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Banned
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Originally Posted by Elphaba
Please explain what you mean by this. (It is my intention to move to Mexico and from what I have read differs from your statement). Thanks.
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pssst....Elphaba, <a href="http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/chreares.html">this is where</a> the "rest of us" are headed....(we are concerned about the prospects for the water and pollution level in the lake, but it's doing better since the rains returned....)
The bold print, in "Poorsouls" post sez it all.....and...if you're near retirement or you have some wealth to sustain you....
Quote:
http://www.prudentbear.com/bearschat...snsa=A#M383310
RE: What part of Mexico? PoorSoul
At present, I am living in Ajijic (about 45 minutes south of Guadalajara and on the shores of Mexico's largest lake, Lake Chapala), home of about 15,000 retired Gringos and Canucks.
In my seven years in Mexico, I have basically spent half the time in the Lake Chapala area and half the time in Mazatlan, on the Pacific Coast.
I prefer Mazatlan, but it is very hot and humid there from June through October. Lake Chapala is in the mountains, elevation about 5,000 feet, and has an excellent year-around climate.
On the downside, there are just too many friggin' old expats here in Ajijic - also known as Gringoville and God's Waiting Room.
I came to Mexico for the climate and cost of living. But I quickly realized that there is a third reason I to move here from Canada or the U.S. - <b>there is more laughing out loud in Mexico than you will hear in a month up north.</b>
Also, the "family values" are REAL here, not just some slogan from the religious right.
Final point: During the first three and a half years in Mexico, I could get about six pesos for the Canuck buck. Now the loonie is worth about nine pesos. That means my nest-egg (from selling a mortgage-free house, plus a hefty registered retirement savings plan, plus a six-figure buyout from the newspaper (boneyard of broken dreams) where I used to toil IS NOW WORTH FIFTY PERCENT MORE THAN WHEN I MOVED HERE.
Lovin' the simple life here, amigos.
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Fred made the leap......
Quote:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm
<b>Fred's House</b>
March 9, 2006
Ha! Vi and I just closed on a house in Jocotepec, the only remaining Mexican town on the north shore of Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara. We’re going to call it The Pancho Villa. It has a big ratty-looking walled-in yard with gynormous twisted orange trees, probably planted by Methuselah’s granddaddy, that drop oranges all over the place without regard to environmental piety. Flowers erupt everywhere, never asking permission. It’s wonderful. I hate trimmed gardens. They remind me of the kind of over-organized desk that I associate with compulsive hand-washers.
On top is a mirador, which means a concrete place like a tennis court that lost its net. You can sit up there in the wind and sun and watch large brown mountains lolling about. Or you can fall off it. We’re going to put in a railing, though. You can also watch sunsets, which are showy hereabouts, or thunderstorms and get electrocuted.
The Pancho Villa is in almost the last street of houses short of the mountains so in the mornings you hear roosters propositioning hens. Burros yell “Eeeeeeeeeeeee-honk!” like hairy saxophones. If you want a burro here, you just get one and put it where you think it ought to be. You don’t need a rabies card, farm-animal zoning, and a federal license saying that you know how to operate a burro.
The lady from whom we bought it (and she is a lady, in the almost-forgotten sense of the word) is an Englishwoman of the generation that fought WWII. They don’t make those any longer, but ought to. Since the furnishings come with the house, it was great to find that her taste was also our taste. Maybe it feels like home to me because I grew up on Kipling and Alice and suchlike British tales.
Now, I get mail saying, “What’s it like to live in Mexico, Fred? Isn’t it full of, you know, deadly viruses?” Well, yes, but they’re optional. If you buy a little plastic bucket of yogurt, an envelope comes with it that says, “Deadly Viruses.” You don’t have to eat them. You can give them to a passing child.
Anyway, life in Messico. The country still works on a distributed paradiggem. That means that if you want a quart of milk, you walk a block to where there’s a little Pedro-and-Maria store that probably used to be a living room and now it’s a store. If you want a donut, you walk two blocks in another direction to the bread shop. You tell Conchis that you want two of those gre-t-t big ones with clumps of maple sugar or something on top and you chat with her a bit because that’s how it’s done. Then you go back home and chomp on them.
See, it’s because Mexico is still primitive. Pretty soon it will get modern. Then it will have a shopping center three miles out of town with a Mall-Wart that will close down all the little shops in Joco. Then you will drive fifteen minutes, fight other angry unhappy people for a parking spot, and save seven cents on your donut. And maybe die on the way back, trying to eat a donut while using a cell phone. (Every cloud….)
We’ve all heard old guys talking about how great it was to live in little towns out of Norman Rockwell (or, as I guess it would be here, Piedrapozo). Well, it was great. Not too dynamic maybe, but especially swell for kids. A lot of Mexico is still like that. In the US the most important things are efficiency and making money, which is why it is real efficient and has lots of money and all sorts of technology. There is a definite upside to money.
Mexico isn’t so hot at any of those things, but it has a certain livability to it. It’s more personal. Most parents recognize their children on sight, people know each other, and towns go in for huge seething festivals for their patron saints, or because it’s Easter, or maybe just Wednesday. A Mexican doesn’t need much prodding to launch a fiesta. In Joco on fiesta nights the plaza is so jammed that it takes twenty minutes to cross it. You’ve got three bands going at once and kids on dad’s shoulders and fireworks fizzing and whirling on tall wicker castillos. Most of it would be illegal up north. So would everything else, though. Consistency is a Nordic virtue, much overrated. There has to be a reason why intelligent people want to live with so many rules, but I don't know what it is....
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There are better places for American's to reside, than we allow ourselves to consider... |