Category Archives: Mexico Here We Are

San Miguel de Allende – House and School Hunting to Car Robbery

Mexico Here We Are, ,
Hot air balloons are in the sky most mornings
Hot air balloons are in the sky most mornings

Phew, it’s been a busy first week in San Miguel de Allende.  The biggest items to talk about are that we’ve chosen San Miguel de Allende as the place to spend the next few months, found a place to live and a school for Geneveve, and just a couple nights ago had our car broken into, lots more details on all of that to follow.

We arrived in San Miguel de Allende on Día de la Independencia, but that didn’t seem to make traffic or anything worse, although the steep, narrow, and bumpy cobblestone streets don’t make getting around the city center very fast.  After a brief mixup about the address of our house rental, we quickly found it and unpacked.  We found the place for pretty cheap on Airbnb at $300 a week, and it had an amazing view.  The views of this city will quickly win you over with its beautiful churches, dazzling sunsets, hot air balloons floating through the air and lakes and mountains in the distance.  And since it was independence day we were treated to some fireworks on our first night there.  Unfortunately we were also treated to some fireworks before dawn on our first morning, and randomly for the next few days too.

Continue reading San Miguel de Allende – House and School Hunting to Car Robbery →

Guadalajara

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Hanging out in Parque Expiatorio
Hanging out in Parque Expiatorio

After leaving the hot and muggy Pacific coast of Mexico we drove inland to Mexico’s 2nd biggest metro area of Guadalajara.  This is another place we’re considering to spend the winter, and by the end of our stay it’s a definite maybe.  We like the weather and the number of things you can do that come with being in a big city.  However, we’re not really big city people, at least with kids, and traffic here is kind of intense.  Traffic is intense all over Mexico in it’s own way if you’re not used to it, but here things like 4+ lane roundabouts, constant traffic slow downs and busy, frequently merging multi-lane what you might call highways take it to a whole new level for us.  I’m sure this has nothing on Mexico City from what I’ve heard, but it was stressful enough for us.

We decided to stay a little ways outside the center of the city at the Crowne Plaza hotel near the Plaza del Sol, partly because it was hard to find dog friendly places and this one was, partly because it had a pool which has been a savior of a feature for us to wear the kids out for bed, and partly because it looked like it was closer to some neighborhoods that I’d read might be quieter and better for long term living.  This put us farther away from city center than I expected, but that didn’t seem to matter a lot since it seems to take at least 15-20 minutes to get from any point in the city to any other.  Even when things looked fairly close together on the map, it would end up taking us 20 minutes to get from point to point when you take into account traffic and parking. Continue reading Guadalajara →

Sayulita

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Hanging out on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
Hanging out on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

So far it’s looking like Sayulita probably isn’t the place for us.  One big factor is we seem to keep forgetting we’re not really beach people.  Kim and I both enjoy a visit to the beach, but every time we go to some tropical beach Kim and I both end up only wanting to be there for a day tops before we want to do something else.  It’s happened us in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Peru, Thailand, and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and possibly other places I’m forgetting where we invariably end up heading for mountains or forests after a little bit of beach time.  I don’t think either of us are the kind of people who can just sit quietly in the sun or shade with or without a drink in hand while we watch the waves – and that was before we had kids.  Now going to the beach is controlled chaos where we’re trying to make sure the kids don’t drown and Ubu doesn’t run too far away or get into trouble while still switching off duties so we can take turns going in the water ourselves for brief periods. And then there’s the whole mess of after the beach you’re covered in salt and sand and just want to get somewhere to shower off and put on dry clothes.  Maybe we could get used to it if we took up surfing or something again like we did in Huanchaco Peru, but to do something like that we’d probably need to take turns or find someone to watch the kids and dog while we did.

Besides that, we’re not sure we can handle the atmosphere.  Continue reading Sayulita →

Heading to Puerto Vallarta – Or Not

Mexico Here We Are,

Our trip from Mazatlan to the Puerto Vallarta area started off with a big drama. We thought we had booked a screaming deal on a luxury resort for a week and were all set to kick back and relax when we arrived. Kim’s parents had very helpfully found this deal online for us, and even called the place to make sure they took dogs and ask other questions. So we figured it would be OK to get in a little late since we could check into our two bedroom luxury condo and relax.  We stopped in Sayulita, about 40 minutes north of our destination, for dinner since that’s one of the places we’re considering spending more time.  Then we drove on toward Puerto Vallarta to check in.  To start we went to the wrong place because there’s multiple places called “Luxury Resorts” and I had picked the wrong one on Google maps. By the time we figured that out it had gotten dark and begun to pour rain, so we ended up driving around in circles trying to find the correct place.  It turned out their sign was barely lit at all and wasn’t what we were expecting.  We finally followed the poor directions in our confirmation email and pulled up at the guard house to the place.  We told the guard we were looking for Luxury Resorts and had a reservation, and when he said Luxury Resorts were here we yelled for joy since everyone was ready to get out of the car.

However, Continue reading Heading to Puerto Vallarta – Or Not →

Mexican Border to Mazatlán

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Our good old Forester takes a break to watch the sunset in Mazatlán
Our good old Forester takes a break to watch the sunset in Mazatlán

Phew, we made it into Mexico, and we’re blowing through the north part of it to get closer to somewhere we can settle down a bit longer.  We entered Mexico on Tuesday, and we’ve been driving almost everyday since to get farther and farther south.  It’s more driving than I expected, but it’s also going better than I’d hoped.  It’s definitely hot, but surprisingly green for what I expected to be desert landscape.  Apparently there’s been a lot of rain here this season, so it’s not normally so green.

The border crossing at the Nogales truck route was easy – almost too easy.  At the border itself there was a sign that said to stop and wait for someone to inspect you.  We did so and two cars drove around us, and there was nobody in sight to actually do anything, so we kept driving too.  We knew from research that most of what we needed to do happened around kilometer 21, so we kept going until we got there.  Continue reading Mexican Border to Mazatlán →