Our Plan
If you haven’t already seen it, I explained why we chose Panama in this post. Now that we’ve finally arrived safely in Panama, let me explain what it is we’re looking for and how we hope to find it…
Part 1 - What we want in our (hopefully) forever home:
- 2+ bedrooms with 2+ bathrooms and a nice, open living room/kitchen/dining room.
- A laundry room, air conditioning and hot water are essentials; if the house doesn’t have them, then the purchase price needs to leave us with enough money to add them.
- Located in a safe, quiet area with an expat community. (We have every intention of becoming fluent in Spanish and hope to make some good Panamanian friends, but initially, it would be nice to live near likeminded, English speaking friends.)
- A fenced in yard for our babies.
- A swimming pool (or money left over after the house purchase to have one put in).
- A nice patio/gazebo/palapa/outdoor living space for enjoying the wonderful weather here all year round.
- As close as possible to (no more than a short walk from) the beach.
- No more than a short drive (to
- roadside fruit/vegetable stands.
- a place where fishermen sell fresh seafood.
- a grocery store or “mini-super”.
- a couple (or more) good, cheap restaurants.
- live music/entertainment.
- a good medical clinic.
- No more than an hour away from:
- A good hospital. (We’re not getting any younger and the older we get, the more important medical care is going to be.)
- a supermarket.
- a hardware/building materials center.
- A garage or workshop (or money left over after the house purchase to have one built).
- The ideal place would:
- be within walking distance of shopping/dining/entertainment.
- have a guest house/casita for visitors.
- have numerous mature fruit trees.
- have a water catchment system.
- have solar panels for free electricity.
- And, of course, it needs to be at a price we can afford.
Part 2 - How we hope to find what we’re looking for:
Starting in Panama City (where we’ll buy a car), we plan to drive along the Pacific Coast, staying a week or two in various beach towns as we work our way to the Costa Rican border. After 90 days, our driving privileges (on our US-issued licenses) expires — so after 12 weeks or so, we need to leave Panama for a few days then reenter the country to renew them. Once we’re certain that Panama is the place for us, we’ll begin the process for getting our Pensionado Visas, Panama drivers licenses, and legal residency — at which point we’ll have no more such time constraints.
After coming back from a short stay in Costa Rica, we’ll explore the Caribbean coast. It’s not nearly as developed as the PacifIc so there’s mostly just Bocas del Toro and Colon to explore.
The short stays in each beach town/area aren’t really intended for finding our perfect spot. They’re more for crossing places off our list (for whatever reason). Once we’ve narrowed it down to a ‘short list’, we’ll plan much longer visits (by then we should have begun our visa/residency process and not have any significant time constraints) so we can really nail down our preferred location targets.
One wild card in all this is our (mostly Krista’s) health. The best medical care is in Panama City so we may have to interrupt the search for “our spot” multiple times to come stay in or near Panama City for doctor appointments and diagnostic tests/procedures.