Washington couple thinking of Mexican retirement

Bill Jones sent me this email, with permission to post it, just before we returned to the US for a month. Sorry for the wait, Bill!

Question: Love your web site/the blogs/we are retired and live on an island near Tacoma, Washington. High taxes/ rainy weather have us ready to move. Wife says Mexico, I say maybe. Cheaper, better weather for sure. Friends say Chapala area, others have told us of Queretaro. I grew up in Miami, so the tropical area sounds great, so does San Miguel/I paint/ but pricey. We both worked for airlines that went bankrupt, so the budget is tight. Don't want to be in a walled-in all american compound. Any ideas/ thanks.

One thing extra, we will have to sell the house here, and house prices are high, so we will have a good bit of cash, but only social security for income and investment money. we plan to rent for 6/12 months and see if like the area.

Kelly and I lived in Olympia, WA, not so far from where Bill and his wife are, for several years. I found the short rain-filled days during the winter quite depressing. The rain here near Lake Chapala doesn't get to me nearly as much... partly because there is a lot less of it in an average year.

San Miguel is drier than here, as is the city of Queretaro. None of these places are tropical in the way that Miami is, as the Lake Chapala area is at 5000 feet and the other two cities are even higher. There are sea-level places you could consider. In fact, there are lots of places in Mexico you could consider!

The places that have "walled-in American compounds" also have more Mexican areas where you can live. Even in areas that are expensive, if you are willing to live a ways away from the center of foreign activities, prices drop.

My suggestion to Bill and his wife would be to make a trip down here. It can be done relatively economically, either getting a cheap flight out of Seattle or driving down. Once in Mexico, come to these areas with a Lonely Planet or other guidebook, stay in the modestly priced hotels, take the excellent long-distance buses between cities if you flew, and just get a feeling about whether you would want to live here. There are so many intangibles in another country that just can't be conveyed online.

Bill didn't mention if they'd been to Mexico before or if they know any Spanish.

So those are a few ideas. I think it's a really good idea to rent for a while, or even permanently. As I've mentioned before, in Mexico you can often rent a house at a much lower price in relation to the price it would sell for than you can up north.

Around our Mexican yard near Lake Chapala

This afternoon, I wandered around our yard for a while with my camera. With all the rain, we don't have to water and there are flowers everywhere. (Actually, there have been flowers everywhere since we moved here in February, but they are especially plentiful now.)

Here you can see the green hills behind our house:


Our dog Larry lounges in front of the house. (Often, we lounge in that very comfortable hammock chair. I take my early morning tea out there... it just seems to make the day go better. I specially like the days when I'm out there just as it gets light, something before 7 AM.)


Here's a young banana tree coming up through a huge patch of wandering jew in the back left with geraniums in front:

Green mountains by Lake Chapala

It's all very lush around here from the rains, and the green is a delight to the eyes. Kelly went for a Sunday-afternoon hike up in the hills the other day with his camera. Here is a family working in their milpa, or cornfield, with everyone helping to weed:


This wild ground cover is mesmerizing, shot from directly over it:


And this lovely spot shows the growth. Much of the greenery is trees.

Hot where you live? Come to Lake Chapala!

With record-breaking heat waves across the US lately, and California currently sweltering, I wonder how many Americans realize that it's way cooler here in Mexico in the summertime. Not, of course, in every part of Mexico, but here at 5000 feet and with the rainy season in full sway, it's downright cool here.

Today both Kelly and I pulled out warm clothes, as it's been raining steadily much of the day and we have yet to see the sun. I'm wearing jeans and a turtleneck and had a sweatshirt on all morning. He's got on a corduroy shirt over a long-sleeved cotton one, as well as his usual slacks. We have added an extra blanket to the bed.

Last week there was a lull in the rains, and it did get hot in the middle of the days. But since last Thursday, it's rained part of every day and/or night, and it's been in the high 60s and low 70s here at our place.

This area has a reputation for the rain happening in the late afternoons and evenings. Not only then, not this year! But I'm not complaining. After experiencing drought in Colorado, I'm happy to be soggy in San Juan Cosala.

Renewing our FM 3 visas

Last year, it took us six or seven trips to Queretaro, from the town of Bernal where we were living, to get our FM-3 Mexican residence visas. They need to be renewed annually, and as the time approached this year, I was reluctant to go through anything like that again. People say that renewals are easier, but we would be changing locations in Mexico and having to provide paperwork to prove that we had bought our house. The amount of income you need to prove is a Kafkaesque number, a bit hard to pin down, but it is said to be cut in half or so if you own a home.

Here in the Lake Chapala area, foreigners often do their renewals on Wednesday mornings in the small city of Chapala. An American friend here on a tourist visa told of waiting and waiting to apply for a renewal while other foreigners waltzed in with the scraps of paper with numbers they had saved from the previous week, and effectively cut in line ahead of her. I wasn't eager to go there myself, though at least it would be a much shorter trip than last year.

There are Mexican attorneys lakeside who handle such matters, and we ended up working with Azucena Bateman Campos, who was a delight to work with. (She's in the law office on the west side of Colon in Ajijic, just up a bit from the central plaza, Legal & Immigration Services at Colón # 41-A, and everyone in the office is great!) She knew just what papers were needed to show our financial worthiness, and it wasn't what I would have thought. Because she does so much of this kind of work, she goes to Guadalajara several times a week, as the immigration office there is open Monday through Friday.

As it turned out, she was well worth her reasonable fees. The unexpected snag we ran into was that last year, in order to qualify for showing less income, I had been listed as a dependent of Kelly's. The Queretaro office of the Migra, as it's called, had required that they receive a copy of our marriage certificate, apostilled and translated into Spanish, by July of last year. We had had the documents sent to a woman translator in Queretaro we became friendly with, and she had evidently submitted them, as when we saw her this year, she gave us copies. But neither she nor we noticed that she didn't give us hard and fast proof from the Queretaro office that these papers had been turned in and on time.

So the Guadalajara office socked me with a daily fine for not having turned in the papers until the day that our attorney here, Azucena, did again. It came to about $90 US. Azucena said that generally her office doesn't recommend going the dependent route because of possible hassles like this. Live and learn.

We picked up our renewed FM 3 visas from her just a day before we had to fly to the US because Kelly's mother had died. I'm sure there would have been a creative Mexican way that we could have gone out of the country and back in again without them, but it was nice not to have to learn it!

Why a local gardener prefers life in Mexico

Yesterday I got to chatting with a gardener here in the Lake Chapala area. He spoke some English, and so I asked him if he had worked in the United States. Yes, he had, and the priest at the Catholic church he attended there had arranged English lessons for many of the Mexican workers. Despite working long hours, he went to class two nights a week.

But he hadn't liked the US much. He had encountered racism and many difficulties. I asked where he had been, and he said Palo Alto. Well, I graduated from Stanford and I remembered seeing an article in the alumni magazine about grad students sleeping in their cars and doing everything else in the campus facilities, due to the extremely high cost of housing there. So I asked this guy about that. Yes, he said, he was one of sixteen migrant workers who shared a one-bathroom apartment. He grimaced at the memory.

Worst of all, he said, was how much he missed his family here. After working in the US for about three years, one day just before Christmas, it got to him. He took a bus ride back home and has been happy to be here ever since.

Bugs in Mexico, and I don't mean VWs or computers

Ah, the tropics! Glorious sunsets seen through the graceful fronds of palm trees, deliciously warm weather you can gloat about while friends up north are huddling in their homes, freshly picked papayas for breakfast...

And bugs.

Nature is prolific and we have seen quite a variety of spiders, scorpions, mosquitoes, wasps, leaf-cutter ants, and other creepy crawlies and little flying things.

There are the bobos who form clouds of dozens to thousands at dusk. They are not very interested in us but it can be hard to walk through a group of them without inhaling a few. I've developed a hold-my-breath method, and now that the rains have begun, there are fewer bobos around. There is now a sort of flying ant we hadn't seen before, but in much smaller numbers.

The first times I used our swimming pool, I was intimidated by the huge wasps, a lovely golden color, who regularly took drinks from the pool. Then I noticed that they actually avoided me. Now we coexist okay. I've also learned to be relatively nonchalant about the many tiny ants and other little critters that cross my desk, dining table, or toe.

Here in the Lake Chapala area, we are at about 5000 feet and the mosquito situation is nowhere near as bad as I've found it to be at sea level. When we stayed at a beach resort on the Gulf of Mexico, my legs were immediately polka dotted. But even here, now that the rains have begun, there are enough mosquitoes to cause trouble sometimes. They are quiet little devils, so we often don't know we've been bitten till later.

If you're thinking of retiring or living in Mexico or in some other tropical haven, just expect that you will have to come to terms with insects and other such beings. We've chosen to use a spray around the doors and windows of the house to keep out the scorpions and monster spiders, and we got it from a veterinarian who said it was nontoxic to cats and dogs, once it dried. (I don't remember its name.) Kelly has used a spray can of Raid very judiciously, to kill a nest of wasps after he'd experienced the pain of their bites and to deter some leaf-cutter ants on the march.

I wear a long-sleeved shirt impregnated with something called Buzz-Off, based on pyrethrin, and it seems to cut down on my mosquito bites. (You can google Buzz-Off and find a lot of clothing products that have it. I practically lived in the shirt in Idaho last month.)

Ah, the tropics! Tranquil and teeming...

Cheerful (sometimes garish) colors in Mexico

What is it about Mexico that brings out the love of bright colors in people? I don't know the history, but here are a couple of results. This picture was taken at a toll booth for a cuota highway.


And here's a motel we stayed in. Orange, a peachy color, and yellow are so common in Mexico that I designed my website to use them... softer tones than these walls!


The motel room was mercifully more subdued in tones. This is the nicer room I blogged about, when I was telling of the places we stayed with our cat on the way south.

Theft Happens

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog entry about theft in Mexico.

It was all very dispassionate, and one of my main points was that crimes are more likely to be against property than physical violence against people.

Well, some Americans we've met had their laptops stolen from their home on a weekend afternoon while they were out. This is theft against property, but it has had far-reaching emotional implications for them. They lost the computers with some valuable files, but they also lost the feeling of being safe at home in the condo they live in. The thief came in via a locked window without bars on it, and their landlord has paid someone to put bars on. But, in a manner so common here, it's been several weeks and the work hasn't been done yet. People have told this couple that sometimes thieves wait a while and then return to places where they've been successful. Disquieting. It's not the only story of this sort we have heard lately.

Theft happens. How does this compare with the US? It depends on where in the US you are thinking of, I suppose.

Loving the Mexican downpours!

It's the rainy season around Lake Chapala now, and we are loving it... mostly. People say that it usually rains just in the evening and night, and we are noticing that pattern, at least a couple of days a week. The other day, it poured hard one morning when we were working at our computers. We are grateful that our electricity is no longer going out every time it rains, as it was for months. The temperature dropped, and I put on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt instead of the culottes and tshirt I'd been wearing. Our view of the lake disappeared completely into grayness. I took a few photos and learned that it is hard to get a picture of rain. Here's one where you can see the columns of water pouring off the veranda roof.



As I took that picture, I discovered that the floor of the veranda was puddled with places where the water was coming through the tile roof. Kelly put thumbtacks in the main places where the leaks were, and intends to do something about fixing them:

The Mexican Presidential Election

Kelly and I have been following the news of the Mexican presidential election pretty closely. Here's an article that fills in a lot of information I wasn't familiar with:

http://www.alternet.org/story/38727/

and here's a blog in English that I have bookmarked:

http://machete2006.wordpress.com/

I received one email asking my opinion. I'm an observer on this one.

Being back home in Mexico

It's good to be back. It would be good to be home after a month's trip no matter where home might be, but since it's the lakeside (Lake Chapala) area of Mexico, there are special joys. We had heard that it had been raining every couple of days, more or less, during June, and things are so lush now, it's great.

We started noticing the greenness a few hours north of here, as we zipped along Mexico's extensive system of cuota (toll) roads. The hills were greener; some of the crops in the fields were emerald green. It made us wonder what home would look like.

It was green before, due to watering, but our housesitter did little or no watering and things are growing like crazy. Kelly had planted a little vegetable garden just before we left, and we've been eating lettuce and radishes from it. The trimming we had done to several trees to increase our lake view will need redoing soon.

We lost a papaya tree, but that didn't surprise us. It had produced several large papayas this spring with almost no leaves. It toppled in a windstorm, and the top of another papaya tree broke off, also storm damage. That one is full of life and is sprouting little shoots. A banana tree is down. Leaf-cutter ants have been on the march in a new area of the yard, denuding plants.

The climate is so nice! I don't know how many times people asked us if it was hot in Mexico, but it's actually more pleasant here than it was in Idaho and Colorado. There's more humidity and more cloudiness than when we left, and it's generally a little cooler. Temperatures seem to be in the high 70s and low 80s a lot.

Kelly's calling me to our first barbeque since we got back... and no, I'm not going to take my camera outside this time!

Driving through Mexico with a cat

We got back to our Mexican home yesterday, Kelly, me, and and Moonlight, our six-year-old half-Siamese cat from Colorado. I'll be writing more about how it feels to be back soon. This entry is about travel with cats.

I've never had to find accomodations for a cat before, in any country. In the US, Motel 6 accepts pets and we stayed in one in Deming, NM, one night. The next morning was taken up with crossing into Mexico, then waiting our turn and eventually getting our car permit for the 2003 VW Jetta we recently bought. It was after noon by the time we were done with formalities. We had veterinary papers for the cat, and his shots were current. It turned out that no border official noticed him or asked us anything much. Some Mexican friends who took a cat to the US for a year had essentially the same experience entering the US... their papers were checked, but not the cat's!

Moonlight was in a spacious cat carrier in the back seat. The first day or two, we had a small litterbox in there, but he didn't use it, so we stopped putting it in his crate, and he could stretch out better. He seemed fine with that arrangement. We offered him water from time to time as we traveled, but he always refused it. He did his eating, drinking, and pottying once we stopped for the night.

He didn't exactly like the trip, but only part of the time did he seem frightened, often when there were noises around. Speaking of noise, I wondered if we would be listening to his very Siamesy voice for miles and miles, but mostly he was quiet in the car. We were concerned about him being cool enough when we stopped for meals, but rarely could we find any shade to park in. Our car has numerous safety devices, and we were frustrated that we couldn't lock it with the motor on and the air conditioning running. Generally, through New Mexico and northern Mexico, the weather was quite hot and dry.

In each place we stopped for the night, Moonlight's method was to find the place he felt safest -- under the bed or whatever -- and use that as a home base. He slept on the bed curled up next to me most of the time each night.

I knew from other Americans who have traveled with pets in Mexico that you just never know which places will accept pets. It's very rare for Mexicans to travel with them. Our first day in Mexico, we stopped a ways south of the big city of Chihuahua, capitol of the state of the same name. It was around seven in the evening, and we were tired. An okay-looking roadside hotel with a restaurant caught our eyes, and we stopped. I went in to the hot restaurant/office and asked, and the lady said no. She said that they had lots of perritos, or small dogs, who would chase the cat. I explained that the cat was in a crate and traveled with his own bathroom. He would not be running loose. She relented, and a very kind man with a speech impediment and awkward gait showed me a tiny room. (Never did figure out what was the matter with him, but he was a sweetheart.) Seven dogs followed us back from the car to the room. They were nice too.

The room was on the dismal side, but the mattress seemed okay and there was an air conditioner, which the man turned on. I wasn't thrilled but driving on offered no guarantees. Kelly looked at the room too and we went ahead and took it.

Staying there turned out to be an experience of old Mexico -- not the quaint Olde Mexico of the travel posters, but the Funky Mexico I experienced years ago. Once we got ourselves and Moonlight into the room, the cat immediately discovered an area under the bathroom sink which had a lot of dead bugs and other debris in it. He staked that out as his safe place until I smelled the insecticide odor, pulled him out, and blocked off the entrance with some of our luggage.

Other "old Mexico" features included the toilet shaking every time we sat on it, the shower not having hot water and not having any water in the morning after I flushed the toilet, the TV getting three scratchy channels, and the air conditioner sounding like a jet about to take off. We started off with the air conditioner on, which added a cool breeze over us to heat being radiated by the bed and the walls. Kelly turned it off in the night, and we slept pretty well till around four in the morning, when Moonlight began wandering around and meowing steadily. He settled down again about an hour later.

The next day, we were pretty tired and stopped earlier in the afternoon, in the small city of Rio Grande, north of Zacatecas. It took three tries before we found a motel that accepted Moonlight. The room was much nicer, for the same price ($30 US), and all three of us had a better night there.

Our last day on the road got us home around six in the evening. I'll write another time about introducing one cat to another, but I must say I am very impressed with a product called Feliway, which made our trip much easier. It's a spray bottle of artifical cat pheromones. You hardly have to use any of it to mellow out a cat. Used originally to combat cats not using their litter box, it really seemed to help Moonlight accept the vagaries of travel. We got it from a site called Catfaeries, but it's widely available.