A Blog I Like, From San Miguel de Allende

There's sometimes a bit of rivalry between the Lake Chapala area and San Miguel de Allende, in terms of which is better as a place for foreigners to live, but I think it depends on many intangible factors. We have more rain and lower real estate prices. They have one city where we are a series of towns along the north shore of the lake. I guess they have more art.

But all of us foreigners in these two places have ample opportunities to get to know Mexico and Mexicans -- yes, even in Gringolandia!

Here's a blog that I enjoy: http://mexicowoods.com/

There are a lot of other good blogs from San Miguel, too.

Chatting with a Long-Time Expat

The other day I had the chance to visit briefly with an American man who has lived in Mexico for over ten years. I asked him if he had any tips for adjusting to this very different culture.

He had a rather Buddhist attitude, I thought. He commented that Mexico gives us plenty of opportunities to practice patience!

Along that line, he pointed out that some things  can take one person a very short time and another person a very long time. Or you can have both experiences at different times. Anyone who has waited for something to be delivered, as we did for the past couple of days, will resonate with this.

Then this guy told me a joke:

A Mexican dog and an American dog were chatting at the border fence. The Mexican dog said, "Gee, you have it great! You never go hungry, your people take care of you, you have a nice soft bed... could you get me into the US too?

"I suppose I could," said the American dog. "I bet we could find an easy place to dig under the fence. But if we do, I'm coming in to Mexico to stay."

"Why?" asked the Mexican dog, astonished.

"Because you can bark."

This joke is not just about dogs.

Moving SOUTH for Better Economic Conditions?

I was surprised to get a comment on one of my older blog posts which included, in part, this comment:

My husband, a Mexico native, and I soon plan to move to Mexico...Our decision was based largely on the steady decline of the US economy as well as the family ties.

Well, I thought that was pretty interesting. I can easily understand a Mexican bringing his American wife and in this case two young children to Mexico because of family. After living here for a while, I've found myself treasuring my own far-flung family a lot more and staying in closer touch with quite a few of them. Family is so central to life and survival here, that it seems natural to me that a Mexican would want to be with family, all the more so if the economy doesn't look good.

What I found interesting was that they considered the US economy to be declining to the degree that they felt their work life would be better south of the border. Mexicans, whether with or without papers, work at a wide variety of jobs up north. I have no idea what the immigration status of this particular Mexican is, but certainly people with papers have a wider range of options in the US.

It's not that I have had my head in the sand for the past while. Yep, I've been following the news. I know what's happening in real estate and with gas prices. With food prices. With jobs.

I've been noticing that every time we use an ATM we get fewer pesos for our dollars... the peso, at about 10.2 pesos to the dollar, is at a five-year high relative to the dollar. A lot of the time we have been here, it's been about 10.7 pesos to the dollar. That's quite a change.

I guess we get so used to one idea that when things change, our mental images may take a while to catch up. (Or in some cases, they never do. But I like to think I'm flexible!) So with a mental map that includes gazillions of Mexicans going north to search for a better life, this one little fact of one little family going south for the same reason stands out. And makes me think.

Would You Retire to the Mexican Coast or Inland and Higher?

We had such a good time in Sayulita recently that we can really see how people love to go there. Sayulita is up the coast a ways from Puerto Vallarta, and right on the beach.

But would we want to live there permanently? No, thanks, and here is why:

• We are much happier at over five thousand feet elevation here at Lake Chapala, as the climate is more comfortable. It was quite muggy when we were at the coast, though admittedly July through September is said to be the worst time of year for heat there. Our worst heat is March to May, and it is dry heat, much easier to take.
• We like being tucked in between mountains that take a lot of the bite out of Pacific hurricanes. Sure, we can get a lot of wind and rain -- this month, we have already had all of the nine inches that are the average July total. But hurricanes on the coast can do a lot of damage, and if the ocean level does rise even a little, it wouldn't take much to devastate a lot of beachfront.
• Our Lake Chapala area is more economical, at least in real estate. While Kelly's sister Alexandra was here, we were trying to get her interested in living here. I don't know if she ever will, but she did get a sense that she could find a nice rental in Ajijic that would suit her (and she has very good taste) for $400 to $600 a month. In Sayulita, it seemed that very few were available and that the prices might be as much as double what they are here.

This area and Sayulita are probably pretty comparable in terms of ease of access when flying in or out. The Guadalajara airport is about an hour's drive from our house, on this side of the city. I don't know exactly how far the Puerto Vallarta airport is from Sayulita, but it's not too far either.

I would give both the two areas top marks in terms of shopping, culture, access to really good medical care in the nearby cities, etc. With an edge to Guadalajara there.

Readers, if you have opinions on coast-vs-highlands, or related topics, please chime in!

Overlooking the Ocean at Sayulita

When we were in Sayulita recently, we stayed at Casa Carricitos overlooking the ocean... that link takes you to the page with rental information and pictures of the attractive interior of the house. We were so entranced with the out-of-doors that we never got around to taking pictures inside!

You can barely make out the house on the hillside, its flat roof showing. My sister-in-law Alexandra is enjoying the little-used beach just a short walk from the house.

The 180-degree ocean view from the terrace was the focal point of our time there. Here, Alexandra is flanked by friends Leslie and Nancy.

Guess it's pretty obvious that my husband Kelly and Alexandra are brother and sister!

Kelly kept his camera handy. Here, one of the countless land crabs is eating a flower. We loved the faces on the land crabs -- you can see the two eyes -- and since they would come into the house, we also appreciated that they tended to scurry away from us! 

But his biggest coup in the nature photography vein was getting the second of these pictures, as the lizard only showed that colorful bit for a quick moment:

The sunset went on for hours:

Many thanks to the owners of Casa Carricitos, Adele and Michael, for the gift of our stay there... they are friends of Alexandra's. We all had a wonderful, restorative time. And I didn't think I needed a vacation!

A Walk Around Sayulita

Kelly's sister Alexandra has been visiting us recently, and she has quite a few friends in the charming small town of Sayulita, which is on the Pacific coast, not too far from Puerto Vallarta. So we took off for a few days.

I'll do another article about the beautiful place we stayed. But first, here are scenes from a walk we took on our first morning. These two young women were working at a coffee bar where we got lattes. It was part of an outdoor restaurant where we had breakfast. Here are Kelly and Alexandra, smiling even though it's before their morning coffees:

I greatly enjoyed watching the rest of the clientele, as there were many young American couples, probably in Sayulita for the surfing. We don't see enough young Americans around Lake Chapala!

Wandering through the downtown after breakfast, we saw surf shops, plenty of boutiques and crafts stores, and many little restaurants.  I had read on the internet that there was a bookstore with books in English, and we set out to find it. A sudden rain came up, so we got a bit damp, but in the heat we felt refreshed. As for the bookstore, either it was closed for the off season, closed period, or we just didn't find it.

This hillside was a bit north (if I wasn't turned around) of downtown, and gives a hint of the lush tropical setting, with homes interspersed. We chatted with a young real estate salesman who said house prices were comparable to San Francisco, California, and that they had pretty much doubled in the past year. I picked up some free real estate magazines and saw that prices were way higher than around Lake Chapala. The fellow also said that people for whom Puerto Vallarta is too expensive are coming here.

This fish store had finished sales for the day and they must have scrubbed the counter, as this fellow was relaxing and watching TV. I asked his permission and Kelly got this photo:

Alexandra and I did some shopping, with Kelly browsing a bit too. I was delighted to find a small wooden heart covered with milagros (miracles), which are tiny metal shapes of arms, legs, hearts, and other body parts as well as animals -- you see them in churches and shrines around  Mexico where someone is asking for a healing or giving thanks for one. Here, I am discussing this with the young saleswoman. I had asked her in Spanish if they were real milagros attached to the heart, and she was astonished. "How do you know about milagros?" she asked, also in Spanish. I told her we had had the opportunity to travel in many parts of Mexico and had seen them many times.  I had another conversation in that same store. A different young woman was at the cashier's desk, and she was wearing a bright pink t-shirt which said in English, "Too Many Social Engagements, Too Little Time!" I asked her, again in Spanish, if she knew what her shirt said, and she had no idea. My rough translation was "Tantas Cosas Divertidas Que Hacer, Tan Poco Tiempo!" and she got a kick out of it, thanking me several times for telling her. I wondered to myself how many other foreigners had seen the shirt and not thought to tell her its meaning or had not had the Spanish to do so. It is so easy, and so rewarding, to chat with Mexicans, and in a place like this many of them speak some English.

On the edge of downtown, we walked past a store that was closed while the walls were being painted. These things were piled on a table in the middle of the room. I like the surreal quality that the rain-splotched window and the reflections of plants across the street gave to the pile, specially since we had been chatting the night before about how surrealism is an essential part of Mexican culture.