I lived in Costa Rica but I did not have a visa to live there. I was just a tourist. Every ninety days I had to leave the country and then come back to get another ninety days. Some people considered this a hassle but I loved it. It ensured that I would keep traveling around and not just stagnate in one place. I traveled to Panama, Nicaragua, Guatamala, The States, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and pretty much all over Central America and lots of South America.
Sometimes we drove down to David in Northern Panama. I liked going to David. It was about a five hour drive from my house. Costa Rica has a high import duty on almost everything which makes goods expensive in the country but Panama has almost no duties on anything so shopping there is much cheaper and they have a much larger selection of things to buy. There also are no movie theaters where I lived in Manuel Antonio so I always went to movies when I went down there.
We stayed at the Hotel Pesidente or one of the other nice cheap hotels in David. It was about twenty five bucks a night for a good hotel. There were nice clean hotels for as little as eight bucks a night all over Panama. Food was as cheap as a couple of bucks for a nice meal and beers were seventy five cents. We partied hardy while we were there. Usually we went as a group to make it more fun and more efficient to get our passports updated. There were lots of great restaurants with a wider range of food available in David so we ate out a lot there.
I liked to go downtown on the weekends because there was a cock fighting place, a whore house and the police department almost right next to each other. Cock fighting was illegal and so is prostitution in Panama but there were cops in both places. I don't support cock fighting at all and think it is wrong. I went to the fights to watch the locals bet big bucks on their favorite birds. They got so excited during the fights that you could barely hear in the building. The cops were big customers plus they settled any fights that occurred. The gentlemen's club next door had exotic dancers lazily going through the motions up on a small stage and then girls walked around the room picking up tricks that they took to small back rooms. Again there were police sitting around watching the girls and wandering in and out of the back rooms.
We often went to the casino in David. The casino was huge and was loaded with one armed bandits and all the usual games like texas holdem, craps, roulette and everything else. I played the bandits sometimes and some poker but I preferred to just watch the locals and the tourists throw their money away while I indulged in a few drinks and watched the girls working the crowd.
There are some good fishing outfits that are based in David. The Coral Star and several other mothership type outfits start and end their trips in David. They fish down around Coiba Island which is a few hours cruising south of David. It takes a long time to wind your way through all the mangroves from David harbor to the open ocean but that just makes the passengers feel like they are in a very remote place. You can see monkeys and snakes in the mangrove trees lining the narrow canals that lead back and forth. Most of the mothership trips are for about a week and you sleep and eat on the mothership but you fish on two passenger pangas during the day. You can fish for whatever type of fish you want that way. Some people want to go for that big marlin and some people prefer inshore roosterfish and pargo. Whatever floats you boat.
I would go down and stay at my friend's place a couple of hours south of David to go fishing. It is called Paradise Lodge. Chad is the owner and I was one of his first customers. He bought the land and built the resort by himself. It is quite impressive for a one man project. It is up on a hill overlooking the Pacific with lots of small islands dotting the view west. To the east there are mountains to watch the sun come up over. Very beautiful setting for a fishing resort. Chad had good vision when he came up with his idea. Today he is almost fully booked up with fishing clients. I highly recommend his place if you want to try out some of the world's best fishing around Coiba Island and Hannibal Bank. He has three boats now I think.
We went to Panama City once in a while also. There were cheap package deals with all inclusive hotels and air included. Panama city is a big city with all the usual problems of a big city but if you are careful you can have a very good time there. Taxis are cheap to get around town with and there are lots of crazy clubs and places to go. We often ended up buying lots of stuff at the big malls there. Phones and computers and cameras that were expensive in Costa Rica were cheap and plentiful here. I did the usual trip on the Panama Canal through the first locks on the canal and went to the Canal Museum too. I also took a ferry out to some islands offshore that was a lot of fun to do.
The strangest thing for me about Panama City is its orientation. I think of cities on the west coast as facing west looking out over the pacific ocean. The first time I was in Panama City I got a room around noon overlooking the ocean. I thought I was going to get a great sunset view out my window and to my surprise the sunset was in the opposite direction to what I thought it was going to be. My internal direction sensing was totally thrown off by this. Panama City is on a curving almost peninsula shaped protrusion sticking out from the pacific coast and when you look out at the pacific ocean you are looking east not west. My brain never was able to get that information right so I kept getting lost in the city and normally I am very good at sensing directions.
We also went to a city in the North East part of Panama called Bocas del Toro. Bocas is just across the border from Costa Rica. There is a foot bridge you can walk across. It is an area with a bunch of islands all connected by small ferry boats. The area is beautiful, lush and tropical with nice clear blue water but in my opinion there isn't much going on there. The town is not really a town just a few buildings. If you want peace and quiet then it is ok but for me it just doesn't work. Some of my friends just love the place. To each his own I guess.
Near David there is another small city called Boquete where lots of Americans are retiring to. It is up in the mountains so it is cooler and less humid that the normal lowlands weather. Almost everybody there speaks English and all the signs and everything are in English so if you want a taste of back home this is the place to go. Myself, again I was not impressed by it. I am not looking for a clone of life in the United States but if that is what you like then this is your place. Have fun there. Magazines love to do articles on retiring in Boquete and always rate it as one of the best places in the world to retire to. If you do retire there I hope you like watching satellite tv and reading because the place is not going to cause you to have a heart attack from excitement. I guess I am just not looking for a cloned American experience. PURAVIDA
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