The Offbeater

My Slow-Burn Crush on a Country With a Reputation.

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Trading London for Panama City

Let’s get this out of the way first. I now live in the same country as the Panama Papers, one of the biggest banking scandals in recent history. For those who know me, you’ll already understand the irony. For everyone else, here it is.

I used to deliver security presentations where I was using the incident as a case study, back when it was a hot topic. Eleven and a half million leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm, exposing exactly how easily money could move through offshore accounts undetected. What followed was a global tightening of anti-money laundering rules, and for Panama specifically, a spot on the international watchlist for countries not doing enough to fight it. One it would take years to shake. And reputational damage that still hasn’t fully gone. It’s not lost on me, the irony of now sitting in banks here myself, jumping through the very hurdles introduced because of it.

I never once imagined I’d end up living in the country of the scandal. I will deny this if quoted, but with a compliance background, I’ve secretly been enjoying the personal admin it’s landed me. It’s my idea of fun. Maybe I was quietly falling for the bad boy of banking scandals years before I ever set foot here, a very slow-burn crush. In my defence, he does have excellent weather and his own canal.

“Why Panama City?” I’ve been asked this more than any other question this year, and for months I gave the tidy version. Better weather. A different pace of life. More outdoor living. Being tired of endless long-haul flights for Offbeat Horizons. UK politics, and the particular flavour of misery that comes with it.

All true. None of it the real answer.

The Question Underneath the Question

The real question isn’t why Panama. Offbeat Horizons could technically run from anywhere with decent wi-fi. But Panama is a smart base for a company built around Latin America, closer to the destinations we run trips to, better positioned across time zones, a hub rather than an outpost. I’d already incorporated the business here the summer before I personally decided to move, which tells you where my head was, if not yet my address.

Except it wasn’t just strategic. I found that out by accident, going through old photos, where I stumbled on an Instagram post from January 2019. A picture of Panama City, captioned “Panama City feels more like home.” Written after a whirlwind through several countries, with zero plans to move anywhere, let alone incorporate a company here. I had completely forgotten I’d said it. Some part of me had worked out the ending years before the business plan did.

I don’t have children. No school runs, no exams, no weddings, no next generation to organise a life around. A friend once put it quite well, most people get the next few decades mapped out for them by exactly those milestones. We don’t. Which means nobody’s coming to tell us where to go next. We have to work that out ourselves. Once I’d decided, I didn’t sit on it. My mentor was more excited than I’d heard him in the entire time he’d been mentoring me. I’m not a spiritual person, but even I raised an eyebrow at how much had apparently already been arranged without my permission.

No Recce

No recce. No rental booked before landing. A one-way flight, for the first time in my life. Most people would call that reckless. I’d call it knowing exactly what I was doing. Arrogant, maybe. Correct, also maybe.

The recce was the only thing I skipped. Everything else was planned in meticulous detail, the kind of planning that only looks spontaneous from the outside. Years in Latin America meant I already knew how the region moved, so while people were curious about my reasoning, I was mostly just asking Cristina which floor, and which aspect, would get me the best light.

Cristina had a scouting trip planned before I’d even landed – coastal, valley, all across Panama City, with more care than the job technically required. I’ve noticed that’s a very Panama thing. Professional relationships can turn into friendships here almost on contact. Someone close to her once summed her up as having three jobs; real estate advisor, lawyer and triathlete. And that tells you everything you need to know about Cristina.

Six Months In, and I’m Not Sorry About Any of It

My favourite part of most days is opening the curtains and making a Panamanian coffee, Geisha beans, grown mostly around Boquete, and some of the most sought-after in the world. I understand the price tag now in a way I never did before I moved here. I’m in an ocean-front apartment on the 31st floor, ships queuing for the Canal being the main event, Casco Viejo on the other, and a few islands thrown in for good measure. It’s roughly twice the size of my London flat. Apparently, 31 floors isn’t even considered high here. Six months in, as of publishing this. I love it, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise for the sake of sounding humble.

Those ships queuing aren’t just scenery, either. The Canal’s had a busy, profitable year. War in the Middle East effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, and tankers that would never normally come near Panama started queuing here instead, so many that operators have been paying millions of dollars just to jump the line. I watch it happen from my window some mornings, ships stacking up while I drink my coffee, which feels like a strange kind of front-row seat to global trade.

The apartment itself took some getting used to. I told Cristina, more than once, that I wasn’t interested in amenities, I don’t use them. Reader, I use them. Somewhere along the way the pool and jacuzzi became a pre-bedtime ritual I never asked for and now can’t imagine living without. During viewings, I’d noticed the local developers aren’t really competing on price, they’re trying to out-luxury each other, Olympic pools, whisky lounges, private cinemas, more square footage than any reasonable person needs. Turns out that was personally very convenient.

Beyond the apartment, the real education has been the city itself. The best surprise wasn’t the coastline or the Canal, it was going out in search of a decent biryani and stumbling into a community that I had absolutely no idea existed here. At least I can rest easy knowing my mother can make some fast friends when she visits. Panama City might be the most diverse city in Latin America, and it shows up on plates more than anywhere else I’ve been. The biryani isn’t too bad either.

I’m a city girl through and through, high-rises make me feel settled, not trapped, so all this suits me more than I expected. The wildlife, however, is the part that still catches me off-guard, not because it’s there, but because it’s ten minutes from a financial district. I still remember a walk through Epping Forest, not long before the move, catching myself already sulking, not because the forest wasn’t nice, but because I already knew, with total certainty, I wasn’t going to spot a toucan. These days I’m ten minutes from Metropolitan Park, where a weekly walk gets me sloths, agoutis, coatis, tamarins, howler monkeys, the occasional deeply shy armadillo, and more toucans in a single outing than that entire London life ever managed.

Seven Minutes

I’m considerably less uptight about the small stuff, which is quite an achievement for someone who used to colour-code her wardrobe.

A few weeks ago, I turned up seven minutes late to a bank appointment. On purpose. I didn’t want to rush the last of my coffee, and for once in my life, I didn’t. Will I do it again? Unlikely. But for someone who’s spent her whole life arriving at least fifteen minutes early to everything, including things that didn’t require it, those seven minutes were a small personal revolution.

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The Unfiltered Version

Panama is small, and despite a genuinely wide range of produce on offer, not much is produced here. A lot of the gap gets filled with American products, and as someone fairly militant about what she eats, that unsettles me more than I expected it to. Clothing’s the same story; local brands are thin on the ground. Cristina tells me plenty of people here just go to Colombia on shopping trips. Apparently, that’s normal. I’m still adjusting to weekend shopping trips to Colombia being normal.

I’m a keen birdwatcher, quietly one of the real reasons Panama pulled at me long before I admitted it. This country has over a thousand recorded bird species. Which is exactly why the lack of infrastructure bothers me more than it might bother most people. Panama City recycles roughly 2% of its waste. The UK, by comparison, manages something closer to 45%. That gap disappoints me, not in a superior, wagging-finger way, I live here now and love it, but because somewhere with this much natural beauty deserves better infrastructure to protect it. There are no water fountains, no bird baths, nowhere for the sheer number of birds here to drink from in the heat. For a country this proud of its biodiversity, that’s an odd thing to have missed.

Back in 2019, on the same trip as that Instagram post, I visited the Plastic Bottle Village in Bocas del Toro, a small, slightly mad, genuinely effective project turning discarded bottles into buildings. I remember standing there thinking how strange it was that something this scrappy was doing more than most official infrastructure I’d seen. I’ve carried a Water-to-Go bottle for years since, partly out of habit, partly because I hate contributing to single-use plastic. It doesn’t fix the bigger picture. But it’s one small thing I get to control.

My mother’s solution has been posting me an alarming quantity of tea. I once asked colleagues at the British Embassy in Bogotá, back in 2004, what they missed most about home. Tea and cheese, without missing a beat. Twenty years and a different country later, nothing’s changed. It’s the British way.And I miss my family more than the tidy version of this story would admit. A two-week trip home earlier this year gave me more real, undistracted time with them than an entire year in the UK probably would have. But it doesn’t cancel out missing one of my nephews’ sports days for the first time in my life. That one doesn’t come with a silver lining attached. I’m not going to manufacture one just to close the paragraph nicely.

So, Why Panama City?

Because London made me, and Panama, apparently, had been quietly rearranging my life behind my back for the better part of a decade. Rude, but effective. Ships and toucans included.

Also, ask me again in six months. I reserve the right to have a completely different answer.