The World’s Best Retirement Haven in 2011
2nd Place – Mexico
White sand beaches and turquoise-blue seas, with hammocks swaying nearby…centuries-old Spanish-colonial cities with winding, cobblestone streets and fountain-filled plazas…towering ruins left by ancient civilizations… guitars being strummed on warm, moonlit evenings….
Mexico is rich in romance, as the one million-plus U.S. and Canadian expats who live there will tell you.
But expats don’t live by romance alone. Fortunately, Mexico also provides solid, modern-day comforts and conveniences. That secluded, away-from-it-all beach on the deserted, packed-sand road? You can get within a few miles of it on a modern highway—one of the many that criss-crosses Mexico. Those centuries-old cities with their colonial homes? Today their walls conceal telephone and high-speed Internet cables and their roofs sport satellite dishes and solar water heaters.
Likewise, health care is very much 21st century, with first-rate hospitals, clinics, and medical staff. (Don’t speak Spanish? Many doctors, especially in private clinics, speak English.) And the bill will likely run you half or less of what you’d pay at home.
In fact, life in Mexico can cost you up to 40% less than what you’d pay in the U.S. for a similar lifestyle. It’s also lived at a slower, more gracious pace. And that is what, finally, many expats seek. As expat Jill Jackson, who lives in Loreto, Baja California Sur, explains: “It lets me be the person I have always wanted to be.”
Perhaps it is a matter of spitting into the wind. But, this article comes to us in a recent publication of the International Living people. They can be reviewed and contacted via the linkage we have provided below. It seems improbable to many people who are burdened by being reasonable and who, for some reason, rely upon American press reports for their news. It is something like, "Do you really believe that Hillary Clinton is concerned about the poor? Do you really think that millionaires and billionaires being taxed at 100% will make things better for the poor and for Americans in general?" If the answer is yes....then....
BUT!!!, Turning to the matter at hand, you can check the magazine and the business out here
It must be pointed out that this writer has a bit of skepticism in some of the reportage in this magazine and the business in general. To be fair, it is an established, long standing actor in the area of foreign living for gringos. It seems to the Gringo Viejo, however, to promote the idea that foreign life is substantially "more perfect" than living in the United States. It seems to gloss over certain very necessary adjustments that must be made, and that quite frankly, some people are not intellectually, emotionally, or attitudinally capable of making. If someone cannot grasp the idea that Baltimore is five times more dangerous than Mexico City, in terms of murder, assault, and armed robbery...then it is really best to stay home.
On the other hand, this particular operation tends to paint foreign places as something like the upper story to Purgatory, just one step away from Heaven. Peculiar odors coming out of storm sewer grates and beggar women who used to open the first scene from Macbeth lurking around the doors of Cathedrals are not covered very thoroughly.
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This photo shows the Gringo Viejo trying to enter
the Catedral Metropolitano de los Angeles in
Puebla de los Angeles, Puebla, Mexico
Sometimes, extra effort is required to obtain just
a few ashes on the first day of Lent. |
Oh! The number one place to live for a well-to-do type American in a foreign country? They choose Ecuador. The President of Ecuador is a dripping Red "fully observant Roman Catholic", who is also a "humanist", and "Christian socialist" (Pelosi soup, anyone?) who uses inspired elocution and rhetoric, as the following - ".....in response to Chávez's comparison of George W. Bush with Satan, Correa said it was unfair to the devil." He is very popular among the unproductive, stupid, proudly troglodyte, and the silk-screeners of Che' T-shirts.
Mexico on the other hand has PAN governance and fairly moderate Centrist and even leftist blocks in charge of their central governments and several States. Almost any given State in Mexico produces more economic activity than the entire nation of Ecuador. Wealth does not make "good", but general wealth sure does cut down on no water, no sewer, no electricity, no paving, dead babies, and turning Indians into welfare slaves. Ecuador does have many beauty spots and pleasant places to live and even die. But.....
Various UN, pinko, and other economic yardstickeries tend to put Ecuador into a category of 4,500/capita income for their population of 13,000,000. This is widely....how should we say....positive-inclusive. The Quechuas, an Indian nation whose members constitute what causes Ecuador to be lumped in to that new Economic Category....that of "Member of the Un-Developeable World, or the Association of 5th World, socialist septic tanques" ....and other intellectuals and labour union types....make for a pretty dull scene of it. Quito is under siege of almost daily marches in downtown, so its a good idea to re-learn your bicycle skills if you choose to live in the capital. The more the government gives the Indians and the "students", it seems, the more emboldened they are to ask for increased entitlements. How could that be possible? (Little matter, just make the rich pay their fair share.)
Thanks again for your continued attention. The Gringo Viejo will be heading back down now that things on the home hearth...the funerals and readjustments have run a bit of a course. So, we shall be making our few purchases of doggy-woggy and kitty-witty and the like. Probably some more expensive glossy white paint for Alvaro's "retirement home" in Xicotencatl.
El Gringo Viejo