The Ultimate Insider’s Guide To The Real Panama

Editor’s Note: This is an extract from my book, “At Home At Los Islotes”. Revealing the behind-the-scenes story of Lief and my experiences in Panama these past two-and-a-half decades, it’s the ultimate insider’s guide to the real Panama—the good, the bad, and the maddening.Los Islotes was Lief ’s idea.

His thinking was straightforward. He wanted to make money.

Lief ’s investment focus has always been real estate. Beachfront property is the most marketable, so he decided he’d find a piece of coastal land in a path of progress and subdivide it.

It wasn’t an unreasonable plan.

We’d been watching other investors develop land for profit for decades.

At the time we were living in Paris, but Lief knew that France was no place for the kind of project he imagined. This was an idea best suited to a New World market.

We’d both been spending time and doing business in Latin America for two decades, and we’d established small offices for International Living in a half-dozen countries across the region.

We considered Nicaragua, Belize, Argentina, and Uruguay but landed on Panama.

The country stacks up as an investment market better than any other either of us had known. The Canal makes this country the ultimate safe haven. The critical global trade route generates nearly US$4 billion a year.

That’s a lot of per-capita cashflow in a country of four million people.

Panama’s economy cycles up and down like any other, but its dips are less severe and shorter lived than most, certainly than any other country in the region. Plus the administration at the time was rolling out the welcome mat for foreign investors, big and small. It was the right choice for a legacy-level property play.

So, Lief began a series of scouting trips that extended for more than two years.

Then, one November afternoon, my son Jackson and I returned to our Paris apartment from our after-school walk to find Lief unpacking from his most recent expedition to Panama. He’d flown home a day early to surprise us.

“How was the trip?” I asked.

“I found it,” Lief said, beaming.

He stopped sorting his laundry and looked straight at me, which he almost never does.

“It’s everything I’ve been hoping for. Mountainous so there are ocean views from nearly every spot on the entire property. Plus two beaches, one that stretches on for nine kilometers. The ocean there is strong, great for surfing. The other beach is smaller and protected, good for swimming.

“Between the two beaches is an elevated point of land with rocky cliffs all around. Very dramatic. Just offshore are three little islands. The ranch is named for them. ‘Los Islotes.’

“You’ve got to see it to believe how beautiful it is. How perfect it is.

“On the plane ride back, I began planning my return trip. I need to walk the boundaries with a surveyor and then I’ll meet with our attorney to confirm the details of an offer. I want you and Jackson to come with me. I want you to see this land before I go much further.”

I don’t need an idea to be fully thought through to be on board. Lief ’s enthusiasm was contagious. Ready, fire, aim. I was in.

If I had to choose one place to be indefinitely, it’d be Paris, but I thrive on discovery. I was ready for a change of scenery.

From the start, Lief had focused his search on the western side of Panama’s Azuero Peninsula. Its Pacific coast is one of Panama’s greatest assets.

Everyone who can afford a house at the beach has one. Beachfront nearer to Panama City was already being aggressively developed by the time Lief set out scouting.

The eastern coast of the Azuero Peninsula was in the crosshairs of international investment groups.

The peninsula’s western coast, in Panama’s Veraguas Province, was a final frontier.

Access was more difficult, but prices were one-third as much for land we found to be arrestingly more beautiful. Plus the sunsets along this coast are the best in the country.

After his first trip, word of the gringo shopping for land spread, and watermelon farmers and cattle ranchers sent messages to Lief ’s home base, a hotel in Santiago, to alert him that they had land to sell.

Lief would drive down the coast then follow the local landowners on foot or horseback into the jungle to see what they had to offer.

These were long, hot days that, much as I savor any chance to travel, I was happy to hear about rather than live through.

I’d spent the previous two decades reconnoitering developing-world property markets as publisher of International Living magazine. If you’ve seen one parcel of unserviced jungle land at the end of a rutted dirt road, you can imagine them all.

Now, though, it seemed Lief had identified something worth making a trip for.

“Wow, that’s exciting,” I said processing the implications.

The large-scale investment Lief was suggesting would mean we’d need to live in Panama for at least a year.

We knew Panama well. We had friends and investments in both Panama City and the interior. That’s how Panamanians refer to anywhere in the country beyond the capital. Now we’d have the chance to become even more connected.

I prize moving around, but I don’t enjoy being a tourist. I want a reason to spend time in a place that allows me to get beneath the surface and connect with the local rhythms. I’m not good at playing. I like to work. After seven years in Ireland and four in Paris, now I’d have a chance to try life in the New World and with a business agenda.

These seem like big life changes, and they were, but I’d been reporting for Americans interested in spending time and money in other countries for two decades and Lief had been chasing a life beyond U.S. borders since grad school. We’re built for big life changes. When too much time passes in between, we get bored.

“When are you thinking of going back?” I asked as I started a travel to-do list in my head. I’d need to get Jackson’s summer clothes out of storage and make sure he had waterproof boots that fit.

“Jackson’s Toussaint break starts in ten days,” Lief said. “That’s our window. I’ve checked dates with the investor I’ve been speaking with, and he’s available. He can meet us in Panama City. I’ll call the airline after I’ve unpacked to book tickets.”

Hundreds of acres of raw land on one of the most remote coastlines in the world? I was sure Lief was right when he said it was beautiful. He’d seen beaches from Belize and Mexico to Thailand and Vietnam. If he said this was special, it was special.

But what were we going to do with it? And how would we pay for it?

I had doubts, but I wouldn’t let myself throw water on his big idea.

“Great,” I said. “I can’t wait.” And I left it at that. I didn’t ask for particulars. If he told me the asking price for the land, I’d want to know how he planned to come up with the money.

Lief would think I was doubting his ability to pull the deal together. I’d fail in my efforts to assure him that wasn’t the case. We’d fight. There had been enough of that, and Jackson was just down the hall. I was choosing to trust my husband.

I’m not a follower, but I was making a point of letting Lief take the lead. For too long I’d made the decisions about where we’d live and what we’d do with our money once we’d earned it.

Some of my staff over the years, men who were older than I was, had referred to me as The Emasculator when they thought I couldn’t hear and sometimes when I figured they hoped I could. I minded at first but came to wear the insult as a badge of honor. My husband was a strong man, but I can be stronger. Time for me to step to the side.

I loaded Lief ’s dirty clothes into the washing machine then put salmon on the stove and set the table. We’re buying a three-hundred-acre ranch in Panama, I thought as I worked, turning the phrase over in my head.

In fact, when I let it sink in in theory rather than in the context of our current circumstances, I loved the idea. I’m always up for doing the thing nobody else would think of.

The financial implications were big, but I’m happy in ambiguity. My years with Lief in Ireland and Paris had only bolstered my natural receptiveness to taking chances.

Every one had worked out so far.

Making dinner for my family that night, I had no idea how severely my openness to the uncharted would be tested…

Until next time,