Boquete, Panama, was once a quiet town home to rainforests and coffee farms. Then came the retirees.

Stepping inside TapOut Sports Zone Bar and Grill in Boquete, Panama, is like stepping inside suburban America.

The menu features American staples like cheeseburgers, barbecue chicken sandwiches, and Philly cheesesteaks. Flat-screen TVs sit above the bar, airing the latest game. On Friday nights, you might catch a band performing hits like "Take It Easy" by the Eagles. On Mondays, locals stop by for karaoke and $1 beers.

I visited TapOut in April — not for the bacon-wrapped shrimp but to see the Boquete Community Players, a theater group that hosts shows in the back room of the restaurant. On a Saturday afternoon, the small room was bustling with a dozen Americans preparing for an upcoming performance.

As they debated curtain colors and stage lighting, a waiter dropped off a round of piña coladas. Another passed by with two bottles of Panama Light beer. Since arriving at TapOut, it was the first reminder that I was far from the heart of America.

Seeing Americans — especially those around retirement age — is standard in Boquete. The town's year-round cool temperatures and the affordable cost of living have earned it recognition for being one of the best places to retire.

While some people moved because retiring in the US was too expensive — if not impossible — others told me they came to avoid America's divisive political climate. Regardless of why they ended up in Boquete, the town has changed drastically in the past two decades because of retirees, and the influx doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

Boquete wasn't always a retiree's paradise

Founded in 1911, Boquete remained a quiet town for decades. The region was known for its coffee plantations and an annual flower festival. Beyond beans and blooms, Panamanians were lured to Boquete for its comfortable weather.

Situated about 4,000 feet above sea level, Boquete's temperatures hover around 70 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The town has long been a weekend escape for Panamanians living in nearby cities like David, where temperatures can reach the 90s.

Thalia Velasquez, who grew up in David, remembers begging her mom to take her to Boquete every weekend.

"Boquete, at the time, was a very, very simple, little town," Velasquez told me about her childhood visits there. "The stores would close by 4 p.m. The bakery would close by 5 or 6 p.m., maybe even earlier. There were very few cars in town. A lot of people still rode their horses."

Landreth Laws, who owns Iwanna Boquete Tours, has similar memories from growing up in Boquete.

The 42-year-old said the town's busiest time was during an annual flower festival. He remembers his family home teeming with people. There weren't enough hotels in town to accommodate visitors in the '80s and '90s. Back then, there were few tourists and even fewer foreign retirees.

In the 1990s, Velasquez took her partner at the time, Samuel Walker Taliaferro, on a tour of Panama. They stopped in Boquete, and Taliaferro, an American inventor, engineer, and investor, fell in love with the town.

They moved to Boquete, along with Velasquez's two children, and the couple opened a real-estate business, bought land, and spent their days riding horses.

During one ride, Taliaferro took her Velasquez to Valle Escondido, a former coffee plantation and "the most beautiful place in the valley," Velasquez said. The couple bought the land, and Taliaferro eventually transformed it into a $100 million residential resort community.

The property opened in 2003, with a chapel, café, restaurant, hotel, and 150 condominiums. Taliaferro set out to promote both his property and Boquete as a retirement haven. He worked with International Living magazine to advertise the destination, and retirees arrived with suitcases in tow.

It helped when AARP named Boquete the No. 1 foreign retirement destination in the Western Hemisphere. In 2005, Fortune Magazine featured the town as an idyllic place to retire.

"Taliaferro sold Boquete like a new destination, like it was one of the most beautiful places to retire," Laws, who worked for Taliaferro as a bartender in 2003, said. "He pushed Boquete to be the best."

Velasquez said she initially feared backlash from locals and admitted some people were upset by the town's quick change. Others saw it as an opportunity to create their own businesses with the influx of new residents and visitors.

In 2000, Boquete was home to 17,000 people, according to City Population. By 2023, the town ballooned to 23,500 residents. International Living said 5,000, or about a fifth of the population, are expats.

Thousands of expats now call Boquete home

As I hopscotched between Boquete's roads and uneven sidewalks, I saw the beauty and change Laws and Velasquez described.

The small town sits at the bottom of a valley where the outline of mountains can be spotted in every direction. It's one of the greenest places I've visited: tropical flowers fill gardens outside family-owned restaurants, and massive palm fronds reach toward the sky.

Between green landscapes, I also saw foreign retirees' influence on Boquete. I doubted the sandwich shop Holy Cow Boquete or Panama Barcade existed when Laws grew up. Traffic sometimes clogged the main street. Signs hung in the library advertising an upcoming talk on cybersecurity and another discussion on wills — topics seemingly fit for an older generation.

Boquete is still a small Panamanian town. Walmarts and McDonalds have yet to reach the serene valley and Spanish was the language I heard most. But walk down any street, and older Americans are impossible to miss. They're also eager to share how they ended up in Boquete.

Jackie Lange, 70, moved to the town in 2010 to escape the Texas heat.

Kelle Sparta, 54, and her husband, Jeff Brandon, arrived in Boquete in 2022, citing tension and high stress levels from America's political climate.

Mike Hill was ready to retire, but early retirement in California was out of reach. Faced with working until his full Social Security hit at 67, Hill and his wife decided to relocate somewhere cheaper in 2018.

Each expat I spoke with had a different reason for the initial push to move to Boquete, but they all mentioned similar motives for staying. Mild temperatures, the cost of living is cheaper, healthcare is affordable, the economy uses the US dollar, no one talks about politics, and you can get by only speaking English.

Boquete is also home to tour companies showing off the technicolor landscape, grocery stores, and nearby hospitals.

Lange owns one of those companies, Panama Relocation Tours, which takes groups to meet with immigration lawyers to discuss visa options. For many retirees, getting residency in Panama is easy with the pensionado visa, which requires proof of income or a pension of $1,000 a month and an additional $250 for each dependant.

While $1,000 is required, realistically, retirees can comfortably live in Boquete for $1,400 a month as an individual or $2,000 as a couple, Lange said.

That's drastically less than the cheapest US state for retirement. A June analysis by GOBankingRates found that Mississippi had the lowest cost for a comfortable retirement at $62,154 annually, or $5,180 a month. Meanwhile, Americans living in places like California and New York need closer to $100,000 a year for retirement.

Lange estimates that her team helps about 100 people move to Panama monthly. And it's not just Boquete, Panama City and the San Carlos area are also popular retiree destinations in the country.

Cheap living is not so cheap anymore

Dagmar Rios grew up taking family trips to Boquete. "At that time, it was more simple," she told me.

After studying and working in Panama City, Rios, 34, moved to Boquete in 2018. She bought a house and eventually opened her own dentist's office.

Boquete is drastically different from Rios' childhood memories, but she said she's also seen many changes in the town in the six years she's lived there.

"Now, there are more supermarkets. Now, there are more restaurants and hotels," she said.

With these changes, Rios said costs have increased. A few years ago, a person could afford a house with a monthly salary of $600. Rios said her employees tell her that's no longer possible.

Instead, houses are more expensive, targeting foreign buyers with larger budgets.

Jason Cohen, the CEO and owner of the Boquete realty company Casa Solution, said a decade ago, homes in Boquete were priced between $150,000 and $500,000. Today, properties range from $200,000 to $2,000,000.

"As Boquete gained international recognition, and with baby boomers approaching retirement, the allure of living in a foreign country grew," Cohen added. "This, coupled with Panama's economic expansion, led to a dramatic surge in prices from 2002 to 2006."

Panamanians feel these rising costs the most, but some of Boquete's long-term expats also mentioned that the town has become more expensive.

Gabrielle Reynolds, who has lived in Boquete for nine years, told me drinks cost $3 at a popular restaurant two summers ago. Last year, prices went up to $7.

It's still cheaper than a cocktail back home in Los Angeles, she added.

"In LA, people are telling me it's $20 a drink," she said. "I'd have to give up martinis, and don't ask me to do that."

As the owner of three restaurants in Boquete, Chris Young said he's had to balance increasing costs, pleasing customers, and avoiding pricing out Panamanians.

Young moved from the US about 15 years ago and arrived in Boquete with a restaurant background.

"When I got here, there were maybe five restaurants,'" he said. "Now, there's a hundred."

After bouncing around regions and jobs, Young and a friend opened Big Daddy's Grill in Boquete eight years ago. Since then, Young has opened two more restaurants in the town: Christopher's American Bistro and TapOut Sports Zone.

For years, Young said he was able to sell meals for cheap. Recently, that has become increasingly difficult.

While inflation plays a role, he said the country's pensionado discount — a discount on goods and services for retirement-age residents — has impacted profitability in an industry that's hard to stay afloat. At restaurants, older diners get 25% off their bill.

Young said his menus focus on local, typically inexpensive ingredients to keep food costs low. He's also created a tacaño or "cheap" menu at Big Daddy's Grill to appeal to Panamanians and foreigners.

Young and others said the arrival of the expat community has also positively impacted Boquete. The surge of hotels, restaurants, and businesses means more job opportunities for Panamanians.

Rios said she's grateful for the tourism and retirement community in Boquete. About 80% of Rios' patients are foreigners, and those patients are partly why her Odonto Smile Clinic has grown from two employees to an office with two doctors, four assistants, and three specialists.

Before the retirees came, Laws worked in coffee fields, making $5 daily. "I came from the bottom of the bottom," he said.

Now, Laws runs a successful tour company where he spends his days showing off his beautiful home.

"I love to live around the retirees. I love business. I love to talk to the tourists," he said. "I want to live the rest of my life in Boquete."

Ditching the American rat race

The Americans I spoke to also plan to live the rest of their lives in Boquete, and they said it's their job to integrate into the town's community and culture — not the other way around.

Hill, for example, enrolled in Spanish classes after arriving in Boquete to better communicate with locals. Reynolds, who helps run Boquete Community Players, said she's always searching for ways to include the Panamanian community in the theater group.

One of the biggest challenges Lange has seen with retirees is shifting from America's intense work culture to Boquete's quiet and relaxed pace.

"Panama is not right for everybody," Lange said. "Some people, it's too different from what they're used to. There's no Walmart down the street."

While some struggle with the change of pace, others love it. Christopher Minori, 58, remembers moving to Boquete with his wife, Brandy Minori, in 2021 and being shocked by how friendly and stress-free everyone seemed. It was a complete 180 from his life back in Georgia.

"It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on in the States; half of the country hates the other half," he told me over the phone. "It was, to me, stressful."

That wasn't the case for Panama. "It's a very, very mellow country, which is actually hard to get used to when you first move," he said.

Once he accepted small changes — like needing to ask a waiter for more water or understanding that a driver might stop in the middle of the road to chat with a neighbor — he fell in love with the town.

I heard about Panamians' friendly and carefree attitude from every expat, and I witnessed it during my first afternoon in Boquete. After touring a coffee farm, the owners didn't call me a taxi to my hotel — they drove me there themselves.

While the expats ditched America's rat race, they said it hasn't led to boredom. Retirees no longer fill their days with work they're unhappy with or stress over finances. Instead, they've found community and joy in Boquete.

Sparta, who continues to run a business as a spiritual coach, pulled up her calendar to show me events every evening in Boquete. Theater practice, karaoke, bingo, and volunteering pack her schedule.

Hill, who spends his days fishing, working with the Boquete Community Players, writing novels, learning the saxophone, and volunteering with local schools, agreed. "I'm retired, but I'm busier than ever," he said.

Reynolds said between their busy days, she and her husband spend each morning sipping coffee and soaking in mountain views from their home. In the evening, she swaps coffee for cocktails and enjoys the sunset.

"We say this to each other almost every night, "Could it get better?'" she said. "I don't think it could be better than this."