Moving To Mexico (1 of 3).wmv

last winter I took an 11 hour bus ride from Tucson into Mexico I was invited to stay in a vacant house that a friend of mine had recently bought in the town of Allah knows all amost has a population of 10,000 or so including about 300 Americans who live here at least part time I was curious what it would be like to live in Mexico and I wanted to meet some of the Americans and find out why they wanted to live here they're older a lot more older they're retired some work tried to get by on Social Security I think one of the basic attractions in Mexico is that they can come down here to a warm climate in the wintertime when they come from Alaska Minneapolis places like that the big thing is life is very easy you can afford a Maine if not full-time at least part-time you can afford a gardener if you own a house I paid thirty five thousand for this place it's it's gorgeous living is easy down here doesn't cost anything really you know if you have any money and so they like it and then it they're pretty bored where they've been a postman or a policeman or they sold asbestos siding or whatever the hell they did back in the states they can come down here and reinvent themselves basically I went through a divorce and after 25 years and needed to do something different got a small settlement and needed to make it work I didn't want to work for someone else for the rest of my life and then maybe at the end of my life have some time to go and enjoy it and so I came here fell in love with it went home after a week told my mother I was moving to Mexico she told me I was crazy a year later I came back and bought the property that I bought and for the last two years I've been working on it putting in bathrooms and water storage getting it ready but the main thing was that I could spend the little bit of money I had to buy a place to live in it and do it as my business also back home was 15 20 years ago I read a book and it was how to have a quality life out of lead a quality life and it's not having a nine-to-five job to stay alive it's not having a mortgage it's not having two car payments I had a security company alarm systems wrought iron window guards working throughout the Los Angeles area and at a particular point in the real-estate market in Los Angeles I decided to follow the book follow my heart and sell out to the gunnels in 2000 this particular piece of property was being used as a little cafe and Cantina anyway in 2000 I was having lunch here and I asked the chap that was one of the owners of the property if the property was for sale and he said yes and the very next day I came back just so happened it was my birthday and for a little over $15,000 I purchased I purchased a ruin that was one of the reasons that I that I fell in love with this I haven't changed too much my living accommodations down here are basically a 20 by 20 room it's got everything one would need a fireplace in a bed and 20 some feet away is the bathroom well you see it was 1983 my husband died for about five years after that I really took a kept house for my mother she was right around 90 and she died when she was 93 and at that moment I realized there was no one that could tell me to go or to come I was about 20 years younger than my mother I was 73 at the time and so I bought myself a Toyota pickup with a camper top and I a nice one woman I'm real attempt and some were cramping equipment and decided I would take off and go down and see the part of Mexico that I had been in before with my husband so I put my dog in the front seat and and went down got my visa and my permission and went on down to San Carlos and that was where they told me I should really go down and look at Olmos so I got here in the middle of the day and I walked walked out of the car onto the plaza and it looked around and I thought I was just in the finest place I had seen I really thought this is a place where I would like to be it was a just a very amiable kind of place besides I really liked the Mexican people where we live we have no really good timber lumber at all it's the only thing we get is cheap pine and there's nothing termites love better than pine oh boy that's desert for them so you want to be careful not to make roof rafters or supports or anything out of the local lumber here so most people use bricks an Adobe - mostly bricks though for construction and the locals are very good at this work they have to close a couple classes at work is like a peony recalling the just chops with a machete and does the gardening work and things like that they don't make too much they make maybe maybe a hundred faces a day for a 10 to 8 to 10 hour day about ten dollars like a dollar an hour but a man it's skilled like a skilled bricklayer or masonry worker or electrician they make about double that they make about 200 about $20 a day immediate neighbor right behind me now he even knows how to build a dome in the house out of bricks and that's a rather specialized type of a masonry so it's brick heaven because mainly because of the termites and the lack of local lumber so they fire up these brick ovens and they cook these bricks and they've got to cook them enough to make them hard if we have gotten bricks here that they've been too soft and they crumble so you've got to be sure the bricks you buy have been sufficiently well cooked in the kiln you

Channel: Karl Knapp

Views: 523,721

Rating: 4.7986469 out of 5

Keywords: Living, In, Mexico

Id: WXZm_RSTaKQ

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 02 2008