Travel, live, and retire in Mexico!

You're in the part of the site where an online book
tells the story of some of our travels.

with
Rosana Hart

14. Back in the USA

We spent our first night in the United States with friends who live right near the border. Our far-ranging conversations included a hefty dose of politics. This made me appreciate what a relief it had been to have a time away. I like getting a fresh perspective on the world by being outside of my own culture.

We own four acres of land in southern New Mexico, so the next day in Deming we enjoyed the pleasures of an American laundromat and did other errands. We treated ourselves to a Mexican lunch and then went out to our land. Kelly dropped me off near the entrance to it and went on to get some water for Cando at a campground nearby. I enjoyed walking in the hot March sun, knowing I would soon be back in cool Colorado.

When I reached our land, I was surprised to see that our simple dirt driveway now had a coating of gravel and road base on it. How strange! Whoever put it there had done a good job, but why? I looked forward to Kelly's reaction, and while I waited for him, I enjoyed the open miles of chaparral and the views of the nearby mountains. After the ubiquitous trash in Mexico, it was a treat for my eyes not to be looking at plastic bags stuck in the bushes.

Kelly was as puzzled as I was by our nice new driveway, so that evening we set out to ask a neighbor if he had seen anything.

"Oh, yeah, I ran the guy off," he chortled. "I went over to see what was up, and he thought it was his land. I told him it belonged to some folks from Colorado. When we looked at the maps, I figured out that he had bought land in a completely different area, but the lot numbers were identical. He was planning to put in a storage shed too."

Poppies were in bloom
near our land outside Deming.

"Next time, let him get the well and the swimming pool in!" I quipped.

We camped on our land for a couple of days, and it was the most relaxing time of the whole trip. Wonderful as Mexico had been, I realized that at some level I had always been "up" for whatever we might have to deal with.

Having this time gave us a chance to think about our Mexican journey before we were caught up in the exigencies of daily life at home. What had we learned? For one thing, RV facilities were minimal outside the well-beaten tourist paths. We had strayed from those paths, and finding accommodations had been an ongoing challenge. We had left some of our favorite places in order to find electricity, water, or a dump station.

That had been fine for this trip, which had had an exploratory mood, but I thought that next time - whenever that was - I might rather go to a place with an abundance of RV facilities, such as the Pacific coast, or take buses and then stay in a hotel. In either case, I was more interested in going somewhere and staying put next time. As usual, Kelly had more of a flexible, wait-and-see attitude.

We talked about developing this New Mexico land of ours, as a winter base that would make it easy to go into Mexico. The unexpected gift of the driveway sparked our imaginations, and we pictured a variety of things we might do. Some of them would be pricey, but others wouldn't be.

As we let our Mexican memories percolate in our minds, we agreed that the trip had been a total success. Even though we had been in Mexico a number of times before, the joyousness of the Mexican people had really reached our hearts this time. We knew that many Mexicans were struggling economically, but there was still a vibrancy to life that we didn't see in the U.S. Even in our few hours of running errands around Deming, we had noticed the difference.

Did we want to go back to Mexico? Definitely!

Might we want to live there part of the year? Maybe.

That had been one of the questions we had been exploring on the trip. I would want to put a lot of energy into improving my Spanish. It got old not having a good command of the past tense verbs! But both of us were pleased at how much our comprehension of spoken Spanish had improved.

Living outside the United States is not a simple matter. What of house-sitting, beloved dogs and cats, staying in touch with family, running our publishing business? The internet made staying in touch easier, with internet cafes in every town and city. We had not yet found a place in Mexico that had what I considered the perfect mix of foreigners and Mexicans. There were too many foreigners for our taste in San Miguel de Allende, and too few elsewhere.

We still had 10 months on our Mexican RV insurance, sold by the year. I teased Kelly about his frugality, suggesting that would make him find a way to return to Mexico in the coming months.

"Maybe it will," he grinned. "Will you come with me?"

"In a heartbeat!"

As I finish writing this book, we are back in Colorado. There's no place like home, and it has been a constant love feast with our cats and dogs ever since our return. It's good to see our friends again too, and to have long conversations with them in English.

But here we are in late April, and it's been snowing for hours. I'm homesick for Mexico!

[End of story part. Next: 16 ways to meet people when you travel]