RETIREMENT IN MEXICO
DISPELLING SOME MYTHS
By David Eidell 09/2009
After reading a couple of Mexico retirement guides, I am mystified as to what country they are talking about. From their various descriptions you’d think Mexico is a perpetual margaritaville laced with marimba music. Mexico is a very different animal than the USA and perhaps fifty-percent of pink-cloud retirees become disillusioned and “bail-out” suffering a considerable financial loss to boot. Let’s look at some realities:
- Some non-tourist areas of Mexico are less expensive than the USA for housing, food and domestic labor. I figure one-percent of retirees end up choosing a truly Mexican area and lifestyle. The reasons for this are manifold – RV parks are rare and most of the amenities are different than what Americans are used to. How long can you hold out eating a Mexican diet, watching Mexican TV, listening to Mexican radio, and not being able to talk to the neighbors? Cheap? Recently I had a lady write to me and describe her modest apartment in Patzcuaro as being a real bargain at “eight-hundred dollars a month”. The unfurnished abode is pleasant but tiny and finding a place to park a car would assume epic proportions. To be frank a much better apartment can be had north of the border for the same amount of money.
- Moving to Mexico “because it’s cheap” is the height of folly – first of all much of the country is no long home to bargain basement prices and services; at least not to the point where cost alone should be a deciding factor for a move. I’ve yet to see the most exclusive million dollar home or five-star hotel built with the same degree of engineering as a similarly priced edifice in the United States. Not long ago I had the opportunity to tour an almost completed 5-star luxury hotel. A suite costs eight hundred dollars a day and not even the ten thousand dollar per DAY “presidential suite” met minimally acceptable plumbing or electrical standards. Absolutely no insulation and the electrical and plumbing would have never made the grade for code inspection – twist and tape wire connections on severely undersized electrical wire and water heaters located three hundred feet away would have doomed a similar facility north of the border. But our tour guide proudly pointed out the his & hers bedside telephones, and telephone with toilet high television in the bathroom. No insulation means relying on the wall mounted air conditioner during the day and on cool winter nights flipping on the heat pump (no thermostat, just a dial to set the temperature). This same facility had to have a swimming pool because the builders opted for a so-called exclusive location that has no beach or safe swimming area. Dollar for dollar in my opinion San Francisco’s Saint Francis Hotel or New York’s Park Avenue Hotel just beats the tar out of much of Mexico’s “finest”.
- So you cannot buy your way to an existence that mirrors the USA – now what? From here on, you’re going to be prompted to come to Mexico and experience the lifestyle and amenities for yourself. No book, travel expert or even your closest friend can predict your reaction to the ups and downs of retirement in Mexico. It would be foolish in the extreme to create a complex fantasy and then make a major move based on a mere pipe dream – make believe belongs in the realm of movies, children and theme parks. Disney parks exhaustingly analyze everything before building – you’d never know an entire below ground city and tunnel network exists just to maintain an ambiance of unreality. Maintaining an illusion takes a lot of money and effort. How are you going to react the first time you get a whiff of a broken sewer line, or twist your ankle on a pedestrian hazard that would make an American injury lawyer weep in appreciation? I’ve seen more than one “newbie” go nuclear the first time a belching bus passed them and then slammed on the brakes and stopped in the middle of the road for a lady holding a chicken. Frustration seems to build upon itself, and if the sun seems to always be in your eyes, and a neighbor’s rooster seems to be using a bullhorn you should be aware of the consequences of allowing this and a growing list of other intolerances to pop your balloon. Fed up retirees frequently become almost desperate in their efforts to get the hell out of Mexico.
- The glass is half full Type-B personality definitely has a better chance of adapting to Mexico than Type-A individuals who pursue life with a vengeance. Being a retired engineer I have a type-C personality which arrives at the conclusion that a half-full/empty glass is twice as large as it needs to be.
Pink Cloud illusion can start by reading an especially good travel guide or spending a few days in mid-winter at a palm fringed resort jam packed with reveling fellow travelers. The same resort becomes almost forlorn in the off-season which is a majority of the year. That lovely restaurant will be closed, temperatures will soar and the humidity will create a steam bath. The flip side of the coin is resort areas that are less hot and humid in the summer but feature morning lows near forty degrees in mid-winter. None of this is especially significant unless you aren’t prepared for it. Small resort town stores that are jammed packed with tourist oriented food and inventory in high season become emaciated when their customers all go home.
THE ONLY EFFECTIVE WAY TO SEE IF RETIREMENT IN MEXICO IS FEASIBLE FOR YOU...…would be to give it a try for six-months. Start on a grand loop that will take you to central Mexico’s colonial cities and some heavily infested tourist enclaves like San Miguel de Allende and Lake Chapala. From Lake Chapala head to the Pacific coast via Tepic and then descend Mex 200 to Puerto Vallarta. From “P.V” try going south five hours to Melaque and Barra de Navidad. An excellent time to start your trip would be October. You’ll miss the worst of the rainy season, yet get a good dose of “off-season-Mexico”.
If you’re aiming for Baja California a good time to start your trip is in June. Rosarito and Ensenada will have a comfortable temperature as will San Quintin a hundred twenty miles to the south. The next enclave of retirees is located at Mulege six hundred miles below the border. Eighty four miles further is Loreto, then way down the peninsula is La Paz and finally Cabo San Lucas. When the Tran peninsula leaves the Pacific coast south of San Quintin, be prepared for daytime temperatures that soar well over a hundred degrees outside of winter months.
BUT DO NOT BANK ON INFORMATION IN TRAVEL GUIDES! A one or two day research sweep of each of the guidebook destinations cannot possibly ascertain the weather or ambiance of the area for the other 363 days of the year. Guide books do not delve into life in various neighborhoods and whether or not you’ll find bagels in July. I almost fell out of bed when living in Cabo San Lucas – a respected travel guide author had written that Cabo’s weather “Does not get to a hundred degrees”. Yeah right; that very same day I had noted that day and seventeen days prior in July had an afternoon high of at least a hundred four degrees. My temperature measurement system consists of a NOAA and NWS approved thermometer and container.
DO NOT RELY ON ADVICE FROM FRIENDS! How many times have I seen someone’s friend become irate and exclaim “But I thought you said…” Points that I have brought up in this article are almost never pondered by a Here Today Gone Tomorrow traveler. Paradise is a relative term and it is seldom the same for two people. You may love something while your spouse hates it.
THE ONLY RETIREMENT ADVOCACY I DISPENSE IS WHAT IS SUMMED UP IN THIS ARTICLE and can be boiled down to just one point: Come and see, taste, smell, hear, and feel Mexico for yourself. Who knows - you may end up hating Mexico and make tracks back to the border. Chances are however your emotions are going to be sucker-punched and the siren call of Mexico will never stop echoing in your heart.