A Gringo in Mexico

 In my introduction post, I put out a couple of photos, pre and post renovation.  Here is a few more.  Still alot of work to do, but its livable.

Before

This is what the front of our house looked like before the renovation.  It used to be a store, as you can see the previous owners left several store items behind.

After

Post renovation, kitchen and living room.  We still need furniture in the living room.  I like this area of the house because it feels really open.

Before

After

After renovation, the area got cleaned up, we added a sliding door that leads to the kids front room.  

Before

The bathroom before renovation. 

After

Bathroom after renovation was completed.

Front Room "kids room"

After Back Room

 We still have lots of work to do, but for now this is what we got, and we make it work.

One of the questions that I get asked all the time, is ” How is the health care down there?”  Well in today’s post I will provide you with some general information on the health care system here in Merida, with some personal insite.  First let me say, that I have experienced life in two very different health care systems before I moved to Mexico.  The first 20 years of my life were spent in Canada.  The last 15 years I spent in the United States.  In some ways, Mexico’s health care system seems to be a combination of the two countries.  Several different levels of private insurance are available in Mexico.  Every possible range of insurance seems to be available from basic catastrophic to something that would be similar to a US plan.  There also is a Mexican government insurance available to expats through the Mexican Social Security agency called IMSS.  Coverage is free for anyone who works for most Mexican corporations, and is available for a low annual fee for everyone else, including expats, as long as they can prove permanent residency (FM2 or FM3 visas).  To insure the kids through IMSS its approx $75 usd per year for each child.  For my wife and I its about $100 usd per year each.  IMSS is inexpensive national health care, and while it has its downside, it is certainly better than nothing.   At this point in our current situation we have decided to go with IMSS, in case something major happens, and just to pay as we go for everythhing else.  Pay as you go medical care is certainly an option here, as it is very inexpensive.  We had to take our 13 month old to the Doctor since we moved here, and it was surprisingly inexpensive to do so.  Showed up at the Dr’s office, and it was 30 pesos, thats like $2 usd with the exchange rate as of this writing, and he prescribed a couple of medications total was about 100 pesos about $7 usd, so $9 to see the Dr and get a couple of medications.   Perhaps on another post I will explore why health care is so inexpensive here in Mexico.

I thought I would write a little bit about the importance of staying connected to your community.  Both your new community and your old one.  I actually want to focus on my old one, let me explain.  As an expat living in Mexico, staying connected to the expat community here in the Yucatan has been invaluable.  Let me start off by saying that anyone out there giving serious consideration to moving to a foreign country should be all over finding an expat community online.  There is probably an expat online community for almost every immaginable place one would want to live.  For a couple of years before I moved to Mexico, I would live and breath on the Merida Insider.  The MI as it was fondly known has since become defunct, but thankfully a new promising community has arrisen, called Yolista.  Very good site.  In addition here in Merida we have the Merida English Language Library I guess you could call it the brick and mortar expat community, and a great online magazine in english called Yucatan Living.  Anyways, there resources are invaluable, as the information, and lessons leared of living in a new land get passed along.  Just to give you an example of how valuable staying connected really can be, I met my architect, and general contractor for my house on Merida Insider.  I also met a fellow expat named Dave, who was extriordinarily helpfull in driving down here.  Those are the two big ones.  Other helpful moments include, knowing where to look for cheap airline tickets from domestic Mexican airlines, hotels, resteraunts, where to find certain gringo foods, plants, etc.  The list really could be endless.  Here in Merida the expat communities often meet up, I have not met many here yet, but plan to in the future, I shall keep you posted.

As many of the readers on this blog know, We live here in Mexico with our 4 children, however many or you don’t know that two of our children are babies. We have a 3 month old and a 13 month old. That’s right, for those of you reading this and doing the math, we did not wait the suggested 6 weeks. If you were married to a hot Latina you might find that a challenge as well. Anyways, I have noticed that there are many differences between the gringo culture as I call it, and the Yucatan culture here. Over time I will probably write about many of them but for today’s post I wanted to talk about one difference that I found particularly interesting. Yucateco’s love, and I mean love babies. This admiration seems to cross all boundaries of sex and age within the culture. I have even seen teenage boys cu over a cute baby. On a personal level I first noticed this when my wife and I would take the babies to our local Chedraui. I put the 3 month old in his car seat in the cart, and my 13 month old sits in the front of the cart. It just amazes me how many complete strangers come over to my babies cu at them. Often times they will reach out a hand to touch them, or extend open arm offering to hold them. At first, I was uncomfortable with this, but as I have come to realize, they just love babies here and its just part of the culture.

I probably should of wrote something about this on inauguration day, but things have been a little hectic around here. Before I continue with my thoughts, in the spirit of full disclosure I should make it known to my readers that I am a avid follower of politics and a very active Democrat.

I am obviously very happy to have President Obama as our new commander and chief. However my feelings on inauguration day were more of relief that the last 8 years are over. My biggest frustration with the last 8 years was that I knew from the 2000 campaign that Bush clearly was a flawed candidate, and would struggle as a president. I saw this coming a mile away. Sadly the struggles were many. The flawed candidate had become the flawed President, and the citizens of the United States of America learned a dear lesson that elections do have consequences. However now we have a new beginning. The challenges are great and many, let us see if our nation is up to the task at hand. We certainly seem to have a capable leader for this turbulent time.

I had my kids gather around the computer as we all watched this historic moment together. It was one of those, do you remember where you were when moments.

As I went about my typical day of completing my usual boring tasks online I stumbled upon this article on Yahoo.  The full title is Mexican collapse?  Drug wars worry some Americans.  The article is written by AP writer Traci Carl.  As I have recently decided to make Mexico my new home, I found this article a must read.  However, it did not take long before it became apparent this piece of writing was simple utilizing random facts taken out of context to sensationalize or exaggerate what is really going on in this country.  I am sure the sensationalize of the article has garnered plenty of clicks as was intended.  However, this appears to be where the usefulness of this piece ends.

There is a drug war in Mexico, there is no dispute about that.  However, where these types of articles come off as sensationalism is when they imply that the whole country has fallen into a state of lawlessness. Or when comparisons are made to Iraq.  A couple of things to keep in mind.  Most of the narco violence in Mexico is contained to to specific areas most notable the northern states, of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California, Durango, as well as the state of Michoacan, and Mexico City.

Making a comparison to Iraq in a broad context without any clarification is irresponsible journalism.  For example the following statement from the AP piece” Retiring CIA chief Michael Hayden told reporters on Friday that” that Mexico could rank alongside Iran as a challenge for Obama — perhaps a greater problem than Iraq.”  This is clearly abstract at best in reference to Iran, as we really don’t know what to expect in terms of potential escalation.  For example if nothing really changes between the US and Iran over the next 4 years, Iran does not go any further with its nuclear ambitions etc, than the comparison seems accurate.  But what if Iran does move forward with these ambitions and Israel decides to launch an intense air strike campaign.  Clearly, the comparison at this point is absurd.  The problem with the original statement in such a broad context, is we don’t really know how the situation in Iran will play out.  The Iraq comparison is a little more cut and dry, perhaps.  However, many readers will inevitable come away viewing Mexico in the same context that has defined Iraq over the last 6 years.  This of course is even more absurd then the Iran example.  Iraq ongoing may not be as challenging as Iraq past, but the author has an obligation to point out the difference between ongoing and issues past.

I went to Progresso,a near by port city on Friday, just to check out the ocean, and the beach.  One of the first things that stood out to me was the amount of Americans and Canadians present in the area.  Many of them driving in their vehicles from different states and provinces (mostly Ontario) .  Suggesting most of them drove, although a very few may have had their vehicles shipped here from Florida.  If this country is in such a lawless state, why would all of these expats be driving down here.  The logical conclusion is, as stated above the drug war although very serious, is currently being fought on specific fronts within Mexico. The rest of the country is not under siege.

Living In Merida:  Now that I have caught everyone up on how, and why we are here in Merida, I thought I would offer a quick summary of our first two months here.   The most challenging part of the first few weeks was just getting everything settled.  Registering the kids for school, ensuring the babies have there shots, buying necessities for our home, everything from a washing machine to food staples for our pantry.  We were here less than a week, when I received even more bad financial news from back home, I won’t go into specifics here, but Ill just say, my available capital was all but taken away do to the unprecedented credit crisis back in  the US, thus impeding my income opportunities..  So that added an immediate challenge and stress to earning income to support us.  So here we are, the kids have settled in nicely, at this point they all but have passed me in their knowledge of Spanish, and as a family we are adapting well to life here in Merida.   The good news regarding our financial situation here, is it is very cheap to live here.  Food, utilities, etc, is much less expensive than back in the US.  Again this was one on the main objectives in moving here, so that piece of the equation has worked out nicely.

Day 6:  My wife wanted us to get going really early, as at this point we just want to get there, so at 3am we were up, and pulling out of the hotel parking lot by 3:30am.  When driving from Minatitlan to Merida, there are two options, the costal route and the inland route.  My friend Dave had made the same trip a couple of weeks earlier and advised that there was quite a bit of flooding in the state of Tabasco and it would probably be a safer bet to take the coastal route.  Most of this leg of the trip is either right on the gulf coast or driving through small little town, who all seem to have a love affair with their topes.  The gulf was beautiful, as where the small towns.  This was also the only area where we saw a heavy military presence.  We had a military stop about 50km past the border, and then nothing until day six, where we were stopped  4 times, and our vehicle inspected each time.  When I say inspected, I mean they quickly looked in the back, moved a couple of items and that was it.  Luckily wife is from the area, and usually after talking to them for a minute or so they would thanks us for our patience, and we would be on our way.  Before the trip started I was a little nervous about potential military stops, and you hear all sorts of stories about corrupts military officials looking to shake gringos down, or worse.  I must say that during our 3 days of driving in Mexico we were stopped a total of 5 times, and all of our encounters with the solders were very pleasant, no problems at all.  At about 2:00pm we arrived at our house in Merida, we made it.  Our 6 day journey was over, our new life in Mexico was about to begin.

Day 5:  We left fairly early similar to how days 1-3 went.  At this point I need to note a few things about this leg in our journey, just so the reader can gain some perspective into what we had anticipated ahead of us for this day.    My friend Dave advised me of the following in his directions.  “Today will involve what are probably the worst roads of the entire journey and there is no way to avoid them. However, in the three years that we have driven this first section of day 2 the roads HAVE improved drastically. The local government is trying to keep up with new paving projects. From now on the probability of topes is more and more frequent. Be aware that virtually every small village will have topes or vibradores at each end of town and quite often here and there throughout town. Don’t rely on all topes to be signposted!!! When approaching even the smallest built up area, be safe and slow down to a speed that will allow you to come to a stop quickly. Your vehicle will thank you.

This section of road is why we choose to stay overnight in Tampico. We prefer to drive it while we are fresh in the morning.

The highway out of Tampico and heading to Tuxpan is Hwy 180 and it is 2 lanes all the way to Tuxpan. The scenery is spectacular but the road is a narrow two lane with virtually no shoulders and is very curvy as it winds up and down the mountains. The best bet is to just sit back, relax and enjoy the scenery. You WILL, eventually, end up behind a convoy of vehicles who are stuck behind a slow moving truck, but just be patient and eventually everyone ahead of you will get past the truck and then it will be your turn to take a deep breath and make your move to pass.   Dave’s description turned out to be spot on.  The scenery was at time simply breath taking.  I have driven up and down my share of mountains before, but for me this was truly unique.  These mountains were just so thick with vegitaiton, it was like a jungle.   The roads were a little rough but not as bad as I thought they would be.

The slowest part of journey once we were in Mexico were all of the small towns, that just had a love affair with their topes.  This was certainly the case on day 5.  It took about 4 hours to go up and then down the mountain, then we drove towards Veracruz.  Just before Veracruz we started taking some toll hiways until we reached are final destination of Minatitlan.  Before we reached Minatitlan we had to add some excitement to our day by missing a key turnoff where one toll connceted to another.  Of course finding an off ramp to head back in the correct direct proved difficult as there are not many off ramps on a toll highway.  That basically cost us about 1.5 hours.  Eventually at around 7 pm we reach Minatitlan. Located in the state of Veracruz and has a population of 152,907 , while the municipality had a population of 151,983.  Much of the city sits on reclaimed marshlands, and many new homes built on this reclaimed land have a tendency to sink as much as several feet before settling. Much of the surrounding undeveloped land is marshy.  There is a large Zapotec indian (often referred to colloquially as “Tec(o/a)s” or “paisan(o/a)s”) population in Minatitlan. They are easily recognizable in their traditional Zapotec clothing. Most speak Spanish, but their traditional Zapotec language is still in common usage among them. What a long day and we never stopped to eat or anything.  Just to gas up.  The kids were great, almost like we had some divine assistance. We were all tired and are looking forward to our last leg of the trip.