Costa Rica vs Panama

To my knowledge there is no one here who has lived in both places. I looked at Panama as a place to live and I did not like the widespread police presence, border guards posted here and there along roads with automatic weapons (one of them threatened my friend and I for a bribe), and the nature I saw there was more like "off the road, over there" as opposed to here in Costa Rica where it is everywhere, not divided up and separated. More like in the USA for the most part: "the nature is over there, fenced in..."

Aside from the ahole border guard, the people seemed friendly enough. I went to Volcan where a lot of expats go and I thought "Who would want to live here?" Cold and windy. Maybe we went on a bad day.

On the plus side, things are cheaper there and they have good roads.

I wasn't going to respond to this question, since we 'didn't' live in Panama' however we did look at it and Belize as well, plus some Caribbean countries too...but decided on Costa Rica.

Would I chose CR again? I really don't know...