animals being aboard the Alaska Airline flight.  Just pay attention to detail and hound the people involved.  That's what they're getting paid for--to make sure that you're getting the right service.

Start early.

Point of View

I woke up this morning realizing that in a destructive way, for me, this blog has started to dominate my life.  I understand that that happens.  What interests me is that La Gringa in Honduras has gone through the same thing.  Our blogs are similar, in that we talk about life here and she, too, takes an interest in trying to point out the risks of uninformed decisions to move to Central America.  Lately, however, that seems to be all I'm doing or thinking about, and that's simply not what I want to focus on.

I realized that through the Comments I've come to "know" a few of you--certainly not well, but have gotten a little bit of a nice "feel" as to who you are. 

I'm not concerned about the rich, and I sincerely doubt that any of them read this blog, which is just as well.  But I am concerned about people like us--retirees or anyone else who is living on modest incomes, who is feeling perhaps financial or other pressures and who dreams about getting away "from it all" and fulfilling some--again-- dream, of comfortable living in a tropical paradise.  Too much Hollywood.

It's these people to whom I address my concerns, almost frantic when I read about the innocence and naiveté upon which people seem to be headed towards making life-changing decisions.

Mary and I went through the list of the ex-pats we know around here--not every ex-pat who has moved here because we certainly don't know everyone by any means--and counted how many households are in the process of leaving or trying to leave.  It adds up to 40% or 50%, depending on what we think one person is going to do.  Of 10 households, fully 4 and possibly 5 want out or are on their way out.  The financial loss for at least two is or will be considerable.  I'd hate to see some of yo wind up in that position, or so unhappy that what should be really good years for you turn out to be miserable.

However, I have the nasty character attribute of sort of taking responsibility that definitely isn't mine on my shoulders.  Whether or not any of you make informed decisions, whether or not you come here at least considering the risks, whether or not you're going to continue to be so desperate or so blind or so in love with a fantasy that you move here regardless and then fall victims to the predators, both Panamanians and gringo (especially American), who are here waiting for you, is really not my concern.  

So, thank you to those who have made comments that they've found my blog informative.  I think I was never so happy with the blog as when it served as an information exchange for tick removal and suppression, because that sort of thing is exactly who I am.  I will continue to write about what I encounter here--I have one post in mind about problems with labor that have come up for us quite recently--but mostly I want to document the real reason why we came here--what we enjoy about living in this area.  I'm going to be busy for the next few days, but when I return to this blog, it will be with photos, hopefully videos about the Potrerillos library and the new additions to the school.

By the way, Dan, I did follow up on Charles Colburn and learned some things last night; I intend to learn much more over the next few days. but you're right--he helped the Potrerillos library enormously.

So I want to leave the subject of risks with this warning:  if you intend to buy land and build, you will face the two greatest risks you have in moving here--buying the land and not being taken (no water, for instance) and then finding an honest and/or competent contractor.  There is absolutely no way to overemphasize those dangers.  It's not possible.

If you decide to buy in a development or another type of existing house, you are merely facing those risks once removed.  I know every screw, every tubo, every bag of cement, every piece of rebar, every beam in this house because I bought them and I checked them out as they arrived.  This is not the US--you don't have the same disclosure laws protecting you.  Buying into a development that exists only on paper is or is only partially complete is, at this point, a horrendous risk for many different reasons, not the least of which is that developers are going broke and leaving people high and dry with no possibility of getting their considerable deposits back.

Sometimes I think I make it sound like we knew everything and avoided all problems and had some sort of easy time of it here, because we were all-knowing.  No.  But from our individual experiences in Latin America--Mary spent three years in the Caribbean doing graduate work, me the equivalent of over a year in the poor parts of Brasil--we knew what we were in for as far as culture and the lack of infrastructure was concerned.  We knew the kinds of things we would have to do without but we also knew what we considered to be the benefits.

We also listened to the advice and warnings of some gringos--American and Canadian--who had been here for a long time.  I will be forever indebted to those three people for their kindness, patience, advice, and help.  Without them, and the sharp but honest and extraordinarily helpful Panamanian businesswoman who sold us our land, I don't know that we would have come out of the experience here in any kind of good shape.  We are not rich.  We built here based on the proceeds of the sale of a very modest house in the US, and we live on Social Security.  We could not afford a major disaster and we didn't have one, thanks in good part to these three people.

Without question, we also had a certain amount of luck.  What percentage that was, I couldn't say.  But it factored in.

Even then, we made mistakes.  But after you get through the major hassles, the rest you can deal with.

So that's it.  If you have questions, you can ask me, and I'll give you whatever information I have based on my experiences and those of people I know (within limits--don't ask me about real estate).  But for the most part, I need to get out from underneath what this blog has become.

Water Again

I think just about everyone who reads this blog also reads Don Ray's Chiriquí Chatter.  Today, June 10th, he posted an outstanding article about the problems with water here in Chiriquí.  It's a must read.  It isn't as if he's saying anything really new; he's responding to a Yahoo group discussion and he's repeating a lot as well as adding disquieting news about the meningitis outbreak--I had no idea it was in Dolega, too.  My post on utility reliability contains much the same information except Don has expanded on the information in his post, and he specifically addresses the situation in David, which is different from the rural areas.

I would have to say that pueblo-wide here in Potrerillos, we have water outages maybe a half dozen times a year.  BUT because of water delivery lines and the fact that people tap off each others' lines (yes, it's illegal--just try to get it enforced), you wind up having far, far more outages than just with the main delivery system.

At any given moment in time, I can take you over a 2-3 kilometer stretch of road and point out to you at least two very visible leaks, plumes of water spouting into the air.  They are not IDAAN pipe leaks--they are leaks from private lines.  There are leaks like that--water plumes, easily visible--as you go down the road to Dolega and to David as well.  If you happen to be downstream of such a line and you're on it--well, if there are outages finally in that line, you, too, have no water.  And IDAAN will not help you.

I posted a comment on Don's blog about the fact that right after the tropical depression that became Tropical Storm Alma left us, Valle Escondido, the over-hyped development in Boquete, suffered a mud slide that blocked one of their access roads.  Fortunately no houses were involved.  Yet.

If you go to the Palo Alto area or the Jaramillo Central area and look at the development on the slopes that has turned Boquete into a slum as far as I'm concerned--if you go look at the steepness of grades of access roads to individual residences (I know there are some that are more than 6%--I've driven on them)--if you look at the way pads for houses have been carved out of the slopes--if you're someone like me who has lived in an area where bluffs are unstable when saturated with water--what you see is certain catastrophe just waiting to happen.

Many of the housing (and access roads) that you see on those slopes would NEVER be permitted in the US.  Never.   And for good reason.  One of these days, too many of those houses are going to wash down the mountainside on what is called here a "patina" of mud.

I don't truly understand the makeup of the soil here--it isn't clay--but I can tell you from sometimes scary personal experience that it layers when wet and you slide on it.  Those layers slip.  And that's on level ground.  4-wheel drive has saved our necks, literally, at least once and gotten us out of some nasty situations at least a half dozen times if not more.  But even 4-wheel drive is not going to help you if you're caught in a mud slip.  I know.  Nearly three years ago, I wound up sliding out of control and lodged gently (thank God) against a small sapling--on level ground.  In order to get out of the situation, we had to chop down the sapling (with a borrowed ax) so that the truck could slide just a little further where the 4-wheel drive could take hold.  That occurred maybe the length of a football field from where we live, never mind in a really rough area.  Or on an unpaved road on a slope, of which there exist many.

So water is a problem in many different ways, and you have to be careful.  Don made a point which he should have put in bold and italics--if you're looking at land, particularly in the Boquete area, ask around about water--don't ask the seller.  DON'T ASK THE SELLER. Should you be lied to, take it from all of us--you have no realistic legal recourse. Contracts are a joke around here.   It's Buyer Beware.  Everyone who thinks you are coming here to a United States on the cheap or Paradise is living in La-La Land.  

I hate to be so negative but Don's post actually alarmed me.  If HE feels he has to post about this yet again, then there are still the sheep out there who are ready and eager to be fleeced, who are ready and eager to come nearly totally unprepared to a foreign country, a foreign culture with no Spanish language skills and no idea of what they're letting themselves in for--and who will join the growing numbers of discouraged and bitter people who are trying to sell their homes and get out.  La Gringa in Honduras estimates that the return rate from that country is a good 50%.  I think that for other reasons--after all, it's a little hard to be pie-in-the-sky blind about a country as poor as Honduras--the percentage here will be similar.

It's not that I think no one should immigrate here.  Far from it.  there is a couple who live near us who have been here 5 years or more, and while they have suffered far, far more than we have (right now, for example, they're in the middle of a fairly grim legal fight with a former employee that could cost them literally thousands of dollars), I think they're good for the long haul.  Yet I see signs of stress in someone else we know, whom I have felt for quite some time does not have either the judgement or the skills to survive here.  Some else we know who has been here for 12 years is finally giving up and trying to sell his home (unsuccessfully) so that he can move back to the US.

I have no actual statistical data to base this impression on, but I would guess that fully 9 out of 10 people who came here during The Boquete Boom have no business here.  I would guess that there is a similar percentage still out there but who think that they're going to be on the right side of the statistic.

I think the best way to describe what it takes to thrive here is that you have to have a frontier attitude--not a Hollywood frontier attitude but the real thing.  A spirit of adventure, a willingness to cut loose from what you know, a good set of real survival skills (not urban commuter ones), and a realistic attitude that on any frontier, there is not the kind of order, never mind law, that exists in more civilized places.  In many respects, Panamá is NOT a "civilized" place if you mean by that the sort of comforts you have and assumptions you make in the US, the assurances and protections.  They don't exist here, and there is simply no use whining about the lack.   And you're  not going to get them soon, either--another common and fatal error--"Oh things will be all right once I get there or in a little while".

This is not a first-world country and it's not going to be one in our lifetimes.

A Really Good Overview on Immigration

A blog I read daily is La Gringa's Blogicito, by an American woman living in La Ceiba, Honduras.  I most certainly can relate to many of the things she writes about, although I think we have it somewhat easier here in Panamá (but not as much as she thinks we do).  

Today I browsed her Website and checked out her page on Immigration to Honduras.  It is outstanding.  While a few of her points are applicable only to Honduras--such as the differences between the Bay Islands and the continent--just about everything she says there should be taken to heart by anyone who is thinking of immigrating to Panamá.  My only possible difference with one point is that I had exceptional service from the Panamanian consulate in Los Angeles, which was the closest to where we lived.  I was on the phone so often with them because of checking and rechecking the Panamanian requirements for animal immigration that we began to recognize one another by voice tone.  They were  patient and helpful, always kind and polite.

This post is succinct and is worth your careful attention.  She says what we all say, those of us who have no financial or other interest in promoting immigration, and she says it very, very well.