Navigating The Start Of Our Nomadic Journey

I wrote an update several weeks ago about changes to the itinerary and there’s been still more changes since. Most had to do with the first European leg of our journey, I’ll briefly talk about those changes in a minute (Unless you’re a slow reader, then it may be two minutes) but the previous update post goes into much more detail.

The new changes are mostly because October happened. We’re leaving in November to start our fully nomadic journey and that isn’t much time at all.

Due to the Schengen visit restrictions we had already modified our expectations of which countries we’d visit and when. Then as we did more research into the impact of ‘tourist season’ on various locations we made the decision to essentially throw out every plan aside from starting in Panama and going to England at the beginning of April.

We stayed with the original dates in Panama City – Nov 15 to 27 – but we bailed on the Nueva Gorgona beach house stay for a couple of reasons. One was that it’s pretty isolated and we won’t have a car. Originally that isolation seemed perfect as a way to settle into our new lifestyle; hang out at the beach and just relax. The closer we got to departure the less appealing that idea sounded. More importantly, our friend who lives at Coronado had been keeping an ear to the ground for us and led us to a smoking deal for the month of December.

It’s good to have friends

Friends of his who were planning to leave town for three months wound up not having a tenant for the month of December so he sweet talked them into giving us their condo for the same price we had been planning to pay for the beach house. This is a super nice 2 bedroom unit on a high floor in the Coronado Golf Tower that we never would have even looked at because the normal monthly rate is almost US$4,000. He convinced them that some income is better than no income and since he could vouch for us personally as ‘quality people’ (his words, not mine) we had a brief video chat with the owners and locked down the deal.

A little (mostly civil) unrest

Then. Oh, yeah, and then….. Did you know that Panamians are mad at their government for the latest mining contract that was signed? Mmm-Hmmmm. Protests and demonstrations galore. Road closures all over the country. Protests in the city. It’s kind of a mess. Areas to the west and north are having supply chain issues with food and fuel and there is no way to predict how long this will go on.

We are active members in several Panama-specific Facebook groups so we were seeing both sides of the argument to cancel a visit… Multiple conversations about whether or not to go ahead and visit Panama right now or skip it and start somewhere else, we even started investigating alternative destinations. We have bookings in Costa Rica starting Jan 8th so maybe we skip Panama and go straight to Costa Rica? Or what about Nicaragua, Ecuador, Dominican Republic…? South America instead? Argentina is supposed to be nice…..

Having taken in all available information, as of today, Nov 2nd, the plan is to go ahead with the flight to Panama City arriving the 15th and play it by ear from there. We did make a change to our hotel due to the original hotel being in between two metro stations that keep getting shut down due to the protests. We moved closer to the financial district. On the down side, i tcost an extra $13 for the stay but on the plus side – rooftop pool.

Protest activity could derail the plan to stay in Coronado in December if it prevents the condo owners from making their planned trip to Boquete. Failing that, it could impact our planned stay in Boquete in January and possibly even ground transportation from Panama to Costa Rica. We had planned to take the bus from David to San Jose but that is shut down right now. And getting from Coronado to Boquete and then to David looks problematic at present. However, as a wise man once said ‘Time wounds all heels’ so we’ll press on until we have to adapt. The good news is that we have resources to rapidly pivot so it really is a ‘First World Problem’.

A little update to the previous update

The most significant adjustment to the itinerary – made before the situation in Panama got weird – was a decision to visit Portugal in between Costa Rica and England. This was partly to maximize what we could see in Europe while keeping the ‘90 days out of 180’ rule for visiting the Schengen Zone in mind. After a lot of waffling and meandering around the idea of when and where I finally just went ahead and purchased tickets from San Jose to Lisbon for a random Tuesday in February. We’ll stay a couple nights in Lisbon, head to the Algarve for a month and then spend nearly two weeks making our way up to England by train.

As it stands right now we’re planning relatively short train journeys with 3 nights in Madrid, 2 in Barcelona, 4 in Paris, 2 in Calais and then hit England a couple days ahead of our first scheduled pet-sit to check out Portsmouth. It would be far less expensive to stay longer in Portugal and hop a flight to London but neither of us actually LIKES to fly. Alternatively, we could do Faro to London as one long trip via bus and train but the idea of nothing but travel for 30+ hours is also unappealing. I figure that a couple of nights each in some major stopover cities will give us a better idea of where we might like to spend an extended period in future.

We’re already booked for pet-sits in England from Apr 6th to May 28th so we’ll need a plan after that; originally we were thinking of Italy and Croatia for the summer but, tourist season. July and August will be hot everywhere in Europe (and more expensive) so the best we can do is find someplace that isn’t also overrun. Albania and Turkey are the top contenders right now but Scotland and Ireland are in the mix, too. We may still try to do Croatia in June but more likely it will be September.

Almost like Swedish death cleaning

In related news, we have been finishing up the process of discarding stuff we won’t be taking with us and practicing packing. The downsizing process has been interesting because of the stages we’re going through. We got rid of the vast majority of our stuff in April/May when we sold the house. But, we kept stuff that we would want for the 6 month transition period of living in a studio apartment. We’ve been thinning that out over the past few weeks but now we’re at the real crunch.

We managed to sell Sandra’s Subaru Baja to someone who promised to give it a good home. That was probably the only thing we’ve gotten rid of that she really had a serious emotional attachment to. Raj was with us for 9 years and she had really personalized him to suit her personality; right down to the purple LED’s for the dash lights and painting all the boring silver interior trim in a pale aqua blue. My broken Jeep went on the same day. We got exactly what I expected from the Baja and I lost a little bit on the Liberty. (Sort of. My internal accounting method for cars is that over the course of ownership it shouldn’t cost me more than $100 per month and in this case, over the course of 2 nearly identical Jeeps, it worked out to about $115 per month for 11 months of driving. The Baja worked out to about -$25 per month over 9 years of driving)

Less than a week from now we will be fully mobile, moving from Redmond to Portland – we’re staying with my mom for a week prior to departure – so we have a few things we’ll still need for that week but won’t be carrying with us to Panama. This morning Sandra told me she woke up at 3 am. Apparently it was strong anxiety about her ability to get all of her stuff into a backpack. And how in the heck was I getting all my stuff into a backpack?! “I have no idea. I was planning to figure that out this weekend but the worst case scenario, in my mind, is that we have to go to the thrift store and buy a small suitcase for the overflow on our initial departure” We know that it’s possible to do this with carry-on only. There are a lot of people already doing it. However, we are still packing for contingencies with no actual experience to base our decisions on. So, we’ll see how THAT goes.

The important takeaway

For anyone who plans to ‘follow in our footsteps’ I would suggest that the two most important things to having a successful launch are going to be flexibility and clear communication. Upon reflecting on the conversations and discussions we engaged in this year, the decisions we made and the process by which we arrived at or agreed to them, I am aware that some couples likely would not have been able to navigate this. This project is rife with potential landmines that could destroy relationships.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Update to the update: I’m not a fast writer so now it’s Nov 9th and we are in Portland with less than a week to go and it’s exciting but a little bit nervous making. This is a HUGE change to our lifestyle. The final clearout of the ADU we’ve been in since May was a very concrete feeling step in the process. Everything we own fits loosely into the bed of a full-size pickup truck and everything we are taking with us would fit in the trunk of a mid-size car.

Everything we own fits loosely into the bed of a full-size pickup truck and everything we are taking with us would fit in the trunk of a mid-size car.

Turns out mom has some extra storage space in her basement so we won’t need to impose on number one son to donate part of his garage to store the 4 big totes. He’s excited about that, too.