Hello!
As they say there is a first for everything… For me everything means: owning a boat and driving it , building in the Caribbean and on the water , having no other job and duty than enjoying life without the constrain of our western society and of course writing this blog.
We came down here almost two month ago, when I say ‘we’ I mean Nathalie my wife and our two children age 16 and 14. After 5 days in Panama city we moved to Bocas , now if I can tell you something Bocas is a town rapidly expending, a lot of people like me are coming down here to build , it means the rental market is quite saturated !!! It took us close to 6 weeks to find a descent place where to live and even so the place is rented empty - really empty ( I had to buy the cooker, the beds, etc. right down to the light bulbs….)
Then you have to find a boat , that’s another important thing. Here a boat is like a car , if you want to come to Bocatorito (this is the name of the little village in Dolphin Bay ) a water taxi will charge you $40 to $50 USD round trip, like a car you have the choice of new or second hand. New will cost you anything from $10-12,000 USD where it becomes tricky is when you don’t want to spend so much, you have to wait to find the good one and again the more people are coming the less second hands boats there are.
When you have these two things sorted out you can start enjoying the place, people here are very friendly - there is no sense of insecurity. You can go out at any time without any problem.
I started really working on the land only 4 days ago therefore my knowledge of building under the tropics is still very limited. For now 6 people are cleaning the land and doing a type of wooden wall to stop the tide flooding it . In less than a week the results are impressive. I think that with 8 guys for another week the whole job will be complete. I will then be able to start the building per se.
That’s it. The lunch break is over and I’m going back to check what they are doing… have good day.
philippe
Posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Filed under Uncategorized.
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December 17th, 2006 at 4:43 am
Dear Phillippe,
Did you eventually manage to buy a boat? If so…did you get it in Bocas? We have tried to find listings on the net for boat sales/marinas in Panama and cannot find any.
Other than Bocas….do you have any suggestions on where to start looking for a boat?
Cheers…Susan