Trip to Panama

Panama is currently the “hotspot” for retirees and ex-Pats looking for a safe, civilized and cheap place to retire. Anyone on a fixed income wants to stretch it as far as possible, and to have an acceptable standard of living. However, I have heard from several people who have retired to Panama from Canada and USA that the cost of living is not as cheap as they had been led to believe.

In my limited experience, I think that if you retire to live in Panama and live as a Panamanian, then your costs will be much lower than elsewhere. Their staple diet, as elsewhere in the Caribbean and Central America, is rice and beans. Panamanians travel by bus, and drink beer, local fruit juice or tap water. They have houses with open windows to catch the breeze, and fans rather than air-conditioning. If you retire to Panama and want all the essentials you are used to expecting – quality ice cream, a decent bottle of wine, branded salad dressing, running a newish vehicle, living with an automatic washing machine and tumble dryer for example, then you will pay dearly for these imported luxuries.

Medical costs are the single biggest saving. A visit to an English speaking experienced and most caring local Doctor cost me $5. The prescription drugs prescribed were a further $1.60 – who needs health insurance for this? The downside is, I sat waiting with 20+ other locals for more than an hour in a corridor open to the elements, as the daytime temperature rose steadily.

There are more savings on local fruit and vegetables – a huge pineapple is just 75cents. I gave a street vendor 25cents for some bananas – and he filled my carrier bag. There must have been 30 fresh yellow bananas in the bag before I motioned “Enough!” Coffee beans are also locally grown and are a very reasonable $4 per pound.

Other foods are the same as the US or slightly more expensive. There is a Price Smart in several large towns in Panama, and their costs are much the same as their sister company Costco in the USA. Fresh chicken breasts are around $2.75 per pound, baking potatoes around $1 each; milk is $2.20 for 2 liters.

Buying and driving a car was more expensive than we had expected. There are no cars anywhere on the second hand market for less than $3000 – and they are basic Toyotas with at least 200,000 kms on the clock. The insurance is cheap at around $160 for the year including breakdown rescue, but gas is 10% more expensive than in the US. It was around $4.60 in June 2008. On the other hand, the local bus took me from Coronado to the center of Panama City (70kms) for just $2.50. Once there I could hop in a taxi and travel across town for $1.75.

Electricity is expensive, and only the mega-rich run air-conditioning 24/7. We had a small fridge/freezer, TV, computer and fans in all the rooms of our apartment. Our cooking and water heating was by gas. We ran the air-conditioning only in the bedroom, for about 10 hours and our electricity bill ran over $120 per month. Add a dishwasher, tumble dryer, and air throughout the apartment and the bill would have been sky-high!

Overall, with the right choices, the cost of living can be cheaper than in more civilized countries, but how much cheaper is in your hands. The choices you make directly govern your weekly costs, and if savings are your number one priority, then maybe Panama is not the place for you.

Albrook Mall is one of several large shopping Malls in Panama City. It is situated on the West side of Panama City, near to Clayton, and easy to find from Simon Bolivar, or from Bridge of the Americas. Just follow the signs for Albrook (or the bus terminal) and look for the parade of individually colored stores. This is the biggest closed air-conditioned mall in Panama, with 8 zones identified by animals, and it makes a great escape on a particularly hot or rainy day. It is generally less ‘designer” than the Multiplaza Mall, and has a lot more shops than the “Multicentro” Mall.

The best part about Albrook is its easy accessibility. The bus station is right alongside the stores, there are taxis galore to take you around the City and within the Zone for just $1.75. If you choose to come by car, there are plenty of car parking spaces.

Inside, over 2 floors, there is every kind of shop, store, restaurant, cinema and kiosk you could possibly want. Starting with the larger stores first, Titan has a huge range of cost-conscious clothing for the girl who wants to look fashionable. Collins is more up market, but still comparatively cheap for visitors from Europe and the USA. Their cafeteria is also very chic, with tasteful table décor and an appetizing menu for lunch. Ever popular, Stevens has cut-price clothing and household goods, and Conway has even more choice of kitchenware, glasses and home accents. The Do It Center offers a good range of Home and garden equipment for which it is famed, as does Novey which is situated alone on the car park.

There are plenty of well-known brands and American chains represented such as Zara, Hilfiger, Umbro’s for sportswear, and Adams. For more unusual styles look in Lolita boutique, and how about a hat to finish the ensemble? Panama Hats has many traditional brimmed hats but with a little twist – a bright ribbon, a broad peak or a shaped back to an otherwise traditional head covering. Shoe Plaza makes everyone slow down and look – what styles, and what great prices!

There are also specialist stores such as El Mundo del Tabaco or Daniella for beautiful embroidered tablecloths. Choose your furniture here from several stores offering both outdoor and indoor furnishings. Electrical goods are also well represented, from Costo to Panafoto, and kiosks for cell phones throughout the Mall.

No girl can resist the brightly lit windows of the jewelry stores, although there is plenty of cheap glitz in Stevens including belts, bracelets and bags.

After all that walking, maybe a little pampering. There are many nicely presented Salons for hair and nails. The newest to open is Only Nails (which bizarrely also does hair!) and Christian Salon and Beauty Supply with all the known brands of retail hair supplies from Matrix to Tigi.

And so to lunch. The food court has a huge choice of food chains from the obvious – McDonalds - to the traditional, at Lenos. You can dine on pizza, salads, steaks, fish, chicken, Chinese, Italian, ice cream and more. If the plastic tables and screaming children withers your appetite there are also many individual restaurants and coffee shops situated along the mall, including my favorite – Crepes and Waffles.

Albrook Mall is a great day out for all ages, easy to find, and there are some great bargains to be had.

Labels: Albrook Mall, Panama City, shopping

One of the joys of travel is seeing local arts and handicrafts of the region you are visiting. The standard of Panamanian handicrafts is exceptional and very distinctive. The indigenous Indians, who make these fine crafts for a living, live in the Comarcas of Kuna Yal, Ngobe Bugle and Bocas del Toro. Their products are sold throughout Panama at craft shops and markets. A fine selection can be found at El Valle, Boquete and in Panama Viejo. Trips can also be organized to visit the Indians. This may involve traveling into Darien along tracks, then a 3 hour horseback ride to a river. The Indians arrive in dugout canoes and sell their wares direct. Certainly a trip like this makes the souvenirs far more personal, and captures the whole experience, making treasured memories of a long-forgotten vacation.

Besides the obvious Panama hat, the most common items are “Molas”. These are beautiful highly colorful cloth pictures of birds, flowers etc of reverse appliqué. They are made by layering cloths, each of a single color, and then cutting through the layers to reveal the color required for the cut out. The edges are then sewn down with the tiniest of stitches, to create an appliqué effect. Details are then embroidered on to leaves etc to make a highly original panel of colorful cloth pictures.

The native Kuna Indians incorporate these panels into their traditional dress and make a stunning sight. A Mola can be purchased for around $170-$300 depending upon size and quality. Some haggling is expected when buying direct from the Indians, so be prepared. Considering the time taken to cut and stitch this ancient craft, this represents a fairly low rate per hour, and the tradition is slowly dying out, or being machine made for faster, cheaper production. The Mola can then be made into a bedcover, or mounted and hung as a beautiful picture.

The Indians are also renowned for their baskets or “Canastas”. The word basket does not really do justice to these incredible creations. Made entirely of natural products and dyes, the end result is a woven bowl or basket, built up by fine weaving to 10mm or more thickness. The weaving is so dense that the baskets actually hold water. The weaving incorporates colorful diamonds and other geometric shapes and the baskets can be many shapes, more like vases than actual baskets. These handicrafts can take up to a year to make and consequently the price of $1000-$3000 for a fine piece reflects the many hours of work.

One final unique souvenir to Panama is the Tagua carvings. The tagua nut is fairly large and smooth and is used to carve beautiful native animals, fish and birds including hummingbirds, golden frogs and parrots. The finished carvings are colored and have a perfectly smooth satin finish. Again quality demands a higher price, but simple tagua carvings start around $25.

Wherever you go, enjoy appreciating the ancient craft and talents of the indigenous Indians and local people, and remember that buying one or more of these gifts helps to keep these ancient skills alive.

Over a million tourists each year choose to visit Panama and traveling around the City and the country on the whole is cheap and safe. Arriving in the airport, there are desks from all the main car rental companies such as Avis and Budget. There are also plenty of taxis lined up to whisk you into the city in around 15 minutes, and if this is your first trip, taxis are an excellent way of seeing the city without greying your hair, or reaching for the blood pressure pills. Taxis are cheap. Pay around $1.75 for travel within a zone, for example from the shops on Via Espana to Albrook Mall. How they make a living I do not know, as tipping is not obligatory.

On my first visit I drove into Panama City at 5pm on Friday evening – not smart. There were 4 lanes of traffic, moving on a 3 lane highway – nerve-wracking - and I began to understand why all the cars looked like they had rolled down a hillside as they had so many dents and scrapes. There is also a distinct lack of signs for major landmarks like the Bridge of the Americas, or City Center. There are signs for roads not shown on your map, and roads named on your map that seem not to exist, so the co-driver and map-reader is just as frustrated! However, after a few trips you come to realise Panama City is actually very small with only a couple of major roads in either direction, and driving around becomes less formidable.

If you really want to blend with the locals, then take a trip by bus. They frequent the city and regularly leave for all the major cities of Panama. Certainly to La Chorrera, Chame, Coronado and El Valle they are every 10 minutes from the transportation center behind Albrook Mall and cost around $2.50 for the 50 mile trip to Coronado. Once you have purchased your ticket, you need a 5cent coin to go through the turnstile to get on the bus, so have one ready to avoid missing your ride!

The buses are old US school buses and are all individually decorated with artwork depicting saints, family members, cartoon characters or whatever takes the driver’s fancy, so they are all highly individual and very brightly colored. It is a pleasure to stop next to one at a red light and enjoy the scenery as it were!

The buses earn their name “Diablo Rojo” or Red Devils for the way they drive. Each bus is individually owned and run. Consequently time is money and the more trips that can be done in a day, the nearer the owner comes to making a profit. Since they are all operating on a tight margin, a day of lost work can make it difficult to make the loan payments they took out to buy the bus. Beware the very loud local music that plays throughout the journey. If you are lucky there will be a film showing on longer routes, otherwise just people-watching is a great experience in itself.

These buses also drive around the city at night as “Party buses”. The seats are moved to the sides and there is a wooden dance floor in the center. As the drivers continue to drive wildly and erratically, as only they know how, straps are suspended from the roof for you to hold on to and stay upright whether you want to dance or not. There is also a bar which is included in your $25 ticket. Stay on as long as you want to ride!

However you choose to travel, enjoy the journey, the people, the sights and sounds of Panama and the experience of being somewhere totally vibrant and different.

We really wanted to see the historic parts of Panama City, but as maps appeared to be useless in the face of a lack of road signs, we decided to chicken out and book a local guide. Rony turned up bright and early and off we went.

We reached Panama City in about an hour, and our first stop after crossing the Centennial Bridge was the Visitor Center at Miraflores Locks. It was a smart new building about 4 storeys high. We paid our $8 to go in, and began to the tour. There was a theater with a short film, followed by 4 exhibition halls depicting the history of building the Canal. It was very interesting and full of artifacts, which showed the huge project from a historic, sanitary and technological point of view. The project was initially French, but after huge losses of life to malaria and yellow fever, and constant setbacks in digging, the Americans finally agreed to take over the project. Their success was due to systematically reducing mosquitos, which carried the deadly diseases, and by planning to raise ships to the level of the newly formed Lake Gatun, rather than lowering the landmass to sea level. This involved building the huge locks, which are still in use today at Gatun, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores.

The Visitor Center is built right alongside the latter locks with several indoor and outdoor viewing platforms from which to see the huge container ships pass through the Locks. We saw a container ship aided by 2 tugs slowly advance into the lock chamber. It was attached by ropes to several “mules” or engines, which held the ship in place while the water drained out of the chamber, and the ship slowly descended the 31 feet. The good thing about the viewing platform was that the whole time we were watching the process; a loudspeaker was relaying live information about the ship. We learned what the ship was called, where it was traveling to and from, and most amazingly what it’s toll was to pass through the locks. The fee is based on cargo, and this container ship paid a staggering $56,000 to pass through. What an incredible money-raiser for Panama – I hope they use it wisely. The Canal works 24/7 continually taking ships across from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea, which saves thousands of miles, tanker loads of fuel, and about 10 days, compared with circumventing South America.

After trying out the navigation simulator and playing with the lighted maps, we visited the snack bar and then we were on our way again into Panama City. Next we visited Panama Viejo “old Panama” which was not so well presented. Here were the ruined remains of Panama City before 1700AD. We saw they were not very well maintained or presented as we wandered around part walls and ruins of buildings and towers from long ago. We then visited where the new “old city” was rebuilt. This consisted of old streets lined with what were obviously fine buildings once, but now were just shells being rebuilt behind the old facades.

Rony was an excellent guide, his English was excellent and he made navigating the City very easy. He took us to various interesting viewpoints and to the shops at Amador causeway and Albrook. Apparently he considered he was well paid at $15 per day as a tour guide, but as we paid the Hotel $120, we might have disagreed with him! What amazed us was how long his working day was. He got up at 5.30 am to catch the local bus from his village to Coronado, arriving at 8am, and then did a full day with us before traveling back to his family at Farallon. It puts our 8-hour working days to shame.

Labels: Miraflores visitor center, panama canal, Panama City, tour guide

When we arrived in Panama, like most other tourists, we hired a car. We got the cheapest and most basic car from Budget, but with the compulsory insurances, it still cost us over $200 per week. We were staying and traveling in Panama for 12 weeks, so this blew a big hole in our budget. We decided early on that we would buy a cheap run-around and sell it at the end of the stay for maybe $1000 less. So off we went.

We hired a Spanish-speaking guide for the day, and asked him to take us to some car dealers. Our budget was $2500 and our expectations were high. This was a cheap country, right, so old cars had to be reasonable? Wrong. Nowhere had any vehicles under $5000, and these vehicles were old, tatty, and with at least 200,000 kms on the clock. We went to see one “bargain” at $2500. It turned out to be an ex-taxi with 300,000 kms, and a smashed windscreen. We were flabbergasted! We searched newspapers and the Internet for private sales and eventually bought the cheapest acceptable car we could find – a Lexus 400, 17 years old, well-worn and showing a very suspicious 41,000kms. The speedometer only worked occasionally, the petrol gauge could only be read with a torch, but at $3500 we jumped at it. It was a difficult car to sell due to it’s gas-guzzling 5 liter engine, so the locals did not want it, but I have to say, we traveled in comfort and style for the rest of the holiday!

We met a great Insurance agent who carefully, and in perfect English, explained what we did and did not need, and it cost us $160 for the year. This included roadside assistance and some months later when the radiator blew, this proved an amazing service. Within minutes of our phone call, Generali called us back having arranged a towtruck from the nearby village. We were 80kms (50 miles) out of Panama City, and expected a huge surcharge, but it was all free. The nicest guy arrived promptly and took the car and us back to our mechanic in Panama City, and all with a smile.

Speaking of our mechanic, we “inherited” Alvaro with the car. When we bought it, the seller kindly passed on the name and number of the mechanic who had serviced the car for the past 2 owners. He turned out to be a gem. He did all the paperwork for us, for $20, and serviced and fixed the car, as we needed him. New tires? No problem. He got them cheaper than we could and always provided us with invoices. When we left Panama to return to the States for 3 months, he offered to collect the car from the airport, garage it for us, and meet us at the airport upon our return. Our return time was a most unsociable 1.30 am, so we walked through Arrivals with doubt and trepidation. Surely he would have forgotten/overslept, or worse sold the car and disappeared. How wrong we were. Alvaro was there, car keys in his hand and a newly washed car just outside. The cost for this personal service? In Alvaro’s words. “For my customers, nothing!” What a great guy he is.

A further note to would be car-owners in Panama. Some ex-Pats have imported vehicles, but the problem there is that a car which may have cost less than $5000 in America is taxed on the Panamanian customs value – which is more than twice that value, so a large import duty is payable before the vehicle can be released. Basically a vehicle in Panama is a luxury item, there is no cheap way to own and run one. The Insurance is reasonable, but gas is 10% higher than in the US. It was a hefty $4.65 a gallon in June 2008 – half a day’s pay for the average Panamanian!

Labels: breaking down, buying a car, car insurance, driving in Panama, gas prices, Lexus 400, owning a car, Panama City, tow truck, vehicle import duty, Vehicles