As I continue to think about my November trip, I feel pretty good about returning to Belize or driving through Mexico. I have a general idea of where to go and what to look for. I don't have the same feel for Panama. I have come to realize that I need to do a lot more research before I could go to Panama.
It also occurred to me that most of the major expat web sites that talk about various cities to move to, focus almost exclusively on three areas: current hot spots, large cities or areas that have new developments being marketed to the expatriate community.
This is fairly understandable since this is where many folks want to live and most of these sites are marketing their own brand of "how to retire abroad or become an expatriate in three easy steps. " But I am looking for a smaller town. I don't want to live in the central area of an old Colonial city. I would like to visit many of these cities as a tourist, but that is not where I want to live full time.
Don't get me wrong; I enjoy reading the pages of International Living, Retire Worldwide, Escape Artist, Expatify.com and others. I have learned a tremendous amount from them about both specific countries and the general process of retiring overseas. I credit all of them with creating a niche and developing their expertise.
But what do you do if you're like me and prefer to live in a smaller town? These smaller locales generally don't get written about except in travel sites because they have no glitzy developments to peddle. I guess I will just have to read what is available and use other sources like TripAdvisor and the usual travel guides to get a feel for the smaller towns and communities that don’t receive the focus from the broader expat community.
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