Here are some of the prices we’ve found for fresh foods, converted to US dollars: $7 for a whole chicken (fresh); $9-12 for a birthday cake (about 12 inches in diameter); $7 per pound for carnitas (fully prepared); $2 for a cantaloupe; $0.65-0.85 for a bottle of soda (500-600 ml.); $1 for a gallon of purified drinking water; $1.75 for 8 small apples; warm, freshly made tortillas: $0.37 per pound in town, or $0.43 per pound from the truck that delivers them throughout the neighborhood (literally to your front door).

For comparison, we heard an example of wages paid in the neighborhood: an experienced brick layer earns about $18 per day, and his helper earns about $12 per day. Many of the prices seem reasonable when thinking in terms of dollars earned in the US, but for locals in a small town like ours, a significant portion of their income goes toward food.

The most common food we found along the way was either some sort of taco or tostada. Tacos are always small, soft corn tortillas (usually two tortillas per taco), with your choice of meat, plus lettuce or cabbage, onions, sometimes tomatoes, and usually a choice of salsas. Tostadas are the same thing except that the tortillas are flat and hard. Prices vary, but it’s usually the equivalent of one dollar (US) or less per taco.

Once we got to our destination, people have been making a lot of meals for us while we get set up. In our first week we’ve had lots of tacos, as well as: chicken soup; zucchini and tomatoes (because zucchini is in season); boiled beans; pork carnitas; Mexican rice; and three birthday cakes (tres leches flavor)!

We crossed the border into Mexico on August 17 and took four days to drive to our final destination. The weather in the northern parts of Mexico, our first three days of driving, was quite warm – temperatures around 96-97 degrees Fahrenheit, with high humidity. It did make for nice landscapes, however. We got on Interstate 15 after crossing the border from Arizona, a couple hundred miles inland. The interstate heads southwest, toward the Gulf of California coast, continues near the coast for about 700 miles, then turns inland again. Both the inland areas and the coastal areas were very green, due to the summer rains. On our last day of driving, as we began to head more inland, we were climbing in altitude most of the day. We even drove through pine-forested mountains. As we got to the central part of the country, the temperatures moderated.

During our first week here in our town, Zinaparo, the high temperatures were between 78-86 degrees Fahrenheit. We had a thunderstorm one day, threats of rain a couple other days, and some rain one night. The next couple of days there was more frequent rain and temperatures around 70 degrees. So there’s definitely more humidity than what we were used to in the Bay Area, but due to the moderate temperatures, it’s barely noticeable. Plus it cools off at night, which provides relief.

We followed Mexican Interstate 15 all the way south from the Arizona border. Our destination is a small town located about 20 miles off I-15 on a smaller intersecting highway. Generally speaking, the interstate is thoroughly modern and in good condition; however, at the time of our travels, hundreds of miles of it were under construction. In most cases the old road is being torn out and a completely new road being built. Delays were minimized by working on one side of the road at a time and having two-way traffic on the other side. We noticed that the highways are remarkably free of litter.

Once you leave the interstate, the condition of the local roads is much more variable, but nearly always in fairly poor condition. There are frequent potholes; lanes damaged by heavy truck use; animals (individual and herds), pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists on the side.

Then there are the speed bumps – “velocity reducers”, as the signs call them. These are used with great frequency, and actually a pretty good tool for controlling motorists’ speed. For example, when approaching a town, an intersection, a dangerous curve, etc., one or more speed bumps are used to slow traffic for safety purposes. On the other hand, though, they are often poorly marked, e.g., there’s not always a warning sign and, although they were painted when they were installed, that paint has worn off and now the bump blends in with the rest of the road. Also, the speed bumps tend to be very tall, so you really have to slow down – especially when you’re driving a minivan loaded with a lifetime of belongings and with a tow hitch on the back!

In 2017 my wife and I elected early retirement from our jobs and went off in pursuit of a whole new adventure. Up until that point we had good, stable lives, with steady jobs, great families, good friends. But we felt we were missing out on something – we had both worked since our teenage years, without a break (except for some “time off” for Maricela to raise our children). We had taken vacations over the years, but they were always limited to one or two weeks at a time, due to the demands of our jobs. As we looked forward, we could clearly picture our next 10-15 years: continuing at our steady jobs, along with their long commutes and corresponding stress, and the hope of retirement some time in the future, along with the hope that we would still be healthy enough at that point to enjoy our retirement. That didn’t feel like enough for us, so we decided to take a risk. We sold and gave away most of our belongings, squeezed as much as we could into our newly acquired minivan, and hit the road.

First we took several weeks to drive from California to Florida to drop our daughter off at university. Then we drove back to California over the next couple of weeks to pick up our dog who we had left behind for this portion of the trip.

After driving nearly 8,000 miles crisscrossing the US, we drove another 1,300 miles south of the US-Mexico border from the crossing at Nogales, Arizona. Some people think we’re crazy to go travel so many miles by car, but it’s how we’ve always enjoyed traveling. We get to see more of the countryside, we get to stop and interact with people, and we have the freedom to make stops and detours according to our own schedule, not according to an airline schedule.

In a sense, that is the same reason we left behind our jobs – it’s not that they were bad, but we wanted the freedom to live life on our own terms. Making a long commute five days a week and working long hours puts a lot of constraints on living how we want. Of course it also provides financial resources that aid in living how we want. That is how we came up with the idea of moving to Mexico. We felt that with our small pension and our savings, we would have enough to afford a reasonably comfortable life there, more so than what we expected we could afford living in the US.

The Drive South

In an effort to heed the safety warnings for driving in Mexico, which advise to only drive during the daytime, we spread the 1,300 miles over four days. We headed out around 9 or 10 each morning, and arrived at our next stop around 6 or 7 pm. That gave us enough time for a relaxed schedule, allowing us to get the rest we needed and to not have to rush along the way.

By the time we got settled into our hotel or Airbnb each day, it was early enough that even though it had gotten dark, we didn’t hesitate to walk around in the evening looking for places to eat. In some ways I feel we got lucky, especially when we booked Airbnb’s – since we are not familiar with any of the towns we passed through in Mexico, we had to use our best judgment when selecting places to stay. Ultimately we felt that all of our choices turned out well. We met many great hosts, and we never had any trouble finding good food at nearby restaurants or at local roadside stands.

For the drive south we had no electronic navigation because we’re on a quirky phone plan and it would have been expensive to use it in Mexico. Instead, we plotted out each day’s drive on GoogleMaps, used our iPads to take screen shots of any important points along the route, and did our best to not get lost. For the most part we followed Mexican Interstate 15 all the way, we just had to make careful notes for how to get to each of the towns we stopped in along the way. The interstate passes near some well-known places such as Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan, but we didn’t stop anywhere along the way that would be recognized as an American tourist destination. We were focused on getting to our final destination as soon as we reasonably could. I acknowledge that “soon” is a relative term, since it took us about six weeks from the time we left California to the time we arrived at our destination in Mexico! Stay with us as we describe life in Mexico.