One of the reasons Canadians move to Mexico - or I can't believe the price!!!

I mentioned I was going to write about being thankful for our car, but in fact , the car was just the prompt to a realization about the cost of life here in Zihuatanejo vs. Victoria.   It's timely as the month we left Victoria in October, Boulevard magazine featured an article about "Living in Mexico"...a trend we see as being more and more a realistic future for retiring baby-boomers. 

The year we drove here in our 1996 Ford Explorer, we had 2 rock chips on the windshield within the last 100 kms. of arriving, both along the poorly maintained strip of Hwy. 200, just north of here.  Over the last 2 years, the chips became cracks that by this year had extended across the windshield at different levels leaving us with a car that looked more and more like a "Mexi-mobil" every day.  The problem, (in Gene's mind) was how could we repair the windshield and retain the very important official sticker that allows the imported vehicle to be kept here legally year around. 

Gene visited the customs officials, who suggested the police would have to give him a letter to take to an auto repair place and then we would have to drive to Lazaro Cardenas in Michoacan to receive offical approval again....this is not easily done and would have been very difficult.  So...Gene went to an "autocristales" repair shop, where the owner said "no problemo" and 1800 pesos (approx. $160 Canadian) later, the car returned with the necessary sticker magically remounted on a perfect new windshield. 

On the heels of that good luck, Gene decided to get our car airconditioner repaired and the full cost of cleaning, rebuilding and recharging that unit was 800 pesos, or approx. $70 Canadian.  Now feeling really lucky, we followed up at the carwash, where we regularly get full interior and exterior cleaning for 50 pesos, asking for carpet shampooing to clean out the final residue of a summer left here....the full cost of a complete auto detailing was 150 pesos, or approx. $12 Canadian...Que bueno!  and for this our car is now a thing of beauty again and we hope we have added to the good karma we have had driving here in Mexico. 

So this morning, we awoke to the slight sound of water dripping and within a few feet of our bed, a swimming pool of water had grown during the night....horror of horrors, we assumed leaky toilet, but to our great relief, it was only the water pipes under the bathroom sink.  Now this is not good as all of my bathroom supplies and clean towels are stored there. and if this was Canada, we could anticipate several hours to days of waiting for the plumber to arrive.  But not in Mexico.  We found the construction manager of the property who within 5 minutes had the plumber in with his head under our sink repairing the leaky pipes. 




Oh, and did I mention that at the same time my carpenter was mounting my new curtain rod and tie- back....the total cost of this will be less than $20 Canadian.   My neighbours daughterinlaw was my seamstress for the $5/meter material, custom sewn for $12 ....all done with smiles, promptly, efficiently and with gratitude for their jobs which in Mexico means a lot to themselves and their families.  This attitude of gratitude  is so missing at home and is so great to encounter here. 


Today is November 30th, I know at home in Canada, this is the day when panic hits when I would realize how much I had left to do and so few days to do it.  Here, in the market and the Commercial Mexicana...it's beginning to look a lot like Xmas..... and without the guidelines of a workplace safety board, the elfs are climbing high into the treetops to display the Xmas goods being stockpiled in anticipation of the shopping spree that is soon to begin...