Country Article / Postcards

Panama Uncensored

Date: 06/29/2006

Dear International Living Reader,

Sultry...that is to say, very hot and humid... Unsavory slum areas with ankle-breaking sidewalks and mad drivers in banged-up vehicles who could run you down at any turn... Down-at-the-heel neighborhoods where the streets are lined with sagging wooden shacks built alongside once-glorious but now moldering old mansions...

Ah, paradise...

Indeed, I'm describing here (in the words of Roving Euro-editor Steenie Harvey) Panama City, one of our most preferred destinations worldwide...our choice four years running for "The World's Top Retirement Haven" (see our annual Global Retirement Index, published every year as a feature of the September print edition of International Living).

What's going on?

We asked Steenie to take a detour. This month, we suggested to Steenie, rather than another Euro-jaunt...why not head west...to the hub of the Americas? We'd like a reality check, we told our correspondent, who'd never traveled in Central America beyond Mexico before. See what you, as an experienced Euro-rover, think of this country called Panama, about which we wax so poetic all the time. Warts and all, we encouraged Steenie. Tell it like you see it.

And she has. You'll read her uncensored dispatches starting tomorrow.

What do we think of Panama now that Steenie's reminded us of its warts and boils?

We think what we've always thought. Panama's capital, Panama City, is without peer in this part of the world, the most cosmopolitan capital in Central America. The country's coasts (both Caribbean and Pacific...plus along the sandy edges of a whole bunch of picture-perfect islands) are beautiful. Its mountains are spring-like...their hillsides covered with wildflowers. The pensionado program of special benefits for foreign retirees is the best on offer anywhere. And this country remains one of the world's hold-out offshore havens.

Our staff is voting with their feet. In the past several months, four among us have opted to up-sticks for Panama City, there to work from our Casco Viejo office...one from Ireland, one from New Zealand, and two from the States. As I write, two others of our ranks, our husband-and-wife team of Dan Prescher and Suzan Haskins, are packing boxes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where they've sold their home of the past two years, in preparation for their move, late July...you guessed it...also to Panama City.

Even Lief and I are seriously contemplating the idea. When our daughter Kaitlin graduates from high school next year, and we're more mobile, we, too, may choose Panama. I'm investigating two French schools in Panama City...with the thought that young Jack, bilingual after two years in school in Paris, could keep up in French. (While his dad begins to teach him Spanish.)

I've let you in on this secret before: In reality, paradise does not exist. No place is perfect. Panama, our "World's Top Retirement Haven," is no exception.

We like the tropics, and we enjoy life in the Third World. We're romantics, as we remind you often, who choose to see the opportunity a place offers...and the less developed and more rugged a place...the more opportunity it can hide.

We like Panama, hot Panama City weather...crazy Panama City taxi drivers...run-down Panama City buildings notwithstanding. We like it as a place of opportunity, a place of beauty, a place of freedom...

You may like it, too. Before you decide, read Steenie's reports, in your in-box starting tomorrow.

Kathleen Peddicord
Publisher, International Living

P.S. Today, Bill Bonner, founding publisher of International Living, forwarded to me an e-mail exchange he's had this week with a reader of his Daily Reckoning free e-letter service (see http://www.dailyreckoning.com). One of Bill's DR readers wrote:

"I envy the fact that you choose to live in France and England. I envy the fact that you can afford to own property in Latin America (Nicaragua, I believe, and also Argentina). I envy the fact that you can still buy gold.

"But, Bill, I feel sad for you also.

"You seem to have lost the sense of home. You have lost the sense of family, neighborhood, roots, values.

"Instead of staying in America with your roots and family and neighbors and fighting to defend the ideals your nation was founded on you chose to leave and pontificate. Shame on you. I will suggest that you are a coward.

"I will stay here in the bunker with mogambo guru. I will stay here, and I will adapt to whatever is. But I will not abandon my country, nor my family (extended), nor my town, nor my neighbors.

"I feel sad for you, Bill, in that you seem to have put yourself ahead of so many other things that are important. Good luck in your selfish endeavors. But I still enjoy reading your tomes."

Bill replies:

"Okay, you stay in the bunker. While we appreciate your concern for our emotional state, we are happy to report that all is well here.

"But let us ask you a question: How do you think you got to America in the first place? Was it because your ancestors were too cowardly to stay in Ireland or Germany or England or Italy?

"'Where freedom is, that is my country,' said John Milton. Americans used to be a restless breed...always searching for greater freedom...greater opportunity...and a place to have a smoke. Your ancestors probably left the Old World because they were looking for something better--a place where they could mind their own business, earn a living, and find happiness in their own way. But now that the country has become the homeland of a decadent empire, we have to ask ourselves: Where should real Americans live? Where is freedom now? Where are opportunities? There are no sure answers to those questions, but we find some of the most appealing of our countrymen outside of the country. It is as if they had left so that they could continue living as Americans should--by their own wits and their own wills. In many ways, they are the best Americans. In some ways, they are the only ones left."