Earthquake in Chile

Cars lie overturned after the highway they were travelling on was destroyed in an earthquake in Santiago February 27, 2010. (REUTERS/Marco Fredes)

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Earthquake in Chile

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE BOQUETE TIMES

EDITORIAL – Climate Summit

Saturday December 21, 2009
The Editor

As the publisher and editor of  The Boquete Times I want to firmly establish my stance on Climate Change.

The time to act is now! Believe it or don’t, we are at the crossroads.

I urge you to support the proponents who fight for change. Do anything and everything you can to reverse this disastrous trend.

Salvage our planet for you, for us, for your children!

Tell us how you feel in our comment section. Tell us how you perceive climate change – is it real or contrived?

Tell us what you are doing to affect change. Tell us what you think we can do reverse the affects of global warming.

In conjunction with the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, I will be posting awareness ads front and center everyday until I exhaust the supply.

Panama Water Shortages

Monday, September 21 2009
Written by Matt Landau

I’m driving in rural Panama when I stopped in front of a cute little house and asked the woman sitting on the porch if I could use her bathroom. I’d seen it done by a friend of mine Jianella a few years back. “Just go right up to the door and ask,” she said. “Panamanians always say yes.” It wasn’t the response I was concerned about as much as the condition of the bathroom itself. I’ve always had a fear of public bathrooms and in this case, private ones were no different. The woman of course said sure and the bathroom, it turned out, was quite decent but for one factor – it had no running water. I would discover this only after doing my business and, with the strength of God, managed to throw most of my debris out the back window where a deep hole sunk into overgrown weeds.

Two very different scenes emerged in Panama not long ago. At Panama City’s landmark hotel the Intercontinental Miramar, President Martinelli, before getting into his motorcade of shiny new Prados, along with several aids and economics experts reported that Panama was weathering the recession. After that morning’s power lunch, they declared that growth would be down but Panama would still maintain a top spot in Latin America thanks to billion dollar Canal expansion, banking district and the dollarized economy.

Roughly 30 miles from the Prados and cosmopolitan Panama City is the rural village of Campana where I stopped to use the bathroom. My host mother that morning, a middle-aged woman named Gladys explained that water shortages were common in her parts. She said it was difficult because they lived mostly off the family farm. The more water shortages, the less crops they could grow and the less crops, the less food her and her family of five had to eat. It hadn’t rained much in the past months and while I tried desperately to sympathize with Gladys, I’ve never been in a position to survive on water so vitally. I don’t know why I did this, but before I left, I gave Gladys’ son Elvis a can of Axe deodorant I had in my car and told him it would help him get beautiful girls.

Over the past 18 months, as the world economic crisis shook up much of the world, Panama wobbled but never came tumbling down. And now that the credit crunch appears to be easing in some ways, Panama is supposedly poised for renewed large-scale growth. However the optimism in Panama’s cities can be contrasted in the country’s less progressive places which underlines the fact that many people in Panama are still largely untouched by the nation’s record growth.

While trade, banking, the real estate boom, and budding tourism sector occupy much of Panama spotlight, a large percentage of Panamanians still rely on agriculture for a living. Agriculture employs a ton of Panamanians (in proportion to its percentage of the country’s GDP). In tandem, agricultural products make up the nation’s main exports, which have declined steeply in 2009.

In a fairly unpublicized article that came out last April in La Prensa, reporter Alcibiades Cortes reported that nearly 70% of the nation’s farms had water shortages. Not only are the rainy months crucial for Panama’s livestock and crops, but access to water reserves has been dominated by tycoon developers. Water shortages aren’t limited to rural areas either: several highly-promoted tourist destinations frequently go without water for days on end.

Santeña Maximino Cedeño, a farmer and member of the National Cattle Association said “the economic losses from drought in Panama is incalculable.” And although MIDA (Institute for Farming Development) has developed a water plan, few if any results have been announced.

In 2001, Panama’s summer drought killed 720 thousand cattle and caused another 15,000 serious malnutrition. No one thinks Panama is facing this type of emergency again, but the upcoming dry season has refocused attention on the problems facing Panamanian agriculture as the population increases, foreigner-targeted real estate developments are constructed, and water resources come under greater pressure. It has refocused attention on Panama’s less glitzy industries and populations.

Many of Panama’s farmers are subsistence farmers (cultivating enough crops to survive) and over one million people (more than 30 percent of the population) live below the poverty line in Panama. Of those people, more than half a million (19%) live in extreme poverty. While poverty has decreased in Panama over the years, it is still one of the more unequal countries in the world. Says the World Bank: “Panama’s poorest are very poor and the richest are very rich. Although inequality is higher in rural areas, it is more obvious in urban areas, such as the city of Colón, where the close physical juxtaposition of the modern, dynamic, wealthy sector with poor city slums accentuates the perceived gap between rich and poor.”

To the neophyte, it would seem that in Panama, a lot of people got carried away in the big industries and forgot that less glamorous initiatives like water existed. It will fall to Ricardo Martinelli’s new administration to determine how the showers of economic growth can better filter down to the country’s poor. Martinelli won in a landslide victory promising more attention to the people, among his first moves, donating his entire salary to charity and opting to ride around in his own private jet. Martinelli’s yet to enact any major plans addressing the water issue during his short time in office, so in the meantime, families like Gladys’ are left looking to the sky for answers.

Alien found in Panama

Cerro Azul, Panama
Thursday September 17, 2009
Staff Writer

or is it?

Alien or Animal?

The hottest buzz on the Internet is focused right here in Panama. Several teenagers stumbled upon this rubbery creature near a creek in the nearby community of Cerro Azul. Sources say it is eerily similar to the “Montauk Monster“, the yet-to-be identified animal photographed on a New York beach last year. Various claims allege it was a dead dog, a film prop or a marketing prank. Its remains have never been found. The Cerro Azul cadaver is most likely an albino hairless sloth. But then again, let’s wait to see if the guys in the white bio suits transport it to Hangar 84. We’ll keep you posted.

Rent Prices Falling in Panama City, Panama

August 31st, 2009
Written by Casey Halloran

When I first came to Panama in 2004, I was impressed by the affordable the cost of living for such a cosmopolitan town. I rented a spacious, fairly new, furnished, ocean-glimpse apartment in El Cangrejo with for $600 per month. In 2004, a beer at the neighborhood bar was $1.25 and dining out ran around $9 for an entree. Back then, there were plenty of pre-construction apartments for under $100,000. Sure I loved Panama, but I loved the those condo prices even more, and so snatched up one myself without thinking too much.

Since then, prices skyrocketed. We can debate the reasons why: the U.S. real estate boom, news of the Canal Expansion, the success of neighboring Costa Rica or a glut of foreigners with fat pocketbooks, and a lot of hype. Regardless of the potential causes, since somewhere around 2006 prices for beach land, entertainment, hotel rooms, and apartment rentals all went through the roof.
After selling my condo in late 2007 (at what I hope will be remembered as peak prices) I’ve been renting in Panama City. While anxiously awaiting Panama’s inevitable real estate collapse, I’ve been both unwilling and unable to pay what I believe are crazy prices for city condos. Thus, I’ve been forced to continue renting. For the last year and a half, that’s unfortunately meant that I’ve paid grotesquely high rent to remain in the now-somehow-fashionable El Cangrejo area. I’ve been reluctant to wander too far from the region, as I do my best to avoid a nasty commute to my nearby office in El Carmen. As an Irish-American cheapskate, it’s been extra painful to pay Manhattan-type rent to live in a so-so apartment in an average neighborhood.

FINALLY, while searching for apartments nearby this month, I have observed a trend that’s both astonishing and heart warming: RENT PRICES ARE PLUMMETING! To any casual observer of financial news, this trend probably seems as surprising as the laws of gravity. However, I am thrilled, because after 2 years of listening to all the Panama real estate “yay-saysers” reapeat like robots that Sir Isaac Newton’s laws do not apply here, I was starting to believe them. But alas, the rules of the universe, as well as Adam Smith’s invisible and, do indeed reach to lands so remote as Panama.

To give you an idea of what I’m seeing, go to any of these sites and take a look around:

www.encuentra24.com
www.compreoalquile.com
panama.en.craigslist.org/apa
www.Boquete411.com

What you’ll see if you do:

* There are a ton of units for rent in newly delivered buildings in San Francisco, El Cangrejo and El Carmen.
* 2BR units that may have rented for $1,700 to $2,000 a year ago are now asking for as little as $1,000 per month.
* Units that were posted as far as 90 days back are still listed and have been recently reduced.
* There are a LOT of units for rent from $1,500 to $2,500 per month.

I’m hoping that the following events occur next:

1. A bunch of apartments do not rent at the desired asking prices
2. Rent prices continue to decrease
3. Many units simply do not rent at all, forcing owners to sell
4. Selling prices fall to near-original purchase prices
5. Would-be buyers, turned off by previous pie-in-the-sky prices, return to Panama and snatch up the good deals they were seeking in the first place

I’m hoping that this is the first of several much-needed reality checks for Panama’s real estate sector. It’s time to get serious about the real value that Panama offers in today’s challenging market. I hope that the local business owners and politicians are prepared to work hard to deliver greater value in order to attract investors. It would also be great if Martinelli’s administration offers investors more benefits and tax breaks to encourage the absorption of this condo glut. I am not encouraged by the move to banish “illegal hotels”, aka: short-term apartment rentals. Do potential buyers need any more reasons to NOT buy? Panama needs to do something very bold, very soon in order to avoid a Miami-type condo crisis. To those who say, “but we’re not in a crisis YET!” I can only respond with my favorite Robert Redford line in the movie Spy Game: “When did Noah build the Ark? BEFORE the flood.”

By the way, who are these nut jobs posting rentals asking $8k per month? Who would pay that in PANAMA?! I can only hope that anybody with that type of salary would be smart enough to make a down payment and BUY a place.

I’ll let you know how my apartment hunt turns out soon…

Anybody else out there moved recently?

Recession Tourism Growing in Panama

Wednesday, May 20 2009
Written by Matt Landau
The Panama Report

In a previous article, we outline what we’ve been referring to as recession tourism in Panama or the increasing demand for low cost, high value experiences that, in many cases, give way to temporary or full-time relocation by foreigners experiencing downtrodden times in their respective countries. It’s a sector not detailed in IPAT presentations or addressed by the nation’s influential leaders, but whether intended or not, Panama’s recession tourism sector is growing, fast.

Maybe it’s the escapist effect – the same reason people commit suicide or runaway – to avoid harsh conditions. In fact, much of what Panama’s seeing is a mature group of runaways looking to weather the storm somewhere warm and breezy. While Panama’s recession tourists probably aren’t doing so secretly, there is an inherent rebellion about their flight and with the onset of low season (and it’s respectively less expensive lodging and tours), more and more visitors are looking to hop on cheap flights (from Newark, Dulles, Houston, Atlanta…etc) to experience good weather, thriving business, happy people: in two words, to experience the exotic. Here are several non-costly experiences not worth missing as a recession tourist in Panama.

1. Cigars in Penonome: Several small factories lie just off Panama’s Inter-American highway, producing some of the most original cigars on the planet. Even if you’re not a cigar smoker, tour these industrial units (free of charge) and take in their old-school Cuban flare including obligatory lector on premises reading daily news feeds to employees as they roll. The owners of each shop live close by to keep an eye on the process, offering up personal advice should you be interested in buying some of their craft (at hugely reduced prices).

2. Surfing in Santa Catalina: The Costa Rica of old, where making a buck is a distant offshoot from stellar waves. Regarded by insider-surfers as arguably the most exciting break in all of Central America, Santa Catalina offers that rustic surfers charm that’s since been replaced elsewhere in the world by phony hotels and wannabe try-hards. In Santa Catalina, dollar beers are compulsory, as are super cheap surf lessons (from dudes who’d probably do it for free), and next-to-nothing surf board rentals. A lack of hotels, restaurants, and tours could be seen as disadvantageous. To Panama’s recession tourists though, it is rather seen as primitively refreshing.

Turtles in Isla Canas

3. Beaches in San Blas: For the recession traveler, try visiting San Blas by car. Yep, there’s a service that brings visitors from Panama City (via large SUV) through the mountains all the way to the sublime shores of the Caribbean coast, stopping for a simultaneous view of both oceans. For roughly $50 (round trip) spend time with one of Panama’s oldest indigenous tribes, the Kuna Indians. Lounge on their beaches, eat their fresh lobsters, or sway in their handmade hammocks where the recession has a way of naturally dissipating with the breeze.

4. Turtles in Isla Canas: This little-visited island just minutes off mainland Los Santos is one of the places real travelers love to visit. There’re no beach chair rentals or puka shell necklaces for sale. Instead, just a humble community of fishermen and farmers, happy to share their undisturbed coasts and nesting leather back turtles. A water taxi out to the island is about $10, beers at the main restaurant (if you could call it that) cost less than a gumball in DC, and sleeping arrangements are more or less limited to what you can carry on your back. This entire experience – one of sunset tents on the beach, fresh clams on the half shell, horseback rides for a dollar, and a window into and old-school Panamanian coastal neighborhood – is culture rich and touristically untainted.

5. Spear fishing off Isla Taboga: It’s a tiny taste of the Caribbean just several miles off Panama City’s modern skyline: red, green, and yellow houses set amidst a sloping St. Martin-esque mountain that cascades down into the sea. Visiting Taboga is reading a pirated page out of old Panama: the roundtrip ferry is less than $15, fried snappers cost a few bucks, and tours like snorkeling or spear fishing (off the back side of the island) are priced as if they’re merely covering costs. It’s an adventure far cheaper than anything similar in Costa Rica or Mexico, wound down by a night in Hotel Vereda Tropical (a European transplant of a hotel with sweeping bay views) where quaint rooms cost less than $70/night.

One argument of today’s recession goers will invariably be this: I need to cancel vacation plans during hard times, not create them. I need to save money, not spend it. But coming down and exploring Panama (in many cases) is cheaper than staying at home (and certainly more rewarding). Panama gets a bad rap for having an increasingly high cost of living but this pertains primarily to high-end lifestyles. Looking to vacation on a budget? There are certainly a slew of options. If $2 meals $10/night lodging isn’t enough, try these $40 adventure tours, $3 Cuban cigars, and $1 beers on the beach: enough to turn your recession frown upside-down and wait out the world’s hard times in style.

Retirement: Why Panama Is the New Florida

SPECIAL REPORT
BUSINESSWEEK
July 2, 2009, 5:00PM EST
By Michelle Conlin

Panama’s quality health care, low costs, and proximity to the states are attracting American professionals as a retirement haven

Prospective retirees: Panama wants you. The pitch? A plane ride just 21/2 hours from Miami enables the newly poor to swap a wretched retirement in the U.S. for one befitting a royal in the balmy Central American nation. Cash out! Emigrate! Feel rich! Panama—the new Florida.

Spin aside, Panama is increasingly popular among retirement-age types looking to hedge against—or skip out on—the recession. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that studies the movement of people around the world, says the chief factors prodding professional-class Americans to flock to Panama include its First World health care available at Third World prices and the country’s pensioner program, which offers some of the deepest retiree discounts in Latin America. Seniors get up to half off on nearly everything, including movies, motels, doctors’ visits, plane tickets, professional services, and electric bills. Expats also pay no tax in Panama on foreign income. Nor are they required to pay property tax for the first 20 years.

The fact that a luxe beachfront manse can be had for the same price as a dump in Daytona doesn’t hurt, either. “We would have been looking at $3 million in Miami,” says Jon Nickel of his 3,000-square-foot oceanfront penthouse in Panama City. Nickel and his wife, Gretchen, bought the place in late 2007 for $250,000, right after Nickel retired from his corporate law job in Portland, Ore., and sold the family’s mortgage-free home for $800,000.

MORE BANG FOR THE BUCK

The skinny isthmus—nearly all coastline, with a mountain range slicing through the middle—boasts some of the best weather and lowest crime rates in Latin America. Other draws include guilt-free conspicuous consumption, with laughably low prices—by gringo standards—on splurges such as a day of beauty ($10) and a maid ($15 a day). A complete blood workup at Panama City’s gleaming new Hospital Punta Pacifica, managed by Johns Hopkins Medicine International, is $36. A checkup with a physician is $50. Boomers who say they would have had to pay roughly $1,200 a month in the U.S. for health care say they are paying roughly $800 a year for coverage in Panama. Barbara Dove, a 66-year-old who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, worried that she would eventually need in-home care if her condition deteriorates. Researching rates in Seattle, she found that nurses run $25 an hour. In Panama City, where she has lived since 2007, they cost $25 a day. Says Dove: “I didn’t want my kids to have to worry about me.”

According to a 2006 report by the Migration Policy Institute, the number of Panama visas issued to U.S. citizens began to rise dramatically after 2003, and an estimated 25,000 U.S. expatriates live there today. “With Americans aging, the economy in shambles, and, possibly, Medicare benefits on the cutting block, it is reasonable to assume that more Americans will retire abroad, particularly to warm, sunny locations such as Panama, where they can get more value for their dollar,” says the Institute’s president, Demetrios Papademetriou.

That’s not to say life there suits everyone. Things in Panama move really slowly. A repairman who says he will be right over might show up days later. Water and electricity service can be spotty. In Panama City, drivers treat stop signs as a mild suggestion. “It takes a little bit of balls to retire here,” says Matt Landau, a New Jersey native who is the founder of Panama City-based online portal The Panama Report. “This is not for type As. It’s not your turnkey Florida retirement.”

Still, boomers who have recently relocated to Panama say they feel as if they have figured out a successful geographic arbitrage. When Stephen Johnson and Linda Murdock were living in Aromas, Calif., they used to moan half-jokingly about how they’d have to retire to Barstow—the armpit of the Mojave Desert, with summers in excess of 100 degrees and winters that can dip below freezing.

Stephen, 63, retired as an executive of the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority in June 2008. His wife, Linda, 57, owned a dog-food business.

The pair had watched several friends retire on depleted cash cushions. Many weren’t fully eligible for Medicare and wound up spending 50% of their income on health care. The couple’s retirement agita was worsened by the fact that they got a late start building equity. “We bought our first house when I was 40 and Steve was 46,” says Linda. “We knew we would never have our house paid for by retirement.”

Over late-night pinot noir on their patio, they started talking about moving to a developing nation to stretch their money further. They had discovered Panama on a trip there in 2004 and saw it as a bargain-basement paradise. The low cost of living appealed to Steve, whose pension amounted to 40% of his pre-retirement income of $150,000. The surf-perfect weather lured Linda, who took up the sport on her 50th birthday.

CRACKS IN PARADISE

Johnson and Murdock are now known as the gringos who live in the house with the red door. They bought their newly remodeled 1890 hacienda near the beach in San Carlos for $100,000 cash. They moved in last year and rented out their California ranch house. The rent covers the carrying costs on that house.

But Panama isn’t only about the beach. The Boquete region in the mountains—Panama’s answer to Boulder, Colo.—boasts loads of U.S.-style gated retirement compounds. The big draws of the area are tennis and golf. For those who are more interested in urban amenities, Panama City, which is by the sea, is sprouting yoga studios, bohemian boutiques, health-food stores, and artsy coffee houses.

Still, there are tradeoffs in this seemingly easy life. “Paradise is just a place you visit,” says Johnson. “If you live here, you begin to see the cracks.” Those include the three months it took them to get their driver’s licenses—a process that involved blood tests, a hearing exam, and lines that make a U.S. Motor Vehicles Dept. seem like a fast-food joint.

But Johnson and Murdock have no major complaints, and Panama is certainly better than the Mojave. Murdock surfs—every single day—and says Johnson looks 20 years younger since retiring. They both love the way their dog can run on the beach without a leash and the fact that their doctors, many of them schooled in the U.S., happily give out their cell-phone numbers and actually answer when called. And their social life is far more active than it was in Aromas. They go out with new friends, a blend of expats and natives, almost daily, often for evenings of fish tacos and endless margaritas—for $20. “We have more time,” says Johnson. “And apparently we have more money.”