In the early summer of 2022, in a post Covid world where seemingly everything was the new normal, my (then) boyfriend (now husband) and I literally had a revelation that there may be more to life than doing the 8-5 grind, day in and out, until we got old and died.
Hi, I’m Dory and my husband is Pete. I was having a bad day…. waiting for the week to end and the weekend to arrive… when Pete walked in after having a similar day. I looked at him and said, “There’s got to be more to life than this.” And his response? Asking if I’d be interested in moving to Belize. WHATTTTT??????
So, I have to back track just a little here. You see, I’ve wanted to live outside the USA for a long time. I mean decades of longing for an opportunity to live abroad. My first husband was in the military and as such, we always thought there’d be a chance for us to live overseas. The closest we came was living in Anchorage Alaska for 1.5 years. I’ve dreamt of the lush landscape of rural France and the rolling hills and paint covered sheep in Ireland and even a few countries in Central America. But Belize? This wasn’t a country on my bucket list but is sure sounded intriguing.
And now back to our story…. Belize… Hmmmmmm. I really knew very little about Belize. I knew the general location and that it was a spot some of my friends had vacationed in… but literally, nothing else. So, I pulled up Google Maps and typed BELIZE. And there it was…. in Central America. Seemingly not that far from the USA. This was the start of a lot of research. Google, YouTube, Facebook groups, etc. We spent about a week reading and researching everything we could find on Belize. And at the end of the week, we realized this wasn’t exactly the lifestyle we were looking for. You see, Belize is a poor country. It does get huge kudos on language, as it’s the only Central American country where English is the official language. But it just wasn’t right for us in many areas including the visa process and lifestyle we wanted.
This led to a few days of trying to compare Belize to Costa Rica and Panama (Costa Rica and Panama had been my top choices in the move abroad dream going back at least to 2021. And ultimately, we chose Panama… for so many reasons.
This blog is about Panama. But it’s also about our journey to this wonderful country, retiring early from corporate America and the adventures we’ve had along the way. We hope that you enjoy reading about our experience and if we can make you stop for a minute to contemplate what you might do with your own life…. well, I’d consider that a win!