So why did I move from Costa Rica to Panama? The process of leaving Costa Rica and moving to Panama involved various factors that I would like to share.
This is my own honest opinion. As a foreigner to give insight of where other travelers go to. I didn’t compare Panama City to San Jose, the capital cities in this video/blog because not a lot of people stay in San Jose.
Infrastructure
I’ll start off by saying I love Costa Rica. Costa Rica is amazing. It’s an amazing vacation for me. I have a lot of great friends there, a lot of genuine people, and there’s so many things to do.
In the video above I go into a lot more detail, the pro’s and con’s of comparing Costa Rica to Panama.
So again, why did I move to Panama from Costa Rica? Well, I tried to stay in Costa Rica. More to come on that later.
Now, infrastructure might not mean a lot if you’re coming from Canada or North America, because, in there paved roads are something you see everywhere. Power Grids are usually underground and its not things that you notice. But in Costa Rica and Panama, paved roads is a luxury, under ground power lines also. I always say Panama City is Miami 20 years ago.
If the power goes out in North America, it’s a big deal. When the power goes out in Costa Rica it’s not really a big deal because you just go with the flow. In Costa Rica, when you have a storm and it rains, the roads get very, very muddy.
And when it rains in Costa Rica, it pours. It’s like cats and dogs coming down.
You have to remember Guanacaste is a bunch of surf towns, basically. So having a paved road in Guanacaste is a luxury.
So afterward the rain, it’s a muddy, soppy mess. Also, if it rains, it pours, the power goes out, and, you know, you might be on a Zoom call and all of a sudden the power goes out and there goes the zoom call.
It just wasn’t super reliable for the infrastructure because when you come to Panama, you’ve got paved roads, sidewalks, but be careful, you know, make sure you’re looking down when you’re walking around, there might be a four foot hole that they decided to do a patch job on, and you might end up in the four foot hole.
So just be careful.
But, you know, they do have pavement. Why? Because they are a city. When it rains, everything doesn’t shut down. The power doesn’t go out all the time, so it’s definitely a plus being here.
Banking
So it might sound kind of funny when you’re in Costa Rica. Tamarindo is where I was living, and you pull out money out of the bank account. In that case, I had a Canadian account, so what I would do is I’d go to one of their major banks, I would pull out money, but then the money doesn’t come out, and then you’re going back and forth with the Canadian bank, while in Central America on a SIM card.
This happened so many times, I basically lost track.
In Panama, it’s a banking capital. Best economy in Latin America, banking district. Things are reliable. There’s not crazy waits and especially opening up a company. So if you open up a company in Costa Rica, I know so many business owners, restaurant owners in Tamarindo that would tell me they can only deposit a certain amount each day.
So say if you made $10,000 that night and you’re only able to deposit $3000, you’d have to go back again and back again and back again. It was just kind of funny rules.
Here, ( Panama City) you deposit as much as you want. Banking is reliable throughout the world. I use my card everywhere. And for me, it was just a lot easier not having to worry about my money.
Buying a Car
When your inNorth America it’s simple to go out and buy a new or used car.
In Latin America, you have something called import fees.
When I was in San Jose, Costa Rica, I bought a car, an ’86 Toyota Corolla, which is probably five, six or $700 in Canada, it was $4000 USD, in San Jose.
In Costa Rica, This car was four times the cost? Maybe more? And this wasn’t, this was a luxury to have a car. One of the reasons, was this was in 2021, and the cars available were minimal. A fond memory of the car in Costa Rica, was it looked like a “Collectivo”. Which is transport for local’s. So I was getting waved at everywhere I would go. If your going to buy a car in Costa Rica, don’t buy an older Toyota.
In Panama, they have the Panama Canal so, cars here are new, not necessarily broken down,
but the taxis are pretty beat up. The Ubers on the other hand are much nicer.
Banking
Okay, Now I’ll talk about how I paid for the car, this goes back into the banking situation.
1. I went to the bank, which you would normally do.
2. You do a wire transfer. People talk about it’s gonna be $75 to $85 for the wire transfer down to Costa Rica.
I went with a Costa Rican friend. That way I didn’t get hit with gringo prices. I also had a translator. He was even surprised. The bank wanted to charge me $800 USD for the transfer, which is astronomical.
Two other banks wouldn’t do it. So what did I do? I started pulling out cash.
At the time I could only pull out $300 dollars at a time. Now imagine the bank fees on $4000 and how many times you have to pull, pull it out when you’re only pulling out $300 at a time. The bank machine would slowly run out of money because that’s what bank machines do.
Next thing you know, you’d have to come back the next day and pull out more money. So it’s a bit of an ordeal here. I just do whatever I need to do.
Although in Panama, the most you can take out is $400, I believe, or maybe, no, maybe it’s $250 at certain banks, and $400 at others. So, you know, that does add up if you’re wanting to pay rent in cash.
So when it comes to banking, Panama is just reliable.
It just makes it a lot easier not having to worry about my money.
Housing
Now I’m gonna get into housing. We just talked about rent in Tamarindo. I lived in basically a container home, without the metal. It’s just like a shack. It’s actually called Casa Shaak.
It was $1100 a month I felt like it could blow down if you had a really bad storm. The power went out a lot because we talked about power, and it just wasn’t super reliable. $1,100 USD.
Now I come to Panama. I lived in that big, curved building. It’s the former Trump building. It’s now called the JW Marriott. It had a gym, it was fully concrete, it was beautiful.
I paid $1,300 a month rent. But the amenities were amazing and it looked out on the ocean, so it was super cool. I also did a tour of my $800 apartment in San Francisco on my YouTube channel just to show you the differences HERE
Electricity
Now power grids, we kind of touched on it. It’s very, very reliable. The power very seldomly goes out. The Internet goes down sometimes, but that happens everywhere. So the power here is amazing. I’m not, not ever really worried about a Zoom call or uploading YouTube videos or anything like that.
So it’s a lot more reliable.
Fitness
On to fitness, I love being fit, healthy, everything else. So in Tamarindo, it’s a city of 8000 people.
So really, what do you expect?
The gyms, well you know, half the machines were broken all the time. You come here, it’s a much bigger city. You’ve got smart fit, it’s like $30 a month, and it’s just like what you would get back home. I much prefer it, you know, not having to worry about things. Plus the gym there was like $60 a month, so it’s almost double.
Airports
So I also travel a lot for work, and I’m always going between Latin America and Canada, so I need. Proximity to an airport is very important to me. In Tamarindo or Guanacaste, you can go to Liberia, but Liberia only flies to, I believe, Canada. It doesn’t fly to other latin american countries. Or maybe it does, but it’s very pricey.
In Panama, you could jump in an Uber, it’s literally $12, which is the most you’ll ever pay $12 to go directly to the airport. It’s an international airport. It’s a hub, and you’re literally there in 30 minutes. So that was a definite plus when it came to Panama.
Now bus transportation, you know, you’d have to hire a driver in Costa Rica. That price was up in the gringo prices of, you know, $40, $60, $80, $100 to basically just go to, like, Liberia and back.
It definitely added up.
Uber here is, like I said, $12 the airport, and it doesn’t really go over seven, which is a fraction of what you’ll get in Canada. So now it looks like I’m dumping on Costa Rica, but I’m really not.
I’m just being completely honest about everything there is to know about living in each area. I go back to Costa Rica for vacations because I have a lot of friends there. Great Genuine people in Costa Rica. Expats and foreigners.
Beaches
In Panama City, you don’t have a beach. That’s a big negative for me, It’s literally 32 degrees. It’s 85% humidity. It is 9:00 a.m. it’s ridiculous. So you need a beach in Panama City, maybe just, like, put one right there.
Then you don’t really want to go in the ocean here either. There’s a lot of garbage and things like that. They say that it’s the foreigners doing it, but you see somebody driving down the road and throw the McDonald’s out of a window, and it’s just. Nobody even second guesses it.
Simply put they don’t have recycling here, which really bothers me. So there, you know, there’s definitely some negatives when it comes to overall Latin America.
I love Costa Rica.
So Costa Rica definitely wins for the beaches, the adventures, the experiences. You just feel like you’re in a different world. It’s a Zen atmosphere, and it is wonderful. I go back for vacations all the time. Costa Rica wins for the overall fun of it all.
So, again, why did I move to Panama from Costa Rica? Well, I tried to stay in Costa Rica, hired a lawyer. I followed all the due diligence, I went through everything, and I really, really thought I was going to be a resident of Costa Rica.
But when the lawyer came back to me after a few weeks and said I wasn’t able to open up a bank account because the bank decided to change its rules on foreigners, opening up bank accounts and I would be able to try again in a few months.
That just rubbed me the wrong way.
And after being in Latin America for three years, I’ve realized they say “pura vida” down there and it means
“a simple life” or “just go with the flow”.
So I went with flow.
After that I decided to go to Panama and see what all the hype was about.