It was the last truly beautiful day of the season here in Fort Worth: 77 degrees, light breeze, sunny, and no humidity. We were a little bummed because we were supposed to be in California with my family visiting my Grandmother, but Chuck’s work had decided that they couldn’t live without him and cut his vacation short.
We decided to take advantage of the day and have lunch at Joe T’s. It was the perfect day for a leisurely meal in the Fiesta Gardens. Of course, being a perfect day, there was a line when we got there. As we stood in line, Chuck went to the bar to get us drinks. Usually when we’re at Joe T’s, I drink a frozen margarita/sangria swirl, but for some reason I decided to have a margarita on the rocks. WOW! A rocks margarita is a compleeetely different animal than a frozen margarita, and the ones at Joe T’s are extra special. They are perfectly balanced and give you no clue how MUCH alcohol you are actually drinking. We stood in line sipping our margaritas way too fast and asking each other why we never had a rocks margarita at Joe T’s before.
It wasn’t long before we were shown to a lovely table in the private part of the gardens, but those margaritas were pretty much gone, and we were feeling pretty good. So when the waitress came by the table and asked if we would like another round, we said suuuure! So there we were, sitting in this beautiful garden, drinking a second Magic Margarita, munching on fresh tortilla chips and salsa, waiting on some amazing chile rellenos and tamales, and generally lazing, when one of us said (I don’t remember which one), “Wouldn’t it be great if life were like this all the time? We should move to Mexico!” It was said as a joke, but it quit being funny pretty fast. We both thought, “Well why not?” And spent the rest of lunch talking about the possibility.
Here’s where it became a serious possibility: When we sobered up, it still sounded like a good idea. And why not? I’m a web developer and can work from anywhere, and I already have national clients whom I have never met face-to-face. I’m lucky enough to be past the point of hustling for work. And Chuck has technical skills that are in high demand. So we did what we usually do in a situation like this - we hit the internet. We’re both a couple of technogeeks, so you have to expect that. There we sat, across the kitchen counter from each other, each with our favorite laptop open, Googling like mad.
There is surprisingly little credible information about expatriates living in Mexico (a little more once you realize the magic keyword is expatriate), and what info we did easily find wasn’t dated, so we had no idea how recent it was. We read what tidbits we could find to each other for the rest of the day. The next day we turned to a source we almost never resort to for information: the local bookstore.
We returned home armed with a couple of books. The first one, Live Better South of the Border in Mexico, by “Mexico” Mike Nelson was a quick, easy read, which we did while waiting in the parking lot of Johnny Carino’s for our takeout dinner. It was a good regional overview and gave us a starting point for further research. One note about the book: take the author’s opinions as just that - opinions. We figured out quickly that what we were looking for and what the author admired were two different things. Areas he thought were too conervative or less desirable because they lacked a sizable foreign community appeal to us. He also tells you the location of each and every AA meeting in the country and which ones are in English, not a huge concern for us.
So now that we had some areas we wanted to know a little more about, we decided to hit the internet again. The searching was better, but finding satisfying sites in English was still slim pickin’s. And, of course, nothing was dated or let you know how current the information was in any way. And that’s when the idea for this site came about. We figure we will document all of our struggles and factfinding, and hopefully someone will find it helpful in the future. We will keep track of costs, paperwork, useful internet sites, and anything else we find and post it here in the hopes that someone else will find it useful in the future.
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