Living in Lake Chapala- This Couple Is Living The Mexican Dream With Their Large Service Dog

welcome back to Mexico relocation guide my name is Mariana today's guests are Cheryl and Andy who Moved initially to the Balkans in Europe however after deciding that the Balkans was not for them they decided to look further into Mexico and they have found their sweet spot in the San Antonio CLA capan area of Lake Chapala so thank you so much Cheryl and Andy for sharing your story with us let's let's go ahead and hear what they have to say about their life in Mexico I'm Cheryl and originally I'm from the Pacific Northwest most of the time in Oregon and my name is Andy uh or Andrew uh born in the midwest lived most of my adult life in Washington state we retired in 2020 of October and first moved to the Balkans and then moved here to Mexico in December of 2022 we spent a couple months in Port of viarta and then moved over here to the Lake Chapala area in February last year and have been here ever [Music] since in about 2007 I discovered organizations like international living and we decided we were going to retire overseas so the research person that I am since I have a background in journalism I went down a rabbit hole and started researching places that Americans could could retire and over the years we looked at a lot of places from Ecuador Nicaragua Colombia Europe wasn't initially on the radar because I just made the Assumption it was too costly and so all along we decided we had narrowed it down to Ecuador and then Co came and of course the world shut down and one of the countries that was still open was Albania so we realized that maybe we could retire earlier than we expected if we went to the Balkans instead of to Ecuador and that got us out the door in October 2020 instead of waiting a couple years so we landed in the Balkans and spent a little over two years there before we decided that basically living on the Mediterranean was just too hot for people from the Pacific Northwest so that began my search for where is a temperate climate about 5,000 fet or higher with lots of choices opportunity for my service dog and we were open to any place in the world and the funniest thing is the country right at our back door in the United States Mexico started checking off all the boxes and that's when we decided on Mexico and started zeroing in on what cities or towns would work for the climate we were looking for and the budget that we were living under to get from the Balkans to Mexico it was very involved with a large service dog so it was going to be a lot of leapfrogging flights which I found intimidating so what we ended up doing was a repositioning cruise from Rome to Florida and then a repositioning cruise from Florida through Panama and we got off in Port of varda and once we got to PTO varda I think I started getting a little intimidated that I hadn't learned Spanish to the level that I had planned on learning it the previous three months and knew about the Lake Chapala area and that you could come here not speaking Spanish and integrate really easily and comfortably that there were a lot more familiar stores and so I think in Port of varda the two months we spent there I kind of fell into I want to be a little more in a safe bubble for a while and so that's why we ended up coming here to aiik but U marilia is still on our long-term radar one of our goals right now is to really work on our Spanish and we know that that'll open up a lot of other opportunities for us as time goes on we're really happy right here right now uh but we want to do our best to be integrated into the uh local community and so Spanish is important [Music] what was interesting about doing 10 or 15 years of research is I thought I'd covered every base but then once you get on the ground things can change and so one of the things I didn't consider when picking a country was deeper than the culture the personality of the people and so Albania is beautiful it has beautiful history it's super affordable but they've only been out of Communism since 1993 and what I found that that translated into a very reserved person they didn't open up easily we lived there two years and I feel like I didn't make a single Albanian friend and I'm very introverted and I have Asbergers and a service dog and so I have trouble in the first place opening up and so it was a huge thing that wow I didn't think about this when I zeroed in on Albania oh and another thing was food oh my gosh as one of the guys that we met said it's offensive to us to cover up food with spices because back in communism if you had spices that meant your food was rotten and you were covering it with spices so if you go to a restaurant and there's not even salt that's the freshest food they're so proud of that so on the list came great tasty food spicy if possible good weather and the big thing became genuine people who as a culture they're friendly and outgoing and welcoming it's not just transactional that I can actually feel people are friendly and that's where we hit like the jackpot here I cannot believe the change for me as far as feeling mildly depressed and not going out a lot to feeling so happy that I'm here because the people make me feel like not only am I welcome but I can be a friend I can be part of the community I'm wanted and that's just a huge deal that I didn't even know to factor into where to pick to retire my cultural shock is that being from America I feel safer here in Mexico whether it's the news or the influence of other people or maybe a few experiences somebody had 20 years ago you learn that Mexico isn't safe and personally I would say America is not safe and never once in the time that we've been here in Mexico we ever felt in any Peril whatsoever I don't know if I would say it was a shock I thought Mexico was a desert but again I only knew it from Southern California and from Tucson so I feel like I I was so embarrassingly uneducated about that there's huge mountain ranges there's waterfalls there's Lakes there's Woods so being from the Pacific Northwest I already did my desert time I'm not interested in living in the desert but there's lush tropical vegetation and you don't have to live at the beach I don't know I just had this picture of Mexico and that's not Mexico for me and so I I realize that when our family is saying why in God's name would you go to Mexico why are you living in Mexico it's like it offers everything on our list of places we didn't think we could achieve from the food to the people to the cost to the gorgeous scenery it ticks every box and here it was so close just a short flight away and we went 40 hours multiple flights clear across the ocean to find something that we had so close before we even left [Music] so weatherwise I'm hoping that this past year has been a El Nino year and so my fingers are crossed that it's going to cool off in the hot weather because it was a little too hot for me uh this last summer but people do say it was hotter than normal um so it's at the upper edge of my comfort zone I in my dream whether it'd be like 72 degrees all year so it didn't get as cold this winter as I thought other people around here who came from Canada were hoping it was not as cold as it was I've lived a lot of places in the world and had a lot of extreme weather and I would say this is just cruising along in a mild place that is just blooming year round and the birds are happy year round and you just don't have any like oh this is the Dead season or this is the six feet of snow season this is just like tropical vacation without the beach humidity year round as far as reactions from family and how they felt about us moving to Mexico initially there was surprise and concern like they were afraid for our safety and as time went on and we continued to tell them about our experiences here uh one of my younger brothers and his wife have actually spent some time here in Mexico now and I feel fortunate that we actually have a at least one family member who says you guys are right this this country is great I remember maybe five or six years ago he asked why aren't we even considering Mexico and I was like the cartels I'm we're not going to go to Mexico having lived in Tucson in Los Angeles even back in the 90s it wasn't necessarily safe to cross the border into nagalas or Tiana or any place and hang and go around at night I mean that that's always been the case but then that's the case in downtown Portland downtown Seattle downtown in Los Angeles yes there are the petty crimes yes you hear about police involvement with things but that overarching fear that I'd begun to feel in the United States about the situation with mass shootings had really started to weigh on me personally and so when I now realized that we've gotten away from any possibility of anything like that I feel super safe and just know to be smart you know it's just kind of Common Sense things and I think what our family was concerned about was literally that you couldn't walk the streets day or night without shootouts or something you know like that the Cel had overrun the country and that everyone was controlled by the cartel and so I think now they're relieved that time has passed and we're able to say firsthand you know who to get involved with you know where to go and when not to go and it's so I just wish probably about eight years ago I had learned what I learned because we probably would have just moved straight to [Music] Mexico when it comes to finding a property to rent and we are renters personally I thought the process was very easy all you really need is first last in a security deposit the issue of of qualifying for a place is different in different communities here in Lake paa uh that's pretty much become the norm because of the huge number of Americans and Canadians that have come here they more or less adopted what they do in the United States and Canada the other question is finding the property uh we have a service animal so that makes it more challenging not all properties will allow pets you have to be aware of that and how we found properties was a lot of research basically uh Facebook groups Facebook Marketplace in fact I think we've had more success with Facebook Marketplace than any of the other uh online real estate and I've been approached by friends how did you find that place we never even saw it anywhere we've been looking for months and months and couldn't find it and I go well we just pay attention to what's listed almost every day we check every morning and then when something comes up we immediately move on it you don't want to waste any time because you're more affordable or more reasonable price properties move very quickly currently we live in San Antonio in a gated community and we actually moved to this gated community from another location here at Lake chipala because initially we thought we didn't want to be in a gated community we wanted to be in a Mexican neighborhood but I didn't realize when we picked the house that being as large as Sebastian is that he wouldn't fit on the bus because we don't have a car and so because I can't get anywhere on the bus with him and I can't go by myself anywhere without him I was not really venturing out anywhere so after about 6 months we decided that we would relocate down to this is closer to the movie theaters Walmart a lot of restaurants the bike path and it's easy to catch the guad laara bus from here and also in this gated community there are a lot of scheduled activities from parties to water arobics taiichi cards and walking is really easy because the roads are paved down the center and we're finding that there are pros and cons to a gated community the pros far outweigh the cons everyone is really friendly but I kind of likened it to if you joined a high school in the middle of the school year the groups are formed and you're the new kid and so you really have to know that you're going to have a little bit of figuring out ways to find your group especially in a gated community like this one where most of the people probably 90% of the people have all been here since it was built 15 years ago we hope to move out of the bubble a little bit and integrate but after 2 months of not going out and doing anything realized that I had to figure out a different way to approach the whole social and making friends when it comes to utilities the home that we leased in West iek included all the utilities which was great you might pay a little bit more for that but the landlord wants to keep everything in their own name and so that makes it easy the housekeeper The Gardener the electric the internet the only thing we paid for is propane then you might move into another property and the landlord wants you to pay for everything personally I would say that negotiating for a lower price on the lease and then paying for as much of that as you can yourself you're probably better off because the landlord's going to put a little bit of a cushion in on those expenses when it comes to grocery shopping especially here in the Lake Chapala area it's really easy we primarily eat meat we're on a very limited diet uh for medical reasons but the fresh produce and meat sources are abundant everywhere here in this area and the prices vary quite a bit depending on where you're at I'll go to chipala to get a lot of our groceries just because chipala is substantially less expensive than a Heek and it's a 15minute ride on my bike to go to uh sorana in chipala or any of the Little markets around the square in chipala then for other items we're just a few blocks away from a Walmart here in San Antonio uh where we could get almost anything else we need there's several pharmacies everywhere uh most pharmacies the pharmacist speaks English which makes it really easy let's say if you have a prescription that you need to have refilled from Canada or the United States either bring a copy of your prescription or bring the bottle with the medication on it and even if they do not have the exact same medication they will find a comparable medication for you in most cases Andy is had an annual physical and a Dermatological sunscreening thing and both of them were about $29 and then when we first got here before we lost weight he was taking one prescription and he had to get that uh through the doctor and so it cost 500 pesos is approximately 2526 for the doctor visit and getting the prescription and then she just refills it now and the prescription used to cost him $90 for our co-pay and we had excellent insurance through his employer and it cost the equivalent of about $40 full out of pocket when he was taking it here so that's been shocking so we have travel insurance for medical emergencies but once we qualify for Medicare we're not even going to do Part B because it's so affordable here out of pocket everything up into a heart attack level of um emergency you're talking about anywhere from $5 to maybe $30 to deal with it in the 15 months we've been in Mexico our total medical costs are um it's a total less than our monthly co-pay costs were in the United [Music] States so to live comfortably in aiek it is one of the more expensive areas in Mexico we live comfortably in a two-bedroom two bath in a nice Community our budget is about 22 200 and it's interesting because it was exactly everything except rent was the same when we lived in Albania so I would say if we wanted to be frugal we would probably be able to get it down to for us together 2,000 and not miss anything now I have to say we don't go out and drink we don't drink alcohol and we're on a pretty simple diet since we moved here 14 months ago we've each lost 70 pounds and it's not like we did it on purpose either which is the funniest thing because I mean all my life I've tried hard to lose weight and just living here with the walking the fresh food it it's just happened but if you have a larger budget you can certainly find ways to spend that budget so it's gotten now where it it will take more to qualify to live here than to actually live here one of the reasons we're going to stay renters I don't like the term expad I am an immigrant I'm immigrating to Mexico this is my permanent home and what I want to do here is contribute and make a positive impact and for me I want to be knowledgeable about the language the culture meeting people knowing people making good friends but on an economic level bu being sensitive and knowledgeable so I just kind of want to share let's be mindful of that we're not coming in here imposing anything we want to come in here and add and we want to be a good part of the community because gosh the last thing I want to happen is for these Mexican people who are genuine and are welcoming and make me feel wanted to have them become resentful from my ignorance and arrogance and no longer want me here because I don't want to find another country I I want this to be the country and I don't want to do something where it's like you know what we want to close the doors we don't want any more new people here cuz I just came from a nation that's doing that and I don't want to be part of helping another Nation do [Music] that as far as as coming here as an immigrant or expat and contributing to the community one of the things that I'm going to be involved in here very shortly is helping a local farmer who owns a goat farm that is working on sustainable construction and living off grid and since I've gotten to know him and his wife they've invited me to come out and I'm going to assist them in actually designing a staircase that works in their sustainable house that is a unique shape and it has its challenges but with the education I have in construction I'm going to just jump in there and volunteer my service to help them accomplish their goals in building a sustainable off-grid home and help develop their small farm and then they're in turn teaching other local folks to do this same thing to make it more affordable for the farmers to continue to live exactly like they've been living in the way they want to live and do it more comfortably [Music] so if you're considering the lake chipala area my advice to you is don't make a vacation of coming here because that's most people that I meet that are visiting it's their vacation I would say rent a house if you think you're going to live in a house don't stay at a hotel and try to come for a month and schedule a few things to do that are vacation like but for the most part go out to restaurants talk to people about where do you shop how often do you have to go to guara versus stay in in aiek for example we don't have a car and we haven't gone to guadalahara one time in 14 months so everything we need is in this area so spend the time living like a local living outside your country of origin is not the same as going somewhere on vacation it's night and day [Music] if you're still watching the video at this point I just want to thank you for spending the time to listen to us the Mexico relocation guide is an incredibly valuable resource so don't hesitate to invest some time and some money into the people that have experience working with foreigners that want to move to the area because it's just incredibly valuable information uh and can really speed up the process and make you feel much more comfortable about the decisions you make well I'm really grateful to have had this opportunity to share my experience getting here to Mexico and how much we're enjoying it and even if this interview wasn't being done by Mexico relocation guide I would mention to you that for example we're going to visit Melia at some point and one of the things we're going to set up along with where we're going to stay is hiring a facilitator through the relocation guide to set up to take us around to show us the different neighborhoods where we would shop living in those neighborhoods with no car quiet places versus busier places and just tell us from their perspective what are the good and bad things about Melia especially with a big service dog and so so even if you don't plan on coming for a while I would buy the relocation guide and really go through it and study it and familiarize yourself because I'm telling you I mean I have still not gotten over anything you want out of a country you can find it here and so the more specific you can get your I want this list and sharpen it down you can find that spot in Mexico and I'm ashamed to say I didn't know that until I I got here thank you thank you so much for watching [Music]

Channel: Mexico Relocation Guide

Views: 33,666

Keywords: lake chapala, lake chapala mexico, living in Mexico, living in ajijic, living in lake chapala, moving to Mexico, moving to lake chapala, retire in ajijic, retire in lake chapala, retire in mexico, lake chapala mexico retirement, lake chapala ajijic mexico, expats in mexico, moving to mexico from us, moving to mexico with family, lake chapala expats, lake chapala rentals, living in mexico on social security, best places to retire in mexico, life in mexico

Id: mTCdDdqh02E

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024