Best Places In The World To Retire

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One thing to keep in mind is that you will be riding in 90+ degree temps so be prepared to do a lot of sweating and watching out for traffic since they won't be watching for you. Early moring is the only time I would consider it in Nicaragua.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will be riding in 90+ degree temps so be prepared to do a lot of sweating and watching out for traffic since they won't be watching for you. Early moring is the only time I would consider it in Nicaragua.

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The things that you will be most happily surprised about when moving abroad is understanding that there is a lot of ways to organize your daily life. Most of the time, people get into a rhythm that they inherited from their parents, their community, their job, or their coworkers, and all of a sudden when that is gone, there is an opportunity to reinvent your day and organize based on your interests, or on what is happening in this new location in which you’re living. That is a...

The things that you will be most happily surprised about when moving abroad is understanding that there is a lot of ways to organize your daily life. Most of the time, people get into a rhythm that they inherited from their parents, their community, their job, or their coworkers, and all of a sudden when that is gone, there is an opportunity to reinvent your day and organize based on your interests, or on what is happening in this new location in which you’re living. That is a rebirth process that I think people might find refreshing.
 
As an example, once you move abroad, all of a sudden your day might revolve around a morning exercise because it is one of the times where it is cooler outside. So you might find yourself getting up earlier and taking advantage of that cool, fresh air, and really enjoying that time of your day, followed by maybe going to a little market and buying fresh produce. There might also be some volunteer opportunity at a primary school or a local community center, or there might be a language practice activity for a couple of hours.
 
If you live in a tropical zone, the middle of the day is quite hot, especially if you are on the ocean or the beach where there is not elevation. And if that’s the case, you might find yourself taking a nap in the middle of the day and then having the rest of your day organized after the weather cooled off a little bit. Who would have thought that they would decide to take naps for two or three hours a day? That is something that people gets to reinvent when they move abroad. They reinvent how they want to spend their day.
 
I think retirement is all about making choices about how you would want to live your life now that you have some freedom. You have a new cultural backdrop and you have all this time. It is very important to really reflect and experiment with what routine feels good for you.

 

(Picture: fresh fruit in the Tropics.)

We had a 20 or 30 year flood when I first came here. We had two major floods in recent years. The first one affected the Rio Caldera, which is the main river going through Boquete. It knocked out and completely destroyed one bridge and everybody was very concerned about the only other major bridge, but it was OK.  Meanwhile, the river near where we live took on a different route and began to flow down the road, but it subsided.

 

These events...

We had a 20 or 30 year flood when I first came here. We had two major floods in recent years. The first one affected the Rio Caldera, which is the main river going through Boquete. It knocked out and completely destroyed one bridge and everybody was very concerned about the only other major bridge, but it was OK.  Meanwhile, the river near where we live took on a different route and began to flow down the road, but it subsided.

 

These events were something that caused the community to work together because it was a genuine disaster. I firmly believe that part of the reason that the nine humanitarian organizations here work so closely together today is that we have learned to in the face of that disaster. Everybody did what they knew how to do best. For example, at that time, our focus was feeding about 11,000 kids a day in school, so we had a pretty good supply of food. We were able to deliver 1,000 pounds of food to the high school where they were sheltering several hundred people who had been stranded. Then we went up to some of the high fincas (ranches) where we had good relationships with the ranchers and we brought down another thousand pounds of vegetables and delivered them.  We went down to town to Romero’s (a local grocery store) and bought something for ourselves and for the people who got stranded who needed help. It was pretty terrific.

 

When it was all done, it was pretty amazing. The mayor called another meeting and told us that he was happy to say that we were back in business and that if we had more supplies, they were not needed any more in Boquete. He recommended that we ship them to Bocas Del Toro because the people there were in desperate shape. We were lucky to have a bit of a surplus because one of the political candidates had given a 40-foot container of humanitarian aide to the Lion’s Club and the Lion’s Club asked us to help distribute it, so we had a lot of stock. The concern was how to get the supplies down to Bocas Del Toro because we didn’t want to have any losses on the way.

 

I then got a call from a friend of mine who also told me that there are some desperate people in Bocas Del Toro who need help. I told her of course I could help, but our concern was how to get the goods there safely and in trusted hands. She said, “That is why I am calling; I have a means of accomplishing that.” I asked her how she was going to do it and she said, “It's pretty simple. A gentleman I know from Bocas Del Toro died in Panama City and his coffin is being transported by truck.  We want to meet you up in David, load up the supplies, and bring it down to Bocas Del Toro in the same truck as the coffin. Nobody is going to get near a truck with a dead body.”

 

The following year, we had a micro flood that knocked out our bridge, and as far as flooding was concerned, that was it. We never had anything like that since. It wasn’t a big deal to build our bridge back up. I had a backhoe come in and we moved some big rocks, and now we are in great shape. I am not concerned about any flooding in the future. Our house is far away from the stream, but you cannot predict when something might happen. A 20-year flood can happen in 20 years or it can happen next year.

 

The people who are considering moving to Boquete should not be worried about flooding. Of course I wouldn’t build my house right next to a creek that could overflow and there are other places that have flooding issues like Volcan and Cerro Punta.  The extent to which you are affected by flooding is just a question of being prepared for it and building on the right spot.

 

We do have minor earthquakes in Boquete from time to time. We had a earthquake about six months ago. My wife, Alicia, who had gone through two big quakes in Los Angeles, was not happy, but even if it was shake, rattle, and roll, it was over in about 30 to 45 seconds. We did not have any damage at all. We had one small crack next to a big girder, which would be pretty understandable given the shake that we got. We have insurance for earthquakes, but you don’t have to prepare for any big quakes like you would if you were in Los Angeles, where you tie things down. We build for it. The buildings here are sturdy because the people know that quakes happen here.

 

We don’t get brush fires in Boquete, and especially not where we live. By and large, most of the houses in Boquete have no wood in them. The house where I am living right now and the house where we used to live almost have no wood in them. The only wood that you will see there are the doors and cabinets. No building with wood is very common in Panama because it is cost effective and climate effective. Either you build with cinder blocks and then plaster it with cement, or they use amados, which is basically a plastic foam with wire running through it. It is very quick to put up because it is in big sheets, and they have a machine where they spray the concrete on that. Generally, I do not know anybody who has had any problem with fires.

 

We had an ice cream shortage for a few months, which was a pretty big disaster. What happened was that the largest producer of ice cream in all of Panama shut down for two and a half months to retool. People were going nuts!