Who Can You Trust?

I have been a world traveler for 20 some odd years now. And although my kids are still living in my home, leaving the cap off the toothpaste and putting a dent in the odd quarter panel of my car, lately I find myself daydreaming about aa time when this isn't my daily grind. About a lovely home on a lovely beach near a lovely village in the Caribbean....somewhere.

And maybe now is the time to try to find this place. But the question is where. And who can help me? And whom can I trust?

One day, several weeks ago, I was surfing this daydream when the voices started. Someone in my house was calling "Mom! The dog messed on the carpet in the living room again!" and someone else was hollering "Where are my shoes, WHERE ARE my shoes, WHERE ARE MY shoes!" and another distressed voice bellowed "HEY, my car is stuck in the snow bank at the end of the driveway". ButI was somewhere else completely.

I was on a beach. The warm salt breeze was blowing back my tussled curls and the smell of frangipani was wafting in the air. The warm Caribbean waters were tickling my toes as I strolled in the sunshine. I was retired on the beach.

I found a website called Tropical Pathways http://www.tropicalpathways.com/ which offers real estate and investment tours to Panama, Dominican Republic, Roatan, Mayan Rivera, and Belize. So I picked up the phone and called Lyle Burke.

He was just the voice I’d hoped for, warm, friendly, but also sensible and knowledgeable. He sent me off with lots of information, but also with the tools to do some research about his company. I found that Escape Artist did an article about them http://www.escapeartist.com/ . They said

"Tropical Pathways is a tour company geared to helping wanabe expats find their place in the sun. It's an intelligent way of seeing a country along with professionals who knows the territory. It's a perfect way to avoid taking the wrong path to the wrong spot and wasting time. A tour from someone who knows the ground prepares the tour-taker to explore further on their own with an invaluable base of knowledge."

Also, Tropical Pathways was featured in USA Today http://www.USATODAY.com/
“Tour operators tout their ability to vet developers, agents, lawyers and the like, on behalf of newcomers clueless to the ways things work in foreign lands. “I’ve had people who said they learned more in one week from Tropical Pathways than it would take them a month to learn on their own” says Lyle Burke, who founded Tropical Pathways Tours six years ago. Panama is supplanting Costa Rica as the Central American country where retired North Americans are seeking their place in the sun… “

And the New York Times Financial News http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/ said this of Tropical Pathways:

"For most people, the annual holiday involves deepening their tan or enhancing their golf swing. For some, though, it means smartening up their investment portfolio... Tropical Pathways Investment Tours takes visitors to see properties in Panama, the Caribbean island of Roatan the Dominican Republic, and Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The tours - attract private individuals aiming to invest in second homes and retirement properties, or even wanting to develop resort businesses…these tours are growing in popularity..." "For most people, the annual holiday involves deepening their tan or enhancing their golf swing. For some, though, it means smartening up their investment portfolio... Tropical Pathways Investment Tours takes visitors to see properties in Panama, the Caribbean island of Roatan the Dominican Republic, and Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The tours - attract private individuals aiming to invest in second homes and retirement properties, or even wanting to develop resort businesses…these tours are growing in popularity..." "For most people, the annual holiday involves deepening their tan or enhancing their golf swing. For some, though, it means smartening up their investment portfolio... Tropical Pathways Investment Tours takes visitors to see properties in Panama, the Caribbean island of Roatan the Dominican Republic, and Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The tours - attract private individuals aiming to invest in second homes and retirement properties, or even wanting to develop resort businesses…these tours are growing in popularity..."

And for a moment I was transported to my future. To the beach, to the sun, to the toothpaste tube neatly in the drawer with the cap on and no need for shoes or a quarter panel of any sort. I was home.

Lyle offers educational tours to Caribbean destinations for people like me, people looking to learn more about how to capture this dream. His testimonials are impressive; not a high pressure sales pitch, but an educational seminar on how to make this dream a reality.