For the fifth year in a row, Panama has taken top honors in our Annual Global Retirement Index. It comes out on top in every category, including the Special Benefits (for retirees) category, boasting the world’s best pensionado program, better than the famed Costa Rica program of the 1980s. Plus it boasts a low cost of living, affordable real estate, great weather in the interior, and, extraordinary and unique in this part of the world, First World Panama City, with infrastructure that works, U.S-style shopping malls, nightclubs, restaurants, cafes…even Dunkin Donuts and The Colonel’s fried chicken.

Consideration for others, not just foreigners, is a tradition in this country. Ruled successively by the Portuguese, Dutch, and British for five centuries, “Malaya” became independent in 1957 and renamed itself Malaysia. Nature has been kind here.

Granada was the final city to be recaptured from the Moors by the Catholic forces of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. It is home to the Alhambra, Granada’s famous rose-red citadel.