Moving to Guanajuato

[ldrews]

A couple of people have contacted me about our upcoming move to Guanajuato. It occurred to me that it might be valuable and/or useful for me to record our experiences in preparing for and actually moving to Guanajuato, and this forum would seem to be the natural place to do that.

Is there any special format or approach that would be beneficial? Or just add messages to this thread?

Regards,

Larry Drews

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So, we started out with the desire to be able to live comfortably on our retirement income. It became clear that we would not be able to do that easily within the United States. Housing costs, medical costs, transportation costs, etc., seemed likely to increase substantially during the coming years and we were barely making it today. In addition, I was becoming more disenchanted with the direction that the US culture was taking and wanted to distance myself from it.

We read two books on Mexico: "Boomers in Paradise" (Living in Puerto Vallarta), and "The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico". The latter book extolled the virtues of Guanajuato. We visited Puerto Vallarta for a week and did a rapid tour of the area and determined that the weather was too hot and humid for us, and that it was being overrun by US and Canadian expats to the extent that it was driving prices up toward US levels. So Puerto Vallarta wasn't going to work for us.

So, we decided to try out Guanajuato. We were anxious to make a move, so we decided to just move to Guanajuato for 6 months and see if we liked it. If not, then we could pick up and try somewhere else. Since Mexico allows 180 days on a tourist visa, this fit our plans perfectly. We located a place to stay initially, Hacienda La Escalera. Their website and English speaking email is handled by Donna, who is very helpful.

Now we need to make airline reservations and fly to Leon. But we have a complication. We have a small Shih Tsu dog that is an integral part of our family. No way is my wife going if the dog doesn't go also. But the dog is too big to fly in the cabin, so it has to be shipped in the live animal cargo. It takes my wife a few days to accept this. Then we find out that Leon airport is not accepting any animals, probably because they don't have the staff to process them on arrival. So now what do we do?

So, as I am writing, we are getting quotes from animal relocation companies, looking into flying to another airport (Aguascalientes? Mexico DF? Guadalajara?) and taking some kind of ground transportation to Guanajuato. However, buses won't work because the dog would have to go in the baggage compartment. Good luck getting my wife to agree to that!

If anyone has any ideas on how to handle the dog, I would love to hear them.

Regards,

Larry Drews