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Life In Panama City

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Mar 27, 2012
in Retirement/Living
0
Choosing Among Panama City’s Many Lifestyle Options
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What Is Life Really Like In Panama City?

Lief and I saw the movie “Contraband” here in Panama last weekend. It was fun identifying the different spots filmed in Panama City, at the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal, and in the very local neighborhood known as Chorrillo, where some of the more off-color action of the film takes place.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I’d recommend it if you have any interest in Panama. The story takes you back and forth between New Orleans and Panama City. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two locations. The more unsavory neighborhoods of the Big Easy could easily be mistaken for the more unsavory neighborhoods of Panama’s capital.

That’s one observation.

Another is that, if the movie is to be believed, a whole world exists in Panama City that Lief and I know nothing about. Could a world-class counterfeiting and smuggling ring be operating out of Chorrillo? I guess so. I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, which, indeed, is home to an underground drug world (have you seen the TV series “The Wire”?). Living there for my first 35 years, reading the local papers each day, I knew this other reality existed. I’m happy to be able to say, though, that I never came face-to-face with it. Never saw a drug land shoot-out, never witnessed a buy or a bust.

I was entertained watching the drug dealers, counterfeiters, armed robbers, and all-around bad guys in “Contraband’s” depiction of Chorrillo and the docks at Miraflores and, mostly, struck by how sedate our lives here in Panama City are by comparison. You might even say dull. Certainly they’re ordinary.

If you’re considering or preparing for a new life in Panama but haven’t yet spent an extended time in Panama City, you might be wondering. The greasy guy with the wolf and giant albino boa in cages in his warehouse? Is he typical? The shoot-out between the robbers and the Panama City police on the highway…is that common?

Not in my experience.

My experience of Panama City is more to do with dragging 12-year-old Jackson on weekly visits to the Riba-Smith grocery store so he can help me carry and load…trying to keep my garden alive three months into the dry season…remembering parent-teacher meetings at Jack’s school…taking Jack and his friends for Pizza Hut lunches and, now that it’s opened in Albrook Mall, Gap shopping sprees…

Sometimes things get more interesting. A few weeks ago, Jackson was invited to spend a weekend on the San Blas islands with a friend’s family. They camped out, slept in tents, cooked over an open fire, swam and snorkeled in the beautiful waters off this quintessentially Caribbean archipelago.

A week later, the same friend’s family invited Jackson to travel the Panama Canal with them on another friend’s sailboat. The group sailed, overnight, from Colon back to the Amador Causeway in Panama City, navigating the three locks along the way. Jack’s report on this once-in-a-lifetime experience (for which he was allowed to miss two days of school): “It was awesome!”

And, a couple of weekends ago, we took Jack, his friend Valerian, and two friends of ours to Santa Fe, one of our favorite mountain towns in this country (because it’s still almost completely undiscovered and undisturbed), to visit the riverfront property we own there. Jack and Valerian swam in the river while we adults dangled our naked feet over the edge of a big rock on the river’s bank. The cold water flowing over our toes helped to mitigate the effects of the bright midday sun overhead…

Jack’s school bus collects him at 6:45 each morning. Lief and I depart for the office about 7:30. We all return home, from work and after-school activities, by 6:30. Family dinner is at 7 p.m. Followed by homework. Some Friday nights we go to Happy Hour (my favorite spots are in Casco Viejo). Saturdays are errands, chores, visits from friends. Sundays we bar-b-que on the back patio.

That wouldn’t be your life, of course. But it’s ours.

My point is that life in Panama City, like life any place, can be what you make it. We could seek out the drug dealers and other unsavories in Chorrillo, if we wanted, and connect our lives to theirs…just as I could have sought out the drug dealers and other knuckleheads in West Baltimore years ago.

But I have all I can handle getting Jack to school on time each day and keeping my business in business.

I do, though, appreciate Mark Wahlberg and company showing me a more exciting side of life in my adopted home town.

Kathleen Peddicord

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Tags: 'Retire To Panama City'ContrabandMark Wahlberg In ContrabandPanama LetterThe Movie
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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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