April 30- Home to North America... for Now

On April 30th we left our beautiful paradise of Cerro Azul and headed to the airport to begin our trip back home to Canada for the summer. Of course we're taking the long way, 4 days in South Beach, Miami and a week in our timeshare in Las Vegas.

So how do we feel about the three places that we spent time living in?

Of course we loved Italy especially the village life where my daughter and her husband live but found that housing costs, utilities and gasoline were way above our budget so we will just have to visit there every once in awhile.

We loved Ecuador. In spite of the third world problems- garbage, poverty, beaurocracy etc- we still found a home there, unfortunately
for us we loved both the Salinas beach area and the lovely city of Cuenca.

And finally Panama, much less of a third world country than Ecuador with wonderful people and many great places to live. The grocery bills were very comparable to Arizona ,in other words cheaper than Canada ( unless you shop at Riva) with wine and beer being half the cost of similar items in Ecuador. That said, living in Cerro Azul permanently was not for us. Though we loved the scenery, hiking ,fresh air and drinking water, we found it too isolated and a 6 month rainy season just didn't suit us- remember we had lived in sunny Arizona for 11 years.

So now we are heading home to Collingwood to contemplate our next move.
My posts will be few during the summer, maybe the odd one discussing ease or difficulty of getting our necessary papers for residency but stay tuned for October when we will start our next journey.