Making headway

We've made lots of progress now. This is our house in Arlington, which is on the market. It is nearly empty now. We've given away more than half of our possessions, and we are really ready to move
This is where we are headed. There are so many things involved in moving to another country. We were lucky to have an excellent real estate agent (Michael Green of Tropicasa) who has lived in Puerto Vallarta for about 12 years.

So now we own the house, and we have a property manager taking care of it until we move. We even have a maid and a pool guy (who also waters the plants.)
We were able to open a bank account in Puerto Vallarta, and I learned how to navigate the online banking even with the instructions in Spanish. Now I can pay bills in Mexico using my computer.

One important aspect to moving to Mexico is the FM3 visa, which allows you to move your possessions, duty free - but one time only. We got a "retirement" form of visa, which has no work permit. You need a letter from the bank establishing that you have an adequate fixed income to meet their standards. Generally social security is enough. And you need a letter from the police showing you have no police record. The letters must be notarized, and the notarization has to be "authenticated." In our case, we had to send them to Richmond. Then you take the documents, passports, passport pictures and cash to the Mexican Consulate. It went smoother than I imagined, and now we have it.

We also arranged for the mover. On the basis of blogs we've read, we chose the international arm of United Van Lines. They will come, pack everything, take it through customs, and unpack it for us in Puerto Vallarta. The estimate is between $7,000 and $8,000. Let's hope it turns out to be on the low side. It depends on the final weight.


We're really anxious to get there, and go to the beach. This picture is of the closest public beach for us. It is a 10 or 15 minute walk from our house.

Every step of the way has had its elements of anxiety, but now it is just waiting for a buyer. We don't have much of anything left to do, so I guess we'll watch lots of old movies.

Making a little headway

Now we have a contract on a house, so we are making progress. Houses in Puerto Vallarta are usually sold fully furnished. That's nice, but it means we have to get rid of almost everything we own.

Environment

This is the map: http://www.puertovallarta.net/map/index.php. I guess you have to copy and paste this...sorry. But it's an interactive map, and I like it.

I'm thinking about the footprint I leave on the environment. I don't feel too guilty about life in Arlington. Our house isn't especially big, and our utilities are pretty low. But I need a lot of heat in the winter to be comfortable, even when I wear lots of layers. And I drive my car almost every day. We have two cars, and they are both in daily use.

If (when) we live in P.V. there will be a lot of changes. The area we like, on the southern end of the city (called the Romantic Zone) :) Is between the beginning of the Sierra Madre Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It is only about 8 blocks deep in that section. That means we will be able to walk for almost everything: shopping, yoga, beach, restaurants...is there anything else?

It is tropical. The temperature is mostly the same...60's at night, 80-90 in the day. I have read that electricity is very expensive, over a very modest limit. Seems like a good idea to keep the citizenry from wasting power on too much A/C.

The worst part is toilet paper. You don't flush it. Just put it in the wastebasket. This has always been the case when we visited in the Cancun area, but we were sure hoping it would be different in P.V. Finally, instead of just hoping, I checked it out. bummer. (Later note: our house has a septic tank, and we can flush toilet paper. Whew!)

Cooking should be a change. Imagine fresh fruit and vegetables all year long, They say you can get just-caught fish at the dock. I'll want to learn Mexican cooking. I like Mexican food, but I've never tried to cook anything more creative than tacos with an El Paso mix. I hope to keep my pre-packaged food use to an absolute minimum.

Environmentally, I think it's a good move.

How would we live?

When we first thought about moving to P.V. I assumed we would live in a condo. A nice modern place, with Mexican tile in the kitchen and a view of the ocean. Then a friend of mine, who just returned to Italy, posted some pictures of his place on facebook.


This place is gorgeous! So I've changed my perspective. Now I hope, eventually, we can find a nice charming place.....still near the ocean.

I've found a nice real estate agent in P.V. who sent me some pictures of his own home, that he sold last year.
These are images to dream by.

The internet is so wonderful for a quest like this. There is a webcam that I check out just about every day. I've played around with google maps and google earth, to get great views of the city. Sometimes I check out real estate listings and look at the pictures and locations.

We've been doing lots of reading. The most interesting book is "On Mexican Time", which isn't about Puerto Vallarta, (it is about San Miguel Allende) but it's an extremely well written book about an American couple who move to Mexico.

In June we will go to P.V. for 9 days and see what it is really like. They say the weather ranges from about 80-95, year around. It doesn't sound like summer is much worse there than it is in the DC area, but we'll find out.

If that works out, we will go for a month in January or February. That means I will have to tell my boss that I will be retiring. Ted already told the school that he will be gone for a month, with the expectation that he won't be teaching much longer.

The idea of retiring to Puerto Vallarta started with a piece on 60 Minutes a few months ago which described the excellent health care in PV, and talked about the large number of Americans and Canadians who have settled there.

We love Mexico, and have been there several times, but we still haven't visited PV. We already had a trip planned to Isla Mujeres (a little island off Cancun). Before we left, we had the big snow storm

Isla Mujeres was great! Just what we needed after what seemed like an eternity of snow. This was the view from our room.