BOQUETE, Panama – Ten years ago, Sam Taliaferro followed the footsteps of his wife's Panamanian family to a summer getaway in these lush, birdsong-echoing mountains above the Pacific.
"Oh, my God – this is Shangri-la," Mr. Taliaferro said.
Only ... boring.
So Mr. Taliaferro, a Colorado businessman, bought a 123-acre coffee plantation in a little valley here for $1.2 million, called it Valle Escondido (Hidden Valley) and built a clubhouse, a nine-hole golf course, restaurants and a string of homes. He planted bougainvillea and lots of other tropical flowers. He blogged, bragged and advertised about his retirement paradise on the Internet.
Now about 200 couples from the United States, Canada and Europe make their home in Boquete. And 42 developments aimed at American baby boomers are planned or under way in this region of western Panama near the Costa Rican border.
Globalization has given Americans access to cheaper goods and services for everything from confetti to heart surgery. Now a few adventurous retirees are taking advantage of lower costs for exotic locales overseas – and braving curious legal climates in the process.
The numbers aren't large. Social Security sent about 264,000 checks abroad in December 2005 (the most recent data available) to retired workers in foreign countries. That contrasts with 31 million checks mailed within the United States.
Those getting checks in Panama are an even tinier share – 692 at the end of 2005, compared with 20,000 in Italy.
But many of the American retirees in Boquete are in their 50s or early 60s and haven't started collecting Social Security.
John Lesley and his family recently moved here from Brownsville, where he and his Peruvian wife ran side-by-side insurance agencies. Mr. Lesley, 64, had been in Brownsville – "smack on the border with Matamoros" – for 20 years. He read about Boquete in International Living magazine, which rates Panama fourth on a list of overseas retirement destinations.
"We thought about Lima [in Peru], but it's too cold and damp in the winter, and the kids couldn't go out and roam around," Mr. Lesley said. "We thought about Boca Raton [in Florida]. But stateside, it's too expensive."
The Lesleys were paying $400 a month just in air-conditioning bills in Brownsville. They don't need air conditioning in Boquete, where daytime temperatures hover around 75 degrees year-round.
The Lesleys live above the golf course in Valle Escondido in a duplex that sold for $265,000 in 2005 but cost them $400,000 this year.
Mr. Taliaferro said that's still a bargain compared with Florida or Spain, another emerging retirement destination, and he argued that Panama is a better retirement locale than its neighbors in Central America.
Costa Rica, for one. Mr. Taliaferro used to own a semiconductor plant in Costa Rica. He watched tourism there go from a string of bed-and-breakfasts to big-name hotel chains, while 30,000 Americans moved in to make it their home.
"What Costa Rica created over 20 years is happening in Panama in less than three years – because of the Internet," he said.
It's not risk-free living. Boquete may remind older Americans of quieter times with less crime and violence (despite the drug problems in neighboring Colombia), but there's no Medicare for Americans living abroad.
"The cost of medical care here is so low that you don't care," Mr. Taliaferro said.
A family health insurance policy costs $250 a month. U.S.-trained doctors make house calls for $20. A new hospital is planned in the nearby city of David, and another, partnered with the storied Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, recently opened in Panama City, an hour's flight away.
The largest risk may be legal. Panama's legal system is notoriously weak and corrupt. Foreign investors, even retirees, seem to attract lawsuits from Panamanians arguing economic injury from the new construction. The law allows such plaintiffs to seek a bond equal to the claimed injury, which can tie up the investor's entire stake.
Mr. Taliaferro recommends that buyers use dummy Panamanian corporations that disguise ownership to deter lawsuits.
"We've got 200 corporations in this valley," Mr. Taliaferro said with a smile, "all of them S.A. – society anonymous."
... Anonymous expatriates who come here in search of Shangri-la.
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JIM LANDERS/Staff
Sam Taliaferro turned a 123-acre coffee plantation in Boquete, Panama, into the Valle Escondido retirement village, with townhomes and a nine-hole golf course.
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