I heard the word expatriate for the first time living one summer in a tiny suburb of Madrid at the age you learn to drink. A chatty woman on the subway had complimented me on a t-shirt I had picked up at a local thrift shop for no more than the price of a donut. It was a solid blue t-shirt with words on the front that translated loosely to I will kill you to get a Nobel Peace Prize. (The Spanish version sounded less aggressive). 

Panamanian law allows for pensioners to live in Panama as permanent residents. While it is intended for retirees, you do not necessarily have to have stopped working to be granted a Pensionado visa. The visa allows foreigners to live in Panama as permanent residents if they can demonstrate a monthly pension of $500 a month, with an extra $100 for each dependent.

Panama is an amazing country and it’s appeal has been growing steadily. Because of its peaceful populace, incredible climate and close ties with the United States, more and more people have been visiting Panama, to explore everything it has to offer and also to invest. People entering the country as tourists are those people who are in Panama for the “exclusive purposes of recreation or observation”. These people will be required to obtain a tourist visa card.

So recently there’s been a lot of fuss over a restriction the Panamanian government put on tourists. And without sounding narcissistic, I am pretty sure they made this law specifically for me.

It’s everything you envision: one-eyed hookers, scraggly hobos, and a stash of various immigrants clearly not native to the Republic. The immigration office in the city is a loud, sweaty, frenzied affair and I desperately want to go back a second time.

It was a fairly muggy Saturday afternoon when, walking through a quiet intersection just short of Via Espana, I felt a tug at the back pocket of my jeans and turned to find a beautiful woman smiling as if I’d just kicked some game her way. It was the kind of tug that might have gone unnoticed had there not been a beautiful face not inches away from mine. We walked a few paces, our shoulders touching, our hips brushing, and our feet semi in sync. Any closer, and I’m pretty sure we’d have been having intercourse.

I crossed over the Costa Rica-Panamanian border at 9:40pm on March 13, after braving the unsympathetic glares and rhetoric from the man behind the plexi glass. While slightly less than traumatic, I would have appreciated a bit of a heads up on what to expect.