Costs for Our Month in Boquete

Hi, Everyone!

Since many of you reading this are considering a future as an expat, I’m sure you’d be curious to know how much it costs to spend a month in Boquete as evaluators on a reconnaissance mission.

Our grand total for 31 nights in Panamá was $5,878.16. I have provided some detail below with thoughts about how those costs could be reduced — and projections about the costs if we actually lived there.

Airfare from Charlotte to Miami to Panamá City to David for the two of us, roundtrip, was $2,286.28 or 38.89% of the total. If you were willing to take a bus from Panamá City to David or rent a car in Panamá City and drive yourself to Boquete and back (and pay for the gas), you could reduce airfare by about $560.

Accommodations for 3 nights in Panamá City and 4 weeks in our casita in Boquete was $1,283.50 or 21.84% of the total. We chose to stay in a balcony room at the Country Inn & Suites Panamá Canal for the first two nights and at the Riande Hotel on the last night, for a total of about $400. There are lots of less costly places to stay in Panamá City — one that is often mentioned is the Hotel Milan, which would have been about half the price. Of course, if you’re going to take the bus or rent a car at PTY and were up for the 7-8 hour drive to Boquete, you could save the hotel costs altogether. Long term rentals of the quality we seek can be found for $750 to $1200 per month, furnished and including all utilities.

Ground Transportation, including taxi, car rental and gasoline was $871.69 or 14.83% of the total. We initially planned to use taxis and our own two feet, but that was far too restrictive so we rented a car for the last 3 weeks at a cost of $600 plus about $75 in fuel. If you are willing to risk all sorts of calamity and argue with the agents at the rental desk in a language you don’t speak, you can actually rent a car from a major agency for under $200 A MONTH — but if anything goes wrong, uninsured renters have a heap ‘o misery to climb.  Big taxi charges are involved when traveling from the PTY to the PAC airports and from DAV to Boquete.  At least $150 of the budget went to just 3 taxi rides. Mind you, if you rented the car in PTY, you could save all of those taxi charges and just pay for the additional gas.  In our case, renting a car at PTY with full insurance coverage would have cost almost $1,200 and fuel would have cost about $300 for the month — so running the math all things included, we spent about $250 MORE the way we did things BUT we also saved ourselves a stressful 16 hours of driving and got to spend a couple of days in Panamá City. Obviously, long term, buying a quality used vehicle is the way to go, so the costs of ground transportation would be quite low.

Restaurants, including 29 visits, consumed $637.47 or 10.84% of the total. That averages out to  almost one restaurant per day at $11 per person for a meal, tax and tip included.  If we lived there, I’m sure we’d be eating out a lot less — perhaps 2 or 3 times a week — but part of a reconnaissance trip is checking out places to eat and a great many of the social activities we enjoyed were held at restaurants.

Groceries cost $266.92 or 4.54% of the total. Again, if we lived there, we would eat at home more often than not, so this amount would probably double.

Gym membership at the Haven and several yoga classes came to $174.80 for the two of us or 2.97% of the total. Had I known we were going to rent a car, I would have joined a different gym in Alto Boquete for $30 and Linda would probably have just stuck with the yoga classes she was taking for $40 a month.

Telecom which amounted to 2 SIM cards and $10 of usage on our iPhones, came to $23.54 or .40% of the total.  We still have the better part of $10 left on our cards for the next time we are in Panamá.

Souvenirs ran $44.50 or .76% of the total. A small package of Geisha coffee beans and 2 boxes of CHOX Chocolates was all we brought home.

Miscellaneous — $119.46 or 2.03% of the total. This included things like a haircut for Linda ($15 AT A SALON!!), tips, a few items we picked up at the department store and the care of our cat while we were away.

Luggage Handling cost $52 or .88% of the total. I know that sounds like a lot, but Air Panamá was going to charge us even more!

Siteseeing was just $118 or 2.01% of the total.  We paid a few trail fees, petted a sloth and took a cooking class. We could have gone zip lining or on a bunch of finca tours, but truth be told, there’s so much to see and do for free we just didn’t need anything else to fill our time.

If I had to make a wild estimate, I would say that once we are back in Boquete, a monthly budget of $2,500 to $3,000 would probably be right, including medical insurance – which didn’t come into play on this reconnaissance trip.

-T-