What’s the crime rate against Americans and other expats in Mexico?
Dan Dathe
Although crime rates against both Mexican nationals and foreigners in Mexico vary significantly depending upon location in Mexico, overall deliberate crime targeting U.S. folks is very low according to government and other recognized sources of data.
Although crime rates against both Mexican nationals and foreigners in Mexico vary significantly depending upon location in Mexico, overall deliberate crime targeting U.S. folks is very low according to government and other recognized sources of data.
How are the roads in Coronado, Panama? Do I need a four-wheel drive in Coronado, Panama?
Col Davis Stevenson RET
Coronado is one of the major beach resorts and weekend destination for the people living in Panama City. Coronado boasts an excellent golf course along with the hotel on the property. Coronado Golf Club also has a beachfront property where the guest can go for their beach time.
The roads in Coronado are excellent and there is no need for a four wheel drive vehicle. I had a property at Coronado where the family would go almsot every weekend. For a retiree...
Coronado is one of the major beach resorts and weekend destination for the people living in Panama City. Coronado boasts an excellent golf course along with the hotel on the property. Coronado Golf Club also has a beachfront property where the guest can go for their beach time.
The roads in Coronado are excellent and there is no need for a four wheel drive vehicle. I had a property at Coronado where the family would go almsot every weekend. For a retiree Coronado is great. They now have a major clinic, supermarkets along with a couple of excellent restaurants. You are only about an hour from Panama City so the drive is not that long or tedious.
What are the main cities, towns, communities and developments of the Managua, Nicaragua area and what is each one like?
Kent Payne
In Nicaragua you have the city of Managua, which is the capital city, and there are several large towns like Leon, Granada, and San Juan del Sur. The country is also dived into what we call “areas” or “departments”, which are like “states” in the US.
For example, speaking specifically about “Managua”, at Gran Pacifica, we live in the Department of Managua, but not in the city of Managua. Still, we say that we “live in...
In Nicaragua you have the city of Managua, which is the capital city, and there are several large towns like Leon, Granada, and San Juan del Sur. The country is also dived into what we call “areas” or “departments”, which are like “states” in the US.
For example, speaking specifically about “Managua”, at Gran Pacifica, we live in the Department of Managua, but not in the city of Managua. Still, we say that we “live in Managua”, even though we live 42 miles away from the city of Managua, on the Pacific Ocean, about an hour away by car, in a very sparsely populated area.
Here are the key places in the Department of Managua:
Gran Pacifica
Gran Pacifica would be considered a town unto itself. We have 2,500 acres, which is enough to build about 5,000 residences. This means that, 20 – 25 years from now, if you assume two people per residence, we could have as many as 10,000 people living in our little city.
Even though we live in the Department of Managua, we certainly don’t have the same negative noise pollution, chickens, honking taxis, buses running over motorcyclists, etc. at Gran Pacifica that the city of Managua does. We have a much more relaxing, bucolic lifestyle. As we say in our world, it’s “muy tranquilo”.
At Gran Pacifica, we don’t allow the chickens and pigs to be in the property. You can have a farm but it has to be offsite and we don’t allow for walls and razor wires because it is not necessary. We have 24/7 security, both at our gate and inside the property, not to keep people out, even if you would think that’s what security is for, but the truth is it’s a deterrent. That way, we don’t generally have any issues and we have a way of handling issues that may pop up.
If you live at Gran Pacifica and need the big city stuff, its 42 miles away in the city of Managua; a little less than an hour drive away.
Villa El Carmen
Villa El Carmen is a little town we’re close to, which has our municipality in it. Our police services and some health care are in Villa El Carmen, which is only about 15-20 minutes away from Gran Pacifica. Villa El Carmen is a good example of other places like it in the Department of Managua.
Main City of Managua
Managua is the capital city of Nicaragua. Its population of 1.3 million is just under 1/3 of the entire 5.5 million population of the country of Nicaragua.
In 1972, the central city fell into the lake. They had an earthquake that killed over 10,000 people, mostly because the construction was so poor that when the earthquake hit, most of the big buildings came down. So now the governmental buildings are spread out all across the city, with different departments in different areas.
After the earthquake in 1972, there is a ramshackle way of reconstructing the city of Managua itself, so there is no central location. The Metro Centro is the metropolitan part of the center of Managua. It has a couple of shopping centers and a couple of the international hotels. But from there, the nicer shopping is on the outskirts, where since the 70’s the growth has come, mostly going south or going west coming out towards Gran Pacifica.
When you fly into Managua, you fly over what we call the North Highways. Actually, the North Highway area is on the far east side of the town but the highway runs north and south, so they call it the North Highway.
It’s about a 15-20 minute drive across the town of Managua itself and you pass through what we call “barrios". That word has a negative connotation in the States, but here, it just means "neighborhoods".
For the most part, along the main highways are the main roads. As you might imagine, there are commercial areas there – one guy has a mattress shop, next door to an ironworker who makes charcoal grills. As you drive through this part of town you can stop and make purchases. You can buy hammocks, you can buy cloth from the fabric store, etc. People usually live behind their places of business like they used to in the 20’s, back in the States.
As you go across the town of Managua, you find neighborhoods that are extremely crowded, even at night. I’ve come in on late night flights and driven across town and it’s amazing to me how active these towns are until 11:30 at night to one o’clock in the morning. Yet at 4:30 in the morning, just about dawn, you have people who are walking to work or taking a jog. Because of the heavy traffic, you'll also find what I’m going to consider noise pollution.
I stayed in one of the nicer subdivisions called Santo Domingo, which is up on a hill, near the church of Santo Domingo. And every morning, starting about 4 AM, the roosters started crowing because there are no covenants or government restrictions in a town like that. You can see pig farms right next to US $850,000 mansions, and all of them have walls with razor wires on the top.
You don’t have to own a car in the Algarve but many people do own cars here.
The Algarve is a little tricky in the sense that the distances can be misleading. Nothing is very far in the Algarve. A lot of people say they want to be able to be close to the coast, which they will define as about half an hour away, but you can be anywhere in the Algarve in half an hour’s drive.
But it is where you want to be in 5 to 10...
You don’t have to own a car in the Algarve but many people do own cars here.
The Algarve is a little tricky in the sense that the distances can be misleading. Nothing is very far in the Algarve. A lot of people say they want to be able to be close to the coast, which they will define as about half an hour away, but you can be anywhere in the Algarve in half an hour’s drive.
But it is where you want to be in 5 to 10 minutes walking distance that becomes tricky. There are lots of these areas, residential suburbs in the outskirts of towns and cities, which are generally too far to walk into a town and just too uncomfortable for public transport, which is sometimes infrequent on these small secondary roads. We find more and more people requesting a place that is within walking distance to the town center, shops, and restaurants because in that sense, you can do without a car. If you are in a town like Lagos, Portimão, or Faro you will find that they have the bus networks that can take you anywhere in the city so you wouldn’t need a car.
If you are going out of the town or the cities, having a car is definitely advisable.
(The beach at Praia da Luz, Algarve, Portugal, pictured.)
What's the food like in the markets in Ambergris Caye?
Bob Hamilton - Century 21 Coral Beach Realty
The food in the markets in Ambergris Caye is getting better. As an ex-chef, when I first came here 15 years ago had a hankering for a Caesar’s salad and I couldn’t find a head of romaine lettuce anywhere. Now we have one divine shop here where you can actually get cold smoked Scottish salmon. You can get imported prosciutto from Italy. You can get almost anything you want here in Ambergris Caye now. It is a little pricey. Four ounces of smoked salmon will cost you around US...
The food in the markets in Ambergris Caye is getting better. As an ex-chef, when I first came here 15 years ago had a hankering for a Caesar’s salad and I couldn’t find a head of romaine lettuce anywhere. Now we have one divine shop here where you can actually get cold smoked Scottish salmon. You can get imported prosciutto from Italy. You can get almost anything you want here in Ambergris Caye now. It is a little pricey. Four ounces of smoked salmon will cost you around US $12.
In comparison to the food in the markets in Canada, the selection here in Ambergris Caye is less but the price is cheaper. If it is mango season here you can buy a ripe mango for about 50 cents as opposed to $6 in Canada. I like mangoes and I used to pay $6 for them in Canada. The best thing here in Ambergris Caye is that there are no growth hormones in any of the pork, chicken, or beef raised in this country and no antibiotics pumped into then. They are all free range and they taste much, much better. The chicken here in Belize is exceptionally good and a lot healthier for you, too.
We have a couple of larger grocery stores here but there is only around three of them, all around 4,000 square feet, which is much smaller than a supermarket in the US or Canada. Most of the better deals are from the guys from the mainland who come over with a little sailboat full of fresh vegetables and fruits. You go to them on the side of the lagoon and you buy fruits and vegetables off of the boats.
We have a store here called The Greenhouse. You can go in there and get some fresh herbs. If you want rosemary and garlic, you can get that here now.
We do not have a fresh fish market here in Ambergris Caye, which is strange because we are on an island and people go fishing every day. Most of the people who fish for a living already have relationships with the resorts and restaurants, so whatever they catch, they just bring to the restaurant or the resort where they have the relationship.
When I was the chef at Captain Morgan’s, I had a relationship with two fisherman who brought me fresh fish and lobster every day. Generally, if you live here for a while, you would know who to go to that could catch you some fish. I went down to the San Pedrito neighborhood and there is a guy named Mario who I have known for a while who is a seafood dealer. He buys lobsters and fish from the fishermen, who sell it directly to him. That way, they don’t have to worry about having to sell it one at a time, so, if you want lobsters and fish, you can just go to Mario’s house. Behind his house there is a shed with a couple of freezers in it and you can buy fresh seafood from him.
(Fishing boat off Ambergris Caye, Belize, pictured. )
Driving south on Highway 1 from after it intersects Highway 5 is fairly uneventful, if by “uneventful” you mean "the hundreds of times when you’re confronted with the fact that even a slight miscalculation on your steering wheel will result in certain death." A half inch to the left, and you’ll crash head-on into a semi barreling towards you at 60 miles per hour. A half inch to the right, and you’ll go over the roughly 12-inch shoulder to plunge either into...
Yesterday was the monthly spay and neuter clinic in Boquete. Over 130 animals were sterilized, thanks to the work of Amigos de Animales, started several years ago.
Some of the workers were talking yesterday of the long term effects of this fantastic program. It's easy to see that this area of Panama has less homeless, starving animals. Stray animals are captured, neutered, nursed back to health and put up for adoption. More Panamanians are...
One can look at a map of Panama and see it as would an early engineer, as an earth moving project. There, where the raised land is as narrow as a sandbar on the globe, and the two giant fraternal land masses balance on either side of the equator, Panama is like the stretched middle of a twisted water balloon, and anyone with an imagination tuned to navigation, would place an inland waterway there to connect the oceans, dug to accommodate the cargo of deep-hulled ships. But when one...
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Managua, which is the capital city, and there are several large towns like Leon, Granada, and San Juan del Sur. The country is also dived into what we call “areas” or “departments”, which are like “states” in the US.
You don’t have to own a car in the Algarve but many people do own cars here. 
The food in the markets in Ambergris Caye is getting better. As an ex-chef, when I first came here 15 years ago had a hankering for a Caesar’s salad and I couldn’t find a head of romaine lettuce anywhere. Now we have one divine shop here where you can actually get cold smoked Scottish salmon. You can get imported prosciutto from Italy. You can get almost anything you want here in Ambergris Caye now. It is a little pricey. Four ounces of smoked salmon will cost you around US...
Driving south on Highway 1 from after it intersects Highway 5 is fairly uneventful, if by “uneventful” you mean "the hundreds of times when you’re confronted with the fact that even a slight miscalculation on your steering wheel will result in certain death." A half inch to the left, and you’ll crash head-on into a semi barreling towards you at 60 miles per hour. A half inch to the right, and you’ll go over the roughly 12-inch shoulder to plunge either into...