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Home Lifestyle

Los Islotes: A Blossoming Community On Panama’s Sunset Coast

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Mar 05, 2018
in Lifestyle, Panama, Travel
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image of pink bougainvillea in front of the beach with blue sky and calm seas
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“Señora Kathleen, come see,” Dalys called to me from outside.

I got up from my desk and followed the sound of her voice. She was standing off to the side of our little Los Islotes office with a bright grin.

“What is it, Dalys?” I asked.

“Look, Señora Kathleen, it’s our first flowers. Our first red flowers…”

Dalys and I have been planting, cultivating, and potting, trying to pretty up the area around our new Los Islotes base of operations.

After a few months of effort and care, we were rewarded last week with our first flowers. The bougainvillea we planted at the entrance gate finally showed us the answer to the question we’ve been considering—what color would the blossoms be? Now we know. Fuchsia.

Since the start of this dry season (or summer, as the Panamanians call our current sunny situation), we have also been pushing hard on infrastructure installation out here at our Los Islotes community on Panama’s Azuero Sunset Coast.

The view from Los Islotes. Flowers, plants and a white fence in the foreground. In the background the blue sea with waves and behind the sea a green mountain.
A view of the bay from Los Islotes

And we have passed long-worked-for milestones. After Herculean effort and years of back and forth with Unión Fenosa, the local service provider, we have electricity to the property.

Solar Powered Internet Tower at Los Islotes, Panama. Countryside Hills And Mountains In Background
The Solar Powered Internet Tower Is Now Operational

We also have internet… the best on this coast thanks to the solar-powered tower we’ve installed. Lief and I have put our new internet to the test these past few weeks we’ve been working from the Los Islotes office. From live interviews over Skype with U.S. media and conference calls with parties spread across four or five countries at a time, to file-sharing with our LIOS office in Panama City and streaming movies on Netflix… we’ve done it all… without missing a deadline or an opportunity.

In addition to bringing electricity and the internet to the property, we’ve dug a new well… buried massive tubes underground for water and wastewater services… and plumbed our new beach bar.

Panama Jack’s, our little open-air oceanfront hangout, now boasts running water, two operational bathrooms, and even outdoor showers for rinsing off after your ocean swim.

These may not sound like groundbreaking, newsworthy accomplishments, but, out here on this wholly untouched coast, in fact, they are.

Lief And The Crew At Los Islotes Standing Next To A Wooden Sign That Says Panama Jacks With Tropical Trees In The Background
Lief and the crew next to the Panama Jacks sign

The flowering bougainvillea at our entrance gate last week was the cherry on top. Finally the pieces are coming together.

To be honest, Lief and I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we undertook the development of the beachfront hectares we named Los Islotes.

Now, years later, it’s Dalys, the young local Panamanian girl we’ve hired to manage the Los Islotes office and work crew, who is helping me to understand what’s really going on.

What are we doing out on this stretch of Panama’s Pacific coast? Over the years, I’ve wondered often about the real answer to that question.

“It is exciting for me to be part of Los Islotes,” Dalys told me recently.

“This is my neighborhood.

“When I was a little girl, my friends and I would ride our horses through this property to get to the beach to go swimming. We would play in the water and then, after, chase the monkeys in the nearby trees.

“When it was time for the turtles to lay their eggs, we would come at night to watch.

“I have such wonderful memories of this place. And now I get to work here.”

Dalys is 26 years old. When she was 11, her mother gave her a children’s book in English.

“I love books,” Dalys told me over lunch one day. “They are my favorite things. I was lucky growing up because my mother made sure I always had books to read.”

Dalys taught herself to read English… and then to speak English. Those are uncommon skills in this part of Panama, and they make Dalys very valuable to us. Plus, of course, she knows this coast from a lifetime of firsthand experience.

“I’m starting to see your vision for this place,” Dalys said the other day.

“You are building something special… something that will continue for a very long time.

“For years, I have had the idea that I would like to have a real career… more of a career than I imagined I could have here in Veraguas.

“At the same time, though, I did not want to leave this place. All four of my grandparents are still alive, and they all live within a short walk of the house where I live with my mother. I see my grandparents every week. Family is important to me.

“So I was torn about the plan for my future.

“Then I came to work at Los Islotes. Now I see that I can have the career that I want without leaving my home.”

“We need lots more help out here,” I told Dalys. “We need lots more people like you… people who want to grow and learn and be part of building a new community.”

Dalys promises to introduce me to some of her friends who fit that description.

Meantime, little by little, day by day, she continues to show me what’s really going on out here on this Azuero Sunset Coast.

Kathleen Peddicord

Tags: 'Azuero Sunset Coast''Los Islotes'beachfront panamabest beach in panamabest surfing in panamamonkeys panamanesting turtles panamapacific beaches panamapanama jack’s bar panama
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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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