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Go To The Western Azuero Coast For Panama’s Best Beaches

My Favorite Spot In Panama

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
May 29, 2019
in Lifestyle, Panama, Travel
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View of the beach at los islotes. The Azuero Coast is attracting more retirees looking for a retirement away from the crowds
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Every Friday afternoon sees an exodus from Panama City as residents drive across the Bridge of the Americas and then west on the Pan-American Highway… headed for the beach.

Most people leaving Panama City for these regular weekend escapes are destined for the City Beaches, as they’re known… a string of resorts and developments lining the Pacific Ocean starting about an hour outside the capital.

This region of Panama has been developed aggressively over the past decade and now is home to dozens of high-rise towers on the sand, strip malls, restaurants, hotels, resorts, and even big-box stores. The beach experience here is comfortable and convenient but increasingly cramped.

If you enjoy resort life and don’t mind crowds, this stretch of Panama’s Pacific coast could make a great choice for your beach life overseas. Living here, you’d be settled among thousands of fellow North Americans, meaning a built-in support system and no need to become fluent in Spanish.

However, Panama’s Pacific coast is long, and much of it is much less developed than the City Beaches stretch. If you’d prefer some elbow room and a more authentic Panamanian experience, you have other—I’d say better—options.

To find the best beaches in any country with a Pacific coast, follow the surfers. You don’t need to be a surfer or care about ever setting foot on a board. If you’re a lover of sand and sea, ask a local surfer where to go. They’ll lead you to a country’s most spectacular undiscovered shores.

You won’t find Panama’s Morrillo Beach listed among the top beaches in the world or even in Panama, but this is where Panama’s surfers are heading today. On this remote coast, you find no high-rises, all-inclusive resorts, or convenience store shopping and very few tourists.

This region lies beyond this country’s path of progress. To get here, you travel the Pan-American Highway well past the City Beaches area to the town of Santiago (the second fastest growing in the country), and then turn left.

The Azuero Peninsula’s eastern coast is far better known. Towns on the other side of this peninsula, such as Chitré, Las Tablas, and Pedasí, are well established among foreign retirees looking for affordable beach living.

The peninsula’s western coast is just beginning to attract attention.

The beaches on the eastern Azuero coast are beautiful, but those on the western coast are more so. The western coast is more mountainous, and the undulating terrain provides ocean views in all directions.

Here the Pacific Ocean pounds the rocky, craggy shoreline in some spots and meets the sand more gently in others, creating opportunities for both surfers and swimmers.

In addition, the western coast is one of the few places in Panama where you can watch the sunset over the ocean.

On Azuero’s western coast, you’re surrounded by nature, pure and raw. Capuchin and howler monkeys call from the trees, sea turtles lay their eggs along the beaches, and, in season, dolphins and whales swim and play offshore. Nearby is Cerro Hoya National Park.

Until recently, this western Azuero coast boasted extraordinary natural beauty but little else. Barely populated, this long expanse of undeveloped shoreline is dotted with a string of small towns, including Mariato, Malena, Morrillo Beach, Torio, and Quebro. The road traveling from one to the other is pitted and rutted, and cell and internet service are patchy.

However, an expat community is emerging; some 300 foreign retirees currently call this part of Panama home year-round. The community’s de facto social center is the town of Torio, now home to a few small expat-run bars, restaurants, and guesthouses.

Development is accelerating. Electricity is more reliable, cell service and the internet are more available, a bank and more grocery shopping options have opened in Mariato, and the government has allocated funds to repave the road.

Expats and retirees moving to this region today aren’t the pioneers who moved here five or six years ago, but this part of Panama remains a frontier and a top option for ultimate escape.

The main attraction remains the Pacific Ocean. Expats on this coast spend their days surfing, swimming, diving, beach combing, fishing, and, increasingly, looking for ways to get involved with the local community.

This western Azuero Peninsula is where Lief and I decided years ago to focus our efforts in Panama long term. When we purchased land on this coast for the Los Islotes community we wanted to create, we were true frontiersmen, arguably laughably ahead of our time.

This is much less true today and less true with each passing month. Panama’s path of progress is inching its way in our direction.

Meantime, we carry on carrying out our vision for Los Islotes. Pioneer life isn’t always easy, but it’s getting easier all the time.

We’ve built houses and a beach bar… are breaking ground as I write on stables and community gardens… and will begin construction before year-end of our church and Town Centre.

As well, we, like many other expats drawn to this virgin region, are looking to do everything we can to support our neighbors.

Our coast is a primary turtle nesting site… and the little guys and gals need protection. We’re helping to improve the facilities for the volunteers who meet here each season to keep the turtle eggs safe.

And we’re finalizing plans for the Los Islotes Quebro Student And Community Center, where we’ll offer English lessons, computer literacy lessons, and after-school tutoring.

If you’re up for helping with either effort, you can get in touch here.

And if you’d like to know more about what’s going on with Los Islotes, ask your questions here.

Kathleen Peddicord

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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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