"Panama City" a Panamá City Travel Page by bilgeez

My wife and I moved to Los Buzos, in Los Santos Province near the town of Cambutal, on Nov 20, 2008. We bid farewell to Panama City our home of over 14 months. We had some good times during our stay but my wife hates big city life and when we had the opportunity to move back closer to where she grew up, we took it!
There are many things about PC I liked, but the congestion, the traffic, the noise and the pollution were too much to take.
I will trade an idyllic, pastoral ocean front setting over living in a city any day!
I won’t go into the history of Panama City, there are many resources on the Internet and at this website covering that. It was founded in 1519, so I hope I am here for its’ 500th anniversary in twelve years.
Panama City contains about 2/3rds of the inhabitants of Panama, so the rest of the country is sparsely populated. It is a very cosmopolitan city and they are working very hard to make it even more attractive to foreigners to invest in and relocate to. The editor of Panama’s daily newspaper, La Prensa, recently wrote an editorial that basically said Panama should strive very hard to attract retiring North American baby boomers here to boost the local economy and give them an economical and safe place to live.
Panama City is growing rapidly. Most of the new skyscrapers going up are high-rise condo apartments that will hopefully be filled with wealthy gringos who want to retire to a maintenance-free lifestyle and will want to explore the provinces.
I heard recently that new car registrations in Panama are up 22% over last year. So the economy is growing and benefiting some people here. Panama, however, is still a very poor country. Close to 40% of the people live in poverty, many hope that soon the economic expansion will trickle down to them.