Chapter 2: Panama

I can hear you asking yourself, “Why Panama?”

A number of reasons actually. I had read an article about Panama in a travel magazine. It is considered a 2^nd world country as opposed to a 3^rd world country. English is taught in grade school, so many Panamanians speak English, living is a lot cheaper than in the States, it’s easy to get a visa to live there, and most importantly, the women are beautiful!

When I arrived, the airport was crowded and it was hot. I had the taxi take me to the Hyatt and there I settled in for the night. The next morning, Sunday, I spent walking around town and laying by the pool at the hotel. Monday morning I went to Banistmo. I talked to a banker who spoke English and opened an account with my $600,000 in cashier’s checks. He directed me to a Real Estate company owned by a ‘primo’ (cousin) of his. After lunch his primo picked me up and showed me a couple of apartments in the high rises overlooking the Bay of Panama. They were both very nice but not what I was looking for. I told him I was not interested in living in the city. He had another primo who was also in the Real Estate business up in Chiriqui, the western most province of Panama, located on the Costa Rican border. I checked out of the hotel the next morning and boarded a flight to David City. The capital of Chiriquí. There I checked into the City of David Hotel and waited for this ‘primo’.

He picked me up at 10am and we were in Boquete by 11. I quickly found out this was not what I was looking for. This is a quaint little mountain village occupied by mostly retired Americans. It would be like living in one of those retirement communities in Florida or Arizona at the age of 29!

As we sat in a coffee shop eating a sandwich, we talked. He asked if I knew anything about coffee. Other than liking it hot, strong, with no sugar or cream, that was about it.

“I have a listing that might interest you. It’s about 2 hours from David, up in the mountains near Costa Rica. It is 200 hectares, that’s 500 acres, the owner was from England. He was some type of agronomist; he planted it in a specialty coffee called ‘Geisha’. It’s one of the most sought after coffees in the world. He built a house, a coffee processing plant and a workers village on the place. He died of a heart attack before the first harvest, which will be later this year. His daughter lives in London and has no interest in owning a coffee farm in Panama. She has never even been here. She’s asking $500,000 for the place but I think it could be bought a lot cheaper, especially if you offered her cash.”

I suspect that he knows from his primo that I have $600,000 in the bank in Panama. I told him I would give the place a look. We decided that tomorrow morning would be best since we were an hour from David and it was another two hours from David to the farm.

After breakfast the next day he picked me up in his SUV and we drove up into the mountains. It was two and a half hours later that we turned off the main road onto a gravel road. It ended after half a mile. There was a parking lot!