Flights to Costa Rica

Rubén Arosemena, Vice-president of Panama; and Mr. George Novey, propietor of the Air Panama (second and third from left to right) toast during the airline's launching ceremony last October.

Panama has a new international airline. Earlier this month, Air Panama, the domestic carrier formerly known as Aero, launched its first international service between the Caribbean province of Bocas del Toro and San José, Costa Rica. The service is offered in conjunction with Air Costa Rica and will be offered three days a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Traveling on the inaugural flight were the Minister of Tourism of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Castro, and his Panamanian counterpart, Ruben Blades.

Passengers bound to Bocas will have the chance to discover one of Panama's fastest growing tourist destinations, famous for its Caribbean shores, eco-tourism and a lifestyle similar to that of Jamaica or Barbados, which has attracted many foreign second-home buyers and retirees in recent years. From Bocas, visitors can also make connections to other destinations throughout Panama, including the nearby Chiriquí province, the San Blas Islands and the Perlas Archipelago.

A venture headed by George Novey III, a veteran entrepreneur with 35 years in the air travel industry, the airline now called Air Panama flew under the logo of Turismo Aero until last month.

The new name is very familiar to many Panamanians who still remember the country's first major international carrier, which operated between the late 1960's and 1980's.

Air Panama launched its service with three, 77-29 planes, each with capacity for 50 passengers and a number of in-flight facilities, such as internet, video games and video systems.

Green and Gold:

House designed by the architect Gilles Saint Gilles.

As surely as swallows returning to Capistrano announce springtime in Italy, travel articles in international media are a sign that a new destination is being discovered.

One such emerging destination is the tip of Panama’s Azuero Peninsula.

Favorable articles in many publications as distinct as The New York Times and The Robb Report suggest this previously unheralded Pacific peninsula is about to join what The Times and many others are calling "Panama’s land rush."

The Azuero Peninsula is usually described in the guidebooks accurately enough, as being "off the beaten track". A charter flight from the skyscrapers of Panama City to the Azuero peninsula takes 40 minutes. By car, you travel, some 250 kilometers west on the Panamerican Highway before turning south for another hour. You pass through country sprinkled with roadside homes and Spanish-style towns to take brief respite in quaint central squares amidst friendly Panamanians and their folkloric festivals.

Often compared to Costa Rica’s desirable Guanacaste province, the peninsula has just two seasons, one golden and dry, the other green and lush. The golden season of Azuero (December-May) is marked by clear blue skies and crisp offshore breezes, while the green season (June-November) brings intermittent rain and sun and the verdant landscape for which Panama is so famous. At the tip of this attractive peninsula are tan-sand beaches with surf, hills, and dales for campers, excellent fishing just off-shore. And everywhere, it seems, cowboys, horses and cattle share the road with modern automobiles.

The visionaries who have first seen the potential of this area are more concerned with restoring its ecology than maximizing human habitation. And for good reason: The wealthy or the well-known who have bought land here (the Robb Report lists such recognizable names as Mick Jagger, Bruce Willis and Tommy Lee Jones) tend to value both ecology and privacy. For these people, privacy is largely assured by location. For the visionaries, restoration of the once-pristine ecology requires a collective will.

Among advocates of responsible development, two of the most influential are Edwina von Gal, a New York landscape designer, and Gilles Saint-Gilles, an internationally known French designer of mansions for princes and other wealthy Europeans.

Luxury and seclusion at an Azueros villa.

According to a two-page color spread in The Times, Ms. von Gal and her associates "are pooling their funds to buy up old cattle ranches before developers buy the land for high-rise resorts, casinos and golf courses. They are reforesting eroded lands and planning to build with local wood and local labor."

Saint-Gilles, who on 1,000 acres is accomplishing much of what Ms. Von Gal and others laudably hope to, coalesces his passion for Old World craftsmanship, exquisite design and environmental stewardship in "Azueros", a sustainable luxury community just outside of Pedasi. Enamored with the area’s Tuscany-like hills and cerulean ocean waters, Saint-Gilles chose a secluded stretch of the Pacific as the location for Azueros and has now commenced his ambitious vision-- a balance of luxurious living and ecological restoration.

Saint-Gilles’ hillcrest "Villa Camilla" guest home or petit-hotel, which The Robb Report and all who have seen it including a Latin American magazine Agenda call "palatial," was built with local materials and labor. Saint-Gilles brought master European craftsmen to Azueros to set up workshops and other infrastructures needed at Azueros to train locals in alternative construction methods—making him de facto perhaps the area’s largest full-service contractor.

Azueros’ work force is currently constructing masterfully-crafted homes designed by Saint-Gilles on beach front and ocean-view lots of up to 20 acres, some of which are surrounded by their own private nature reserve. Four years into the project, Villa Camilla accommodates prospective buyers seeking privacy and such recreations as fishing and horseback riding, but who want telephone and Internet access as well.

It takes a certain kind of person to pioneer an area, and it seems that certain areas attract certain types of pioneers. It may bode well for the Azuero Peninsula that the reigon appears to attract pioneers with passion, talent and the means to make things happen.

By Andrea Petersen
The Wall Street Journal

Add this to the gift list for new retirees: a Spanish-English dictionary.

As legions of baby boomers prepare to retire and relocate to warmer climates, a widening range of Central American countries are vying to be their new home. While places like Costa Rica, Mexico and Belize have long lured U.S. retirees with pristine beaches and cheap living, prices in those countries have risen sharply during recent years. As a result, a new breed of intrepid retirees is branching out to countries including Panama, Honduras and Nicaragua. These countries, in turn, are rolling out the welcome mat in an attempt to snare Americans' retirement dollars.

In Panama, the hilltop town of Boquete now has a population of about 300 American retirees. Dozens live in the new real-estate development, Valle Escondido, which has a nine-hole golf course, high-speed Internet access, and a 24-hour manned security gate. On the island of Roatan in Honduras, retirees have snapped up beachfront property and are taking advantage of "pensionado" visas that allow noncitizens to live in Honduras income-tax-free if they can prove they have income of $1,500 a month.

And while Nicaragua may conjure up images of civil war, real-estate agents are offering entire islands off the Caribbean coast for less than the cost of a condo in Florida.

No one tracks the total number of Americans retiring abroad, but there are sizeable settlements springing up. Costa Rica, for instance, is home to between 20,000 and 30,000 Americans, according to the U.S. embassy there. Overall, in 2002, 242,128 American retirees had their Social Security benefits sent to foreign countries, according to the Social Security Administration. That is up slightly from the 219,504 who listed a foreign address in 1999. Those numbers don't represent all of those retiring overseas, since many people keep a U.S. mailing address.

The move by retirees to more off-the-beaten-path destinations is being driven partly by rising prices in some of the more traditional hot spots. Home prices in San Miguel de Allende, a Mexican colonial hill town that is home to more than 10,000 Americans, have risen 8 percent to 11 percent a year for each of the past three years.

Annie and Michael LaFoley moved to Boquete, Panama, from Colorado in 2000, after deciding against Costa Rica. Instead, they plunked down $144,000 for six acres of land in Panama that include a working coffee plantation. They built a main house, a guesthouse and a greenhouse for Mrs. LaFoley's orchids.

"The quality of life, the cost of living is a lot better" than the U.S., says Mr. LaFoley, 56 years old, who owns a shopping center in Massachusetts.

Baby boomers are adventuring into retirement.

Countries like these are rolling out the welcome mat to Americans with a variety of financial incentives. The LaFoleys, for instance, are in Panama on a pensionado visa similar to what is available in Honduras, which lets them live there after proving they have $500 a month apiece in income. Panama also lets retirees import a car tax-free every two years, import $10,000 of household items tax-free, and buy property tax-free if it is the owner's only home. In Honduras, those over age 65 receive a card good for discounts on airline tickets, medications and their electric and water bills.

The primary appeal is the cost of living, which can make it possible for retirees to live on nothing more than their Social Security benefits — or live lavishly on a bit more money. Retirees are hiring live-in housekeepers for $150 a month in Panama City.

Countries like Costa Rica have been so successful at luring retirees, it's starting to eliminate some of the perks it once offered to lure Americans. "We used to have incentives, but today there are not many," says Alejandro Cedeno, minister counselor and consul general at the Embassy of Costa Rica in Washington, D.C.

Next door in Nicaragua, real-estate agents say that Costa Rica's cooler reception is partly what is driving some retirees to consider the formerly war-torn country. The expat community is small and residential communities are just getting off the ground. On the Pacific Coast, Rancho Santana is a new beachfront community with pools, tennis courts and a helipad. Two-bedroom houses are selling for prices starting around $99,000. Quarter-acre ocean-view lots begin at $52,900. Some of the tiny islands that dot the coasts are also for sale: A five-acre Caribbean island with a two-bedroom house, a generator and coconut trees is currently being advertised online for $230,000.

One big promoter of retiring in Central America is International Living, a travel newsletter published by Baltimore-based Agora Publishing Inc., and Agora Travel, a related travel agency. International Living acts as a broker for real estate in Panama and is one of the backers of the Rancho Santana development in Nicaragua. Agora Travel runs real-estate tours of Nicaragua, as well as Panama, Honduras and Europe.

A few other resources for people considering retiring abroad are ExpatExchange.com, which includes country-specific message boards, and the Web site for the Association of American Residents Overseas (www.aaro.org), an advocacy group that has information on tax and health-insurance issues.

For retirees abroad, the living isn't always easy. For one thing, Medicare doesn't cover medical care received outside the U.S. Many have the added expense of emergency-evacuation insurance, which pays for flights to U.S. hospitals in case of a serious illness.

Shopping can be tricky, too. Mr. LaFoley, the retiree in Boquete, Panama, likes to cook but has trouble finding some ingredients at the markets in Boquete — and even in the Costco nearby. "I had someone bring me horseradish from Miami," he says.

An average of four pets enter Panama each day.

Not only homo sapiens family members and retirees are relocating to Panama. As a matter of fact, at least four pets (mostly dogs, but some cats), enter the country each day.

The following is a list of requirements needed for the importation of domestic animals in Panama:

1. To enter Panama, every domestic animal needs a certificate of vaccination against Rabies and a health certificate issued by a qualified veterinarian. Both documents must be sealed at the nearest Panamanian consulate.
2. Three days before the pet's arrival, an import application must be submitted to the Department of Control and Prevention of Zoonosis. The document should include the pet's information (breed, age, color, sex, name, origin and particular signs), flight number, airline, hour and date of arrival; and the owner/guardian's data (name, Passport or ID number, address and telephone). The application must also specify the length of stay of the animal (temporary or permanent).
3. A total of $130.00 must be paid for quarentine expenses to the National Bank, located on the first floor of Tocumen International Airport, from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
4. Present the bank's receipt and all the other documentation to the Veterinarian of the Quarantine Department of Tocumen International Airport, in order to get the pet.

For more information, call 212-9338 or 238-5340.