Panama Living Newsletter

Sam is on the radio

If you are looking for great information about living and investing in Panama, you may want to visit Window2Panama, a web radio program. They have interesting stories and interviews with people who live and work here in Panama. This week, I did an hour long interview about the Boquete area specifically and Panama in general. You can go to this website to hear it.

Promo: Window  2 Panama  This week                 we have

Sam Taliaferro,

 the                 creator of Valle Escondito and the person                 credited with starting the mass retirement movement to Panama.                  This is an information rich show and you wont want to miss it.                

In Panama City's old quarter, a rebirth takes place

Boston Wold news has a nice story on my friend K.C. Hardin and his efforts to revitalize the old Panama. K.C. has been hard at work here for 4 years and is a driving force in that part of the city. Congratulations to K.C. and to Patrizia for their great work.

American helping restore buildings

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff  |  January 22, 2007

PANAMA CITY -- As the fast-talking, big-money barons of a full-throttle property boom noisily transform Panama City's bayfront skyline into a shiny facsimile of Miami's, a different sort of developer is quietly revitalizing the city's crumbling, charming old quarter nearby.

Panama City's casco antiguo, as the old quarter is known, is home to 780 historic but mostly dilapidated buildings, from Spanish colonial dungeons and churches to French and American townhouses with wrought-iron balconies built a century ago during the construction of the Panama Canal.

Read the whole story here...

Latin America Real Estate: Continued Growth

Another good article from Latin Business Chronicle on Latin real estate for the boomers.

Excerpt;"The fundamentals of the region continue to be sound, despite some concern on the potential collateral effect of the slowdown in the

U.S.

real estate market in other regions of the globe," says Rogerio Basso, an analyst at Ernst & Young's real estate advisory services. "The baby boomer generation will continue to retire in large numbers in the next coming years and they will have a substantial amount of disposable income available to them. Many of these individuals are looking for opportunities to purchase second homes that they can use either for vacation or retirement purposes, and as such

Latin America

will continue to be an attractive proposition."

Read the whole story here...

Where in the world?

Another positive article from

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

about travel in Panama. Keep them coming!

Excerpt;

Panama. It's getting increasingly popular as a warm-weather destination, but it's still something of a bargain: Sherman Travel offers a five-night getaway, including air fare, for $899 (shermanstravel.com/editor --review.php). Seven years after the U.S. government handed the Panama Canal back to the Panamanians, and 17 years after dictator Manuel Noriega exited the scene, this country has suddenly become Central America's newest place to play. It boasts a full complement of beaches, islands, rainforest, indigenous tribes, multiethnic culture and duty-free shopping. Panama City's skyline is like Miami's and the city's multicultural mix is reflected in shops and restaurants, says Norman Vanamee, editor in chief of Sherman's Travel. You can tour the 90-year-old Panama Canal, still an amazing feat of engineering.

You can explore the country's Pacific side, with some of the most pristine jungle landscape in the world and Native American tribes who live in remote wilderness villages. Eco-tour groups abound, and one of the largest is called Ancon.

Buying in Central America

The New York Times has an article about buying property in Central America. Seems almost daily I read an article in various papers about this subject. If Americans really discover the advantages of International Real Estate in mass there won't be enough land to satisfy the demand. Each article like this helps get the word out.

New York TImes
By AMY GUNDERSON

Published: January 10, 2007

 

When Steve Carl steps out of his three-bedroom beach house in Ambergris Caye in northern Belize, snorkeling at one of the largest barrier reefs in the world is just a short swim away and going to dinner means leaving footwear behind.

      

“Everything is barefoot here,” Mr. Carl said. “There are fantastic restaurants nearby and I can walk in there with bare feet for white-linen service.”

Mr. Carl visits his vacation home in Belize with his family four or five times a year. The cost of labor in the country is low enough that he and the five other homeowners in his community can house two full-time caretakers in the development to keep watch over the homes and manage renters. Also, property taxes are “virtually non-existent,” Mr. Carl said.
Read the rest of the story at NYT online.

Poverty in Panama

Bob Baker writes an excellent article in Latin Business Chronicle about how poverty is measured and how that measure might apply to Panama. I have often defended Panama as not having as many really poor people as other Latin countries I have visited or lived. As Bob Points out, by many standards, those who appear poor are rich in many ways. It all depends on the benchmark. There are certainly areas of poverty by any standard in Panama, and most of it is with the indigenous peoples. Here in the interior we work with a number of private organizations who help with nutrition, education and other pressing issues that are a result of, or attributable to poverty. Even so, by any measure Panama has much fewer people living in poverty,  simply because it has a relatively small population compared to other Latin countries.
Thanks Bob, for a very insightful article.

Occasionally,  income does not provide a true indication of rich and poor and a quality lifestyle can be defined differently.

BY ROBERT E. BAKER

While Panama is experiencing better than 8 percent growth and our future looks brighter than ever,  a  foreign visitor recently lambasted Panama regarding our level of poverty and warned that we had better watch out because 47 percent of our population lives in  poverty. He based this on the low dollar  income of  almost half of our citizens. Furthermore, while espousing his  reactionary values that  eluded both interpretation and prophecy,  he went on to suggest that Hugo Chavez-type, leftist leaders could be  the future result of our 47 percent poverty level.

Why Today Is an Anti-American Holiday in Panama

Yesterday was another holiday of a long list of about 18 scheduled this year in Panama. What makes this one different? Well, It is the "Day of the Martyrs".  Panamanians are taking this day in remembrance of those who died at the hands of Americans during an outbreak of violence over a flag raising issue at a high school in the canal zone back in 1964. The American Heritage website carried an interesting story about this rather shameful day in Panama History.

Why Today Is an Anti-American Holiday in Panama

By Jack Kelly

Panamanians gather in the streets after the riots in 1964.

(Michael Rougier/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Few Americans know that January 9 is a national holiday in Panama, and even fewer know why. Today is Martyrs’ Day—commemorating an outbreak of violence between Panama and the United States in 1964. The confrontation left four Americans and twenty-two Panamanians dead, and it deeply strained U.S.-Panama relations. It marked the beginning of a process that would induce the United States to relinquish its rights to the Panama Canal in the decade that followed. And “it all began,” as Life magazine reported, “because there was one vacant flagpole at Balboa High School.”

Panama, Ethiopia among Frommer’s hot-spot picks

Frommer's travel Guide picks Panama as one of the undiscovered travel destinations. This article from the Boston Herald.

Excerpt: You can explore the country’s Pacific side, with some of the most pristine jungle landscape in the world and Native American tribes that live in remote wilderness villages. Eco-tour groups abound, and one of the largest is called Ancon.

    But Vanamee was most enthusiastic about the Archipielago de San Blas, on Panama’s northeast Caribbean Coast islands, a group of 400 or so islands, many uninhabited, and overseen by the Kuna Indians. “It’s a gorgeous area with spectacular diving and beaches,” he said.

Read the story here.
    

Bouquets for Boquete

This article from the San Francisco Chronicle is so good it makes me want to move to this paradise... except I already livve here. Great read about tthe beauty of Boquee.

(01-06) 04:00 PST Boquete, Panama -- Tucked in the cool highlands of the Chiriqui province, an hour's flight from Panama City, lies a slice of Shangri-la called Boquete. This idyllic place, I was told, offered tumbling trout-filled streams, mountains clad in lush rain forest, abundant orange groves and coffee plantations, and a picture-postcard town resplendent in flower gardens. Supposedly, it was known only to Panama's well-to-do looking to escape the lowlands' mugginess and mosquitoes. (And, I suspected, the overwhelming and, to me, boring presence of the Panama Canal.)

More tourism brings more crime for Costa Rica

Our neighbors to the north are experiencing significant increases in crime that has come along with their huge increase in tourism and foreign retirees. I don't make these post to scare potential retirees or visitors, but to make them aware that the natives are not always friendly and to take precautions. Foreigners are always perceived as rich and are by the local standards. Like every society there is a small number of criminals in an otherwise safe and friendly populace that prey on the unwary.

THE MISSISSAUGA NEWS

Knife attack ruins Christmas vacation

 

Louie Rosella

Jan  5, 2007

Police in Costa Rica are investigating after a Mississauga man was stabbed and his wife badly cut while the couple was on vacation this week.

The trip was supposed to be about rest and relaxation, but Miroslav and Nadia Chuyko were lucky to return home with their lives.