Websites, Blogs, Books and Tours

“Costa Rica Sunset” photo I made in 2011

My initial thinking was either Panama or Costa Rica as a retirement home and at first I focused on Panama, my most recent visit. The InternationalLiving site and products were the first ones promising I could live very nicely on my social security check or $1,500 a month in most Latin American countries. Then I found both Panama and Costa Rica sites saying something similarly. My hope were up! I can live a tropical life and have money left to travel to the other countries I don’t live in and all over the one I live in. I subscribed to the InternationalLiving Magazine, which I now would not advise, though I’ve only received one issue. Actually, there is good information, but that organization is pushing buying property and I will definitely rent for many reasons I’ll list later. They also have a free InternationalLiving Postcard (daily email) which has some good stories of people who have retired in many different places around the world, but focused on Latin America which is good for me, but again they are selling something in each email. So I’m learning from these but peeved at the way they keep asking for my money.


The first focus on PANAMA led me to these sites with various amounts of help:

Panama City from Cruise Ship in Canal, Photo by Charlie
  •  Panama For Real which is an unprofessional blog kind of site by a young man from Tulsa who married a Panamanian is the “Panama Gringo” and writes straight-forward opinions about various parts of Panama with his added home videos. It is interesting and certainly not a hard sell on Panama. He only wants to sell ads on his site.
  • Panama Relocation Tours which is modeled after the long time tour in Costa Rica and would be a must to take if I were still considering Panama.
  • TheInternational Living Panama Page has different info and more links
  • Google will take you to many other sites including real estate sites, but my initial searches discouraged me on Panama and I started focusing on Costa Rica

So I started searching for COSTA RICA information and found much more:

“Blue Jeans Frog: in Tortuguero by Charlie
  •  Christopher Howard’s Live in Costa Rica Relocation/Retirement Tours which also has books, web information galore, a blog and simply the main guy to go to if thinking about moving to Costa Rica. I will be talking about him more in future posts.
  • The Real Costa Rica which is a less professional page with lots of information and his own tour
  •  InternationalLiving site has some good articles on Costa Rica too, but you have to sign up to get access to some of them. Again they seem to be more interested in real estate sales than anything
  • And of course Google will give you more than you want

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