March 30, 2023 • 41 mins
This week on the podcast we are answering a few questions submitted by listeners of the show! We're talking about life in Mexico, raising a child abroad, safety concerns, our favorite tacos, what's on our travel bucket lists and more! This episode was really fun to record so hopefully you guys enjoy it and if you have a question that you'd like us to answer, feel free to send it our way for the next Q&A episode. Enjoy! In this episode:
- Cooking vs. eating out while traveling
- Safety in Medellin
- Exploring the cost of living in Mexico
- Our favorite tacos
- What it was like getting set up in Mexico
- What’s on our travel bucket list
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello, and welcome to the WorldWanders podcast, a proud part of the
wander Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan, I'm Amanda, and we're your host.
We're a traveling couple and digital nomads, taking you on our adventures as
we explore locations, destinations, andcareers. Enjoy the show. Yeah,
as always really appreciate you guys tuningin and extending to dive into some listener
(00:25):
Q and A today. Yeah,so, we haven't done a Q and
A episode in a long time,and so put out a little call for
questions plus some questions we'd received viadms and emails, so compiled some of
those together to hopefully give you guysan exciting and interesting episode. And just
before we dive into it, ifyou guys do have any questions for us,
(00:47):
or any questions you ever want usto answer, feel free to just
send us a message on Instagram orFacebook. It's at the World Wanders podcast
or info at the World Wanders dotcom. You can always email us and
send us a question. These episodesare always really fun to do and we
haven't done one for ages, somaybe we can start making it a more
frequent occurrence for sure. Yeah,should be diving. Yeah, So the
(01:10):
first question is how do you balancecooking versus eating out while traveling? And
I feel like this is a reallyinteresting question because I think for us it
kind of is different depending on whattype of trip we're doing. So if
we're doing something that's more of likea long weekend getaway somewhere, a weeklong
vacation style trip, or something that'smore of like one plus months, more
(01:34):
nomad style. So maybe let's start. If we're going somewhere for like a
long weekend, what does it looklike for us? Yeah, it's a
like ninety percent eating out. Iguess I guess our typical style, like
if we're going for a weekend andwe're staying at an airbnb, would be
maybe like cook breakfast in one ortwo days and then mostly eat all of
(01:55):
our other meals out. Yeah.In general, we like to book into
airbn bes. I think recently we'vestayed in more hotels, but I feel
like that's more like one nights,two nights, anything kind of longer than
that. In general, we liketo get an airbnb, and we always
look for airbnbs that have kitchens inthem, and then we will at least
buy snacks, because I think thatwhen we're eating out in general, we
(02:17):
often don't eat like three large mealsout, so we'll either try to like
cook breakfast and then go out fortwo meals, or maybe do like a
big brunch and then a dinner andhave something like light in between, like
snack type thing, or you know, buy some ingredients to cook something.
But yeah, would definitely say ifwe're doing like a weekend or a long
weekend, part of the experience forus is going out and eating and so
(02:42):
you know, we really only haveso many restaurants that we can eat at
in that time period, so we'regoing to try to eat at as many
as we can. And then whatabout those like week maybe a week long
vacation style trip. I know we'vedone this and in Panama a number of
years ago, we just did atrip to PV with vacation style. We
did Costa Rica vacation style. Yeah, I think not a lot changes.
(03:05):
I think that probably like the differentiationwould be when we are staying kind of
like we did that Medaine trip,going somewhere for like three weeks longer.
I think if it's a kind ofa week and it's more vacation style,
we're still you know, a heavymajority, but when we are staying somewhere
like a few weeks, that's Ithink when we're cooking a little bit more
so, like when we were inMedine for almost a month in an airbnb
(03:28):
with the kitchen there, we probablythat one was probably what likety fifty,
yeah, close to that, likebetween lunches and dinners, most breakfasts at
home, between lunches and dinners,probably like one of those. A day
at home was kind of what thething we're aiming for. Sometimes it was
less probably a few nights in arow it was more, but about that
(03:51):
type of thing. And then obviouslythis change is a little bit depending on
where you are. So we spentso much time over the past couple of
years in places where it's really affordableto eat, like I know, traveling
Southeast Asia, lots of places inLatin America, Like if you go to
the grocery store and start getting stuff, it's like, yeah, it's affordable.
But if you're shopping kind of likeyou would in Canada, buying like
(04:12):
you know, some of those importerproducts, you kind of get the sense
of like might just be cheaper forme to order in food. So like,
if we're going to the States,we're going to be cooking our own
meals more often. And if,for example, if we went to Europe,
we'd be looking at doing that.But just because kind of where we've
been, it's lended itself as wellto a higher percentage of eating out slash
(04:33):
ordering in. Yeah, yeah,one hundred percent. I think that's a
good differentiation too, is that wedo order in quite a bit, and
you know, so it doesn't alwayslook like going out, but we're ordering
uber eats or rappies, so we'rehaving a meal that's delivered to us,
but we're not always going out.And this is especially shifted quite a bit
(04:53):
with having the baby, just becausewe're on her schedule quite a bit and
stuff like that. But I alsothink the location thing is important, and
I think looking up where you're goingand seeing what the cost of food is.
And I think the States is areally great example versus Mexico, somewhere
where we are not going to saywe're going for a week, you know,
we are not going to eat ninetypercent of our meals out. I
(05:13):
think it's going to be like onemeal a day and we'll go and do
like a big grocery shop, andit's not really affordable the way it is
here to order our groceries online.So one of the things we look for
when we look for an airbnb oraccommodation is like, are we in walking
distance ideally or like a quick uberfrom a pretty major grocery store. So
yeah, I think definitely planning basedon your budget how much things are going
(05:40):
to cost in the place that you'regoing. But I think for us,
like a big part of travel andnomad life and living abroad has been the
food. I mean, one ofthe things that we love about living in
Mexico is the food, and soI think getting to experience new restaurants,
eating at places we like, supportingthe local economy in that way has something
has been something that's been important tous and continues to be important to us.
(06:01):
Yeah, I think too, withjust like the way budgeting works,
like we often end up staying inlike a smaller apartment, and so once
you start cooking in there, it'smaking a big mess you don't like,
especially with bouncing work too. You'rein the apartment, you're working all day,
you cook like there's a really nicefeeling of like getting out, going,
walking somewhere, sitting down, we'rea little bit more present, and
(06:26):
so all those things beyond budget thatmake it feel like it's it's worthwhile.
And I think we both love yeah, eating good food, experiencing like finding
new restaurants, kind of being outand about in like a community where you're
seeing lots of different people. Andso for us, that's a big part
of travel. And I think oneof the reasons we do look to travel
to places where the costs are lowerthan they are in Canada, the States,
(06:47):
Europe is that feeling of like,yeah, we can go out and
eat dinner like most nights if wewant to. Is something we look for,
not that we don't like cooking,but just for us when we're traveling,
that's something we like to do.Yeah. I think the last thing
I'll say about this is that kindof leaning into like the different rhythms,
Like I feel like, you know, we have cravings for different things and
(07:10):
sort of different chapters and cycles oflife. And I think that one thing
that we've noticed is that we gothrough these different periods of time, like
say, we're traveling continuously quite abit and we're eating out quite a bit,
we'll feel like the desire to settledown, and so that'll be like,
hey, let's get an apartment ina city for you know, maybe
(07:32):
three months instead of one month ormaybe even six months, and let's do
things like invest in a good fryingpan or invest in an instant pot,
and let's make a concerted effort tocook the majority of our food and give
back into things like going to thegym, etc. Etc. And So
I think that there's kind of theselike cycles that happen also, and I
(07:55):
think we just kind of lean intothat and trust that if we're in a
big period of eating out quite abit, at some point we're going to
be craving more of that, likehome cooked, eat at home, lighter
food, and just kind of goingwith the flow with that a little bit.
We haven't had that as much overthe last year because we have been
more stable. So I think we'vebeen cooking probably like the majority of our
(08:16):
food over the last little bit,and that's really nice. But I also
feel like when we go places likeour trip that we just did to Panama
and Medine, it was really niceto be going out more and trying new
restaurants and all that type of stuff. Yeah, for sure. Okay,
great. So the next question thatwe received is did you feel safe in
medine? And the person asked especiallywalking around in the evenings and in the
(08:39):
Pablato area. And so the firstthing I'll say with this is that we
do have an entire episode on Columbia. It's one of the recent episodes that
we released, and we talked quitein depth with this. But I think
the short answer for this is,Yes, we felt really pleasantly surprised with
everything in medicine. The entire vibewas really great, and I don't think
(09:00):
we at any point felt unsafe atall. Yeah, I think the first
thing I'd say is, I thinkwhen you're going in travel circles, there's
a lot of like feeling safe feelingunsafe, which I think has like some
value, but isn't necessarily like thebest metric like for your actual safety or
not. Like I know, there'squite a few black legitimate safety concerns in
(09:24):
medie, especially in evenings, especiallyin like bars and clubs and that type
of thing. When when you're inthose spaces around strangers were like you know,
more family oriented. Now, sowe're up more in the day,
not staying out late, not doingthose steps of things, which leads itself
to feeling a little bit safer andto being a little bit safer. So
I think we both felt like reallycomfortable. Not very many sketchy people around,
(09:48):
especially in those areas, and solike walking around, you know,
everyone's been super friendly, a lotof like exchanging like hellos with people,
and so yeah, it didn't geta sense of like unsafety or safety concerns
at all. But I do thinkkind of that that bigger point with traveling
of like on November first, theTurkey feels really safe, and sometimes when
(10:09):
you're traveling, you like nothing happens, you feel safer and safer, but
you're actually more and more in danger. And so I think there are legim
at safety concerns in many specifically Columbiagenerally most places generally especially at night.
But for us, like when wewent out in the evenings, we're never
really outpassed like ten pm, andI mean, let's be real, we
(10:30):
weren't out past like eight pm.Yeah, but like we're probably out like
to nine something at least one nightmaybe, but walking around pretty busy area.
So there's lots of people around,not very many sketchy people around,
and so just from like our perception, it didn't seem like there was a
particularly like a high risk of beingmugged in that area, that zone that
(10:52):
we're staying in. But I'm surelike once you get into like the one
ams, two ams, and maybein some other zones of the city that's
not the camp. Yeah, forsure. And I think that I would
always advise taking safety precautions. Imean, if you were traveling solo,
I think that that makes you athigher risk for all this type of stuff.
I mean, we were together,I think basically all the time.
(11:15):
I wasn't ever really really alone,and I wasn't really ever alone with the
baby. And again we weren't outin the middle of the night. I
think if you're alone and maybe you'vebeen out drinking that and it's three am,
that puts you in a more vulnerablesituation. So I think this taking
safety precautions, maybe not getting inthose situations, or if you do want
to do that, just knowing thatmaybe taking an uber instead of walking might
(11:37):
be like the better option for you, etc. Etc. We took general
safety precautions in Meding, though likeour passports were kept safe in the safe
in our apartments where we were staying. You know, we didn't really walk
around with a lot of valuables.In general, we don't have like a
lot of flashy things. We're notever out like waving around our cell phones
(11:58):
or anything like that. And thenthe other thing we do is we never
keep all of our cash in ourwallets, just in case purses do you
get stolen, our wallets get stolen, or muggings do happen. So always
making sure that you've got cards andcash kind of separated so that if somebody
does steal your stuff, it's it'snot going to be like the end end
of the world. You've still gotsome cards, some money, maybe in
(12:22):
a form of identification, that typeof thing. So I think that just
taking those general safety precautions is somethingthat I would definitely advise, and I
would advise that for most places inthe world. But in general, I
think we did feel, you know, quite safe and whatnot. In Medine
we had a really pleasant trip andyou can hear more about that in that
episode that we did. Yeah,definitely, and I think for us going
(12:43):
into so we'd been there before andkind of had addrenal sense of things going
into it had probably like more peoplebringing this up. I don't know if
there's like the narratives changing or whatthe deal is, but I think we
felt safer while we were there thenthe questions, concerns and thoughts kind of
(13:03):
beforehand. But that said, wenever really know if you're just getting lucky.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, AndI do feel like a lot of
those things are just like wrong place, wrong time, so it is important
to take precautions because you know,bad things can happen anywhere, all right.
The next question is what is thecost of living in Mexico. I
(13:24):
feel like this question is a reallyhard one to answer because it's going to
be really different depending on where youdecide to live in Mexico. I think
one I think comparison that I canmake is like when we lived in part
of Irata, for example, wewere paying about twelve hundred USD for a
one bedroom apartment in a really nicearea of town with a small ocean view,
(13:45):
a sizeable one bedroom apartment, butstill one bedroom apartment. And here
in Queetro we play, we paypretty similar for a three bedroom house with
a backyard in like a private communitywith like a pool and a gym,
also in a really nice area.So that just gives you the sense of
like a city that's more local versusa city that's more touristy, and the
(14:09):
difference in demand. So we havelike at least twice the amount of space
in this house as we did inthat apartment, probably like two and a
half times the space, plus thebigger outdoor space, plus amenities. So
I feel like, you know,the bang for your buck is a lot
better in a city like here thanit is versus PV. Yet being in
a city like PV offers a lotof benefits, you know, things like
(14:31):
the beach. I mean, ifyou don't speak a lot of Spanish,
it's great because there's a lot moreEnglish speaking there. It's more touristy.
If that's your vibe. If you'relooking for more, you know, people
from you know, maybe the USor Canada or your home country, you're
probably more likely to find them there. And then, yeah, like I
said before, the beach. Soif you're looking for a beach vibe,
(14:54):
places like Portavorda and plattl Carmen andTuloom are just going to be more expensive
than some of the more local inlineplaces. Yeah, I think you really
hit on it varies a ton,almost feel like you could be like the
cost of living in Mexico's whatever youwant it to be. Like you could
live really far out of the cityin like, you know, a not
so nice small apartment and eat Tamali'sand tacos and spend like, you know,
(15:18):
under a thousand dollars a month.Easy that you can live in the
center of Mexico City in a twobedroom apartment and eat out most nights and
spend probably more than you're currently spendingunless you live in New York like four.
Yeah, I think in general,my sense, like in a totally
non scientific way, would be itseems like two to three times like either
(15:45):
the cost difference for the exact samething or the quality difference for the exact
same cost. So like if you'recomparing living in like one of the nicer
areas, like a kind of ahip area of Mexico City to like a
hip area of New York City,Like the rents next city are quite high,
but they're at least double or moreif you were in New York City
and kind of something like if you'recomparing PV I don't know, like La
(16:08):
or San Diego, Yeah, orlike maybe San Diego or somewhere like a
beach town in Florida. If youwere looking at paying the exact same rant,
you'd be looking at like a significantlynicer place to stay. And then
you go to the bar, yougo to the restaurants, Like if you
go to a similar like quality place, usually the prices are going to be
(16:29):
like two to three times lower forlike a similar level of quality would be
kind of like my real thumb rightnow. That said, the Mexican paso
is like really strong. So overthe past year, the things in Mexico
relative to US dollar prices have gottengotten higher or more expensive here, significantly
more expensive compared to the Canadian dollar. Inflation is happening here, So I
(16:55):
think kind of over time we'll seethat trend a little bit lower, like
where they difference isn't so great,especially in like the nicest areas where there
are people from other places in theworld coming to Mexico. Yeah, for
sure, for sure, I thinkthat you touched on something important there where
you said like you can kind ofspend what you want to spend, because
even the prices we're spending is likewe could be spending quite a bit in
(17:15):
this city if we are living ina different area, maybe not in a
private community, we could certainly beliving in a smaller space. You know,
we have friends that pay like,you know, five hundred, seven
hundred dollars less per month than wepay, and you know, they have
quite a bit less space and livein a less ideal area, but at
least in our opinion, but youcan spend less. And I remember when
(17:38):
we lived in Mexico City back intwenty seventeen, we thought we were getting
like an excellent deal on rent.Like I think we were paying about seventh
sorry, about a thousand dollars Canadianseven hundred and fifty USD a month for
a small, one bedroom apartment inRoman Norte, which is an amazing area
of the city to be in.And I mean this was like cutting down
(18:00):
on our cost of rent pretty significantlyfrom Canada. And then we went to
Medita and we were there with afriend and our friend was moving into this
like I think, two bedroom,two story house that was like probably twice
as big as our apartment, andI think he was paying like four hundred
USD or something like that. Sohe was paying like almost half of what
(18:22):
we were paying, and I waslike, oh, we are like definitely
in the wrong city. And obviouslyprices have shifted quite a bit. They've
gone up quite a bit over thelast couple of years, just with inflation,
demand, just the nature of theeconomy and stuff like that. But
I think just looking at your budgetand what you'd ideally like to pay,
and then looking at what is apriority for you, like what amenities are
(18:44):
the most important thing for you,you know, even with like the fanciest
apartment that you might want to livein in Roman Norte. Like Ryan said,
if you're comparing this to like amajor city in the US, you're
still going to have a lower costof living, but it's not going to
be cheap cheap, Like you're notgoing to get a ball in penthouse in
Condesa for a cheap price, Likeit is relatively expensive to live in that
(19:08):
area in that city at this time. So I think that narrowing down maybe
a couple of cities that you're kindof interested in because they are related to
your values, and then just doinga little bit of research on you know,
areas you might want to live inthe cost there and then deciding based
on that. And while there wasmany reasons that we decided to live in
(19:30):
Curetro, I think cost of livingin what we could get here relative to
some of the other places we livedwas definitely a factor for us. Definitely.
Okay, next question is the nextquestion is what are the biggest downsides
of raising a child in Mexico versusyour home country? And I think that
this is a really interesting question becauseyou know, obviously, I think for
(19:52):
us, we've identified more upsides thandownsides. But I think the two major
downsides that I would identify are one, I do feel like there are more
safety concerns in Mexico and we dotake more safety precautions, especially with having
a child, than we would ifwe lived in Canada. And then too,
I feel like the other downside forme is that we are just further
(20:15):
away from family. If we livedin Canada, particularly Western Canada, we
would be able to see, youknow, our families more, which I
think would be really special for forLou, We're really lucky that our families
are willing to con visit us hereand we get back to Canada once or
twice a year to see them.But I do feel like that's a downside
of being, you know, livingabroad. Yeah, I think there's really
(20:36):
honestly not too many downsides. Likeobviously we think upsides outwegh the downsides,
but like you said, those,I think you're the big ones. I
think the safety thing because when youhave like a child that's under two,
like you're not letting them play alone. Really, it doesn't make itself as
a parent. I think some ofthose downsides will probably start to be more
(20:59):
apparent she gets older, like thoseages where you want your child to kind
of like roam free, which obviouslyisn't that's a concern, and like lots
of different cities in Canada in theStates now that is safety, but I
think it's more apparent here, andthat's more of a downside of like and
you're like ten year old, tenyears old and you want to go like
roam all around on your bike byyourself. I'm not sure how we're going
(21:22):
to feel about that here. Andthen distance from family, especially if family
gets older, And then I thinkfor me, like there's maybe that downside
of like we're second language speakers inthis country and kind of what's it gonna
look like when our like if ourdaughter is like kind of identifies Spanish as
like the way she prefers to communicate, and there's like always a little bit
(21:42):
of like, you know, maybelack of ease with us talking to Spanish,
Like could that be a downside aswell? Those things that come to
mind for me, yeah, orvice versa, if you know, she's
speaking English at home and that's kindof her dominant language, Like how does
she navigate? I mean, one, she holds a Mexican passport, so
she's a Mexican national, and youknow, how does she navigate the world
(22:06):
around her. We're hoping that she'llbe like confident and fluent in both,
but I think it's just definitely anuncertainty. I think similarly to that,
one thing that I have thought aboutis just like, you know, like
what does she identify with culturally?And obviously we don't know what our long
term plans are, but I thinkthat if you're born in the country that
(22:26):
your parents are born in, Sohad she been born in Canada and our
base was in Canada and we werein Canada for half the year every year,
then I think there'd be like she'llidentify as Canadian, but it's a
little bit more tricky when it's likewe're living in Mexico. She is a
Mexican national, but like, we'renot Mexican and we're Canadian. She's also
(22:48):
a Canadian citizen, but we don'tspend that much time in Canada right now,
so I definitely do think about that, like what are the downsides of
being like I guess, like Ithink they call them like third culture kids,
you know, like is that somethingthat's gonna packed her? And I
know talking to a friend of minewho actually is American and Canadian. She's
a dual citizen, but her familyis originally from Mexico, so when she
(23:10):
was growing up in Texas, shehad a lot of influence from the Mexican
side of her family, and shemoved to Canada quite young. And she's
like, I don't know if Iwant my daughter to have to get her
the second passport, because she canget her the US passport through birth.
She's like, I don't know ifI want to get her it quite yet,
because she's like I feel like Inever really knew exactly where I fit,
(23:32):
Like I was never fully American I'venever been fully Mexican and I was
never really felt like fully Canadian,and she's like, I kind of just
want her to like be Canadian.And obviously she can make that choice when
she's bigger and stuff. But it'sdefinitely something that gives you, like food
for thought in terms of like whatwill this be like? But I kind
of trust that we will navigate thatstuff as it comes and do what's best
(23:55):
for her. But I think rightin this moment, you know, we've
had a lot of conversations about justthe opportunities here, the quality of life
here. I think it gives usa lot of stuff that we wouldn't be
able to get and give her inCanada, which which definitely those upsides kind
of outweigh the downsides. Yep.Okay, I think this is my favorite
question we received, and we gotthis from from our good friend Sasha,
(24:18):
So shout out to Sasha for thebest question on this list. He asked,
what is your favorite taco? Ithink for me, it's gotta be
taco or an al pastour taco wouldbe my favorite. Okay, that's mine
too, But I feel like youneed to give a caveat that it needs
to be like a good ol passtorewith like a good trompo, because I
don't want just like any ol pastoorwhere they've like maybe shaved the meat previously
(24:42):
from a trampo, like days anddays earlier, and they're just like heating
it up in a frying pan.That's not my vibe. So I feel
like a good ol pastore taco.I feel like second to that would be
like a really good shrimp taco,and and also a barbacoa taco. I
(25:02):
feel like those are kind of mylike close seconds. And if I was
at a place that had al pastorand the menu but they didn't have the
trumpo, which if you guys don'tknow, it's like the big spit with
the meat on it that they rotateand cut it off, kind of Donaire
style. If they didn't have thatbut they had al pastora, I would
order something else. Yeah, Ithink that's that's about where I'm at.
Taco's Governor, which are like shrimpbut like in melted cheese, are a
(25:26):
go to for us. And thenwhat was I going to say? Oh,
Taco's the Canasta, which are kindof like soaked and like meat juice,
are pretty tasty. But again it'slike you can have some good ones
and you can ask some bad ones. So those would be the top of
my list. Okay, nice,Okay. Next question has a couple of
parts that says, what was itlike getting set up in Mexico from getting
(25:49):
residency, deciding on Catro, gettingyour car down, and finding a place
to live. Yeah, I thinkthis is basically that would be like an
hour long episode, and I thinkit's stuff we've hit on in different episodes,
so we're willing to point to those. But overall, it was like
incredibly smooth, like it was agradual process for us, and kind of
(26:10):
when we came here and got ourselvesmore set up full time, like we'd
already spent a bunch of time inMexico, knew a lot about how things
worked. But then kind of there'sso many different Like if you were in
a city, normally there's a communityand there's people who can help you navigate
a lot of these things. Sofor us, like we worked with someone
great going through the residency process whenwe first did it, and then that
(26:34):
was more of a law firm,and then this person's more of just like
you call her like a fixer ofsome variety, just someone who can help
you book appointments, translate documents,prepare things here. And she was helpful
for like renewing our temporary residency,changing to permanent residency, all that stuff,
and then kind of going through thecar process. One. Our drives
(26:56):
were great, super fun and enjoyed. Like on the way down, if
you haven't listened to those episodes,we shipped our card to Utah because at
that time you couldn't cross the USborder in a car, and then drove
from Utah to Caretro. Last summer, we drove from Caretro back to Canada,
sold our Canadian car, came backdown here and bought bought a car
(27:17):
here in Mexico, and that thewhole process was like pretty pretty darned smooth
as well. In same finding aplace to live, we actually kind of
did it through our network, butagain, like most communities have some great
real estate agents and people who canhelp you kind of identify what are the
best areas of town to live in, what are the different options, all
that type of stuff. Yeah,that was a really good, like sistinct
(27:41):
answer, and yeah, we dohave podcast episodes on a lot of this
stuff. But I think, justto kind of add a couple of things
to that, I feel like ourpath with Mexico has happened really organically,
Like when we came down back intwenty seventeen. I don't think either of
us saw a future in which wewere like permanent residents living full time in
(28:02):
Mexico, you know, owning acar, having a child who has Mexican
citizenship like that was not at allon our radar. I think it was
just we needed to be more settledthan we had been previously in our nomad
stuff. We wanted to be ina time zone that worked, and we
felt like Mexico was a great optionbecause we had six months on a tourist
(28:26):
visa, it was on Central Standardtime. We'd heard great things about Mexico
City, and then I think thatas we discovered more of Mexico, we
just got really like I guess,kind of sucked into it and just fell
in love with the people, theculture. We learned more and more Spanish,
and I think that being more advancedalmost fluent Spanish speakers now has helped
(28:48):
us a lot, I think forthis whole process. But another thing I'll
add to is that one of thegreat things about Mexico is that there was
a lot of people willing to assistwith these types of services, So things
like arriving and getting set up,Like there's an amazing real estate agent slash
house hunting company that we've used herein Queretro and she will like take you
(29:11):
in her car from you know,area to area, show you around the
area and two or you through houses. She'll help you navigate like signing a
contract in Spanish, She'll walk youthrough it all in English. And you
know, those are the type ofthings that I think people don't realize because
they think, like, oh,I'm going to move to this place,
I don't speak the language. Youknow, maybe I'm going to get like
(29:33):
taking advantage of And there's a lotof people who are willing to help.
There's a lot of people who offerservices like this as a business, like
even from things like we'll pick youup at the airport and we'll get you
set up with like your first placeto live until we get you into like
a more permanent place. And thegreat thing is is that these services are
affordable, so you're not going tobreak the bank doing things like this.
(29:53):
So we're big fans of stuff likethat. But yeah, getting residency was
something that kind of came from like, hey, you know, Canada was
going pretty crazy during the pandemic.We were actually unable to fly back due
to flight cancelations. We were ona tourist visa. Everywhere else was kind
(30:15):
of closed. There was a lotof restrictions, and we felt a little
bit like trapped, and so welooked to see if temporary residency might be
an option for us and decided tojust go for it and apply, and
that was one of the best decisionswe've ever made. We did that back
at the beginning of twenty twenty one, and then things have just kind of,
I guess snowballed from there in termsof like the more we set our
(30:37):
life up here, we just decidedto kind of stay. And then when
we got pregnant, we decided tomake the move to Queretro. And part
of that was like who we wantedto birth with. I really wanted to
birth with a midwife and in eitherat home or with a birthing center,
and I found somebody who seemed reallyaligned here, so we came to meet
her earlier in my pregnancy. Wetoured the city a little bit. We
(31:00):
looked around and we kind of feltlike, yeah, this is definitely something
somewhere we could stay for at leastsix months. So we kind of thought,
bring our car down, We'll stayfor my last trimester and at least
the first three months of the baby'slife, and then if we don't like
it, we can move on.And spoiler alert, we really liked it
a lot, so we decided tosign a lease and get into a more
(31:22):
permanent situation here. But yeah,I think that things are really similar if
you're an American or Canadian, thingswork differently here, but also really similarly,
so the way that you know ofthings like buying a car or finding
a place to live, Like,in general, things work pretty similarly and
people can help you navigate the differences, Like there's lots of locals that have
(31:45):
those services, like we've mentioned,So I would say overall, it's been
a lot of paperwork, a lotof language learning. Definitely some like ups
and downs and challenges, but overallquite smooth. Yeah. Yeah, And
the only things I add would belike, we used lots of different services,
but did find most of our accommodationson our own. Over Like most
(32:07):
of the years living here, likeusing Airbnb and then kind of getting set
up meeting people and going about itthat way. But we've never really regretted
hiring someone to help us with anythingfrom the immigration stuff to other stuff.
So um, yeah, that's beengood I think, or generally too,
like just trust. Like I thinkcoming in you're like really skeptical a lot
(32:28):
of things like oh I gonna getscammed here whatever, But trusting your gut
and kind of like you know,trusting people but using discernment has really led
us in good directions and to workwith people who have been really helpful,
whether it was the car, houses, etc. Yeah, We've found a
lot of good information through Facebook groups. I feel like most cities we've spent
(32:51):
significant time in in Mexico have reallygreat like expat or digital nomad groups.
And you know, if you gointo like the XPAC group in Kietro for
example, and you start looking likewho could help me with my residency or
who could help me find a house, Like, the people that we've worked
with are the people that are thatare going to be like most recommended.
So I feel like you can kindof trust when like hundreds of people in
(33:14):
a Facebook group are recommending the samepeople you know you've found like good people
and they don't want to scam you, Like this is their livelihood, this
is their business. They're here tohelp. They're not looking to make a
quick buck off of you, especiallyif people are recommending them. So yeah,
I feel like, use your gutin your judgment, like you said.
But I think also like there arereally great people out there in all
(33:37):
countries around the world that are reallygenuinely wanting to help you have a good
experience for sure. All right,So last question on our list is what's
on your travel bucket list? Andwhich of these do you think you'll be
able to accomplish this year. Yeah, this is a really good question.
I feel like the whole twenty twentiethor twenty twenty two got us off of
(33:57):
like thinking what's on our bucket list? About to be want to do kind
of change our direction and kind ofreconnecting with that. Now, I guess
start with, like what's on mytravel bucket list? I feel like I'm
not super clear on this right now, Like what are the things that are
on the top of it? Goingto every state in Mexico is definitely there.
I'd love to go to like someplaces in like Central Asia, like
(34:17):
Mongolia or Kazakhstan or something like that. I think one day I'd love to
travel Russia. I would like togo to some like interesting island countries,
like go to like the Falkland Islands, or go to you know, some
of these these random kind of geographicand political isolated things. So all that
(34:40):
stuff is kind of still on mybucket list. Probably going to antarcticast on
my bucket list, spending a summerand Patagonias on my bucket list. This
year, I think, well,hey, let me answer the question before
you get into what we're doing.Okay, So a lot of those are
really similar. I think some otherones I actually have like an around the
world bucket list on on my todo list app so Safari in Africa is
(35:02):
something I would love to do.I would love to do some like bigger
hikes, maybe like Mount Kilimanjaro.Maybe ever space Camp obviously need to train
significantly for those. Going to Bhutanhas always been on my bucket list.
Places like Madagascar, Easter Island,Jordans, swimming in the Dead Sea.
(35:23):
I really want to go to Turkeyand do a hot air balloon ride and
also see the Petrified waterfall there seeingthe Northern lights through a glass igloo.
I think you can do that inlike Finland. That's something that I would
love to do. And then Ifeel like doing the Trans Siberian Railway.
I think that goes through a goodportion of Russia. That's something that's definitely
(35:44):
on my bucket list. The Maldivesare on my bucket list. Going to
ender arcticas on my bucket list becausethat's our last continent. So lots of
big things that I would like todo, and I feel like, now
that we have a little one,I feel really excited to think about giving
her these experiences and letting her seethe world in this way. So those
are mine. Oh the Egyptian Pyramidsas well. I would love to see
(36:05):
the pyramids in Egypt. So lotsof things. I'm sure there's a million
more, but those are kind ofthe top ones that come to mind.
So, yeah, what if thoseare we doing this year? I feel
like basically none, I was goingto say. I think part of my
bucket list seems to be like justgoing back to the places I've already been
and enjoyed, So doing well onthat part of it with like this Japan
(36:29):
trip and Colombia. I think thatmost likely is like making some progress on
Mexican states out of my list ofthings, and then maybe like getting some
stuff planned for bigger adventures, kindof like a year from now. Maybe
a little bit more than a yearfrom now, Yeah, for sure.
So I think just for a littlebit of context. So obviously we weren't
(36:49):
traveling a ton during my pregnancy,and then when lou was really little,
and so as she kind of hita year, we were like, Okay,
we're feeling a little bit more comfortablewith parenting, a little more stable.
We've saved some money, We're readyto do a couple of trips,
and I feel like we've been kindof just doing the trip so far that
got canceled during the pandemic, soMedine was one of them. So now
(37:13):
we've done that, I feel likewe went back to Panama, which felt
like we've maybe kind of closed tochapter for now on Panama because we left
so quickly. We actually had flights. I don't know if we ever talked
about this in the podcast, butwe actually had flights to Japan for twenty
twenty one. I think it waswe booked them at the end of twenty
twenty, thinking this will be amazing. We've got a great flight deal.
(37:35):
Japan stayed closed, so we aregoing to Japan for the month of April.
I think that we've been really reallykeen to get back to Japan since
we went there in twenty seventeen,and I think taking lou there is kind
of a bucket list item for us. And yeah, we were just talking
the other day about what the restof the year looks like. We've got
a big trip to Canada planned inthe summer, and then not too sure
(37:57):
about the fall. I think we'rekind of looking at maybe taking some more
states off the list in Mexico.But when the pandemic was happening and we
were living here, we were likefeeling kind of a bit depressed with all
the places we couldn't go, andso we kind of made this sort of
big but smaller goal for ourselves oflike, hey, could we just explore
like a lot of Mexico. AndI think one of the beautiful things about
living in a country that's so diverseis that there's a lot to see here,
(38:22):
and there's a lot we still haven'tseen. I think we're just a
little over half in terms of thestates we've been to here, so we've
still got a lot of this countryto explore, and we've got some cool
trips planned or on our radar forover the next I guess like six to
nine months, the rest of twentytwenty three, so taking off a couple
more states here, and then we'llhave to decide what's aligned on our bucket
(38:45):
list and what's most important for usfor twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five.
Where where do we want to go? Yeah, yeah, definitely,
But yeah, I think, likeyou said, that's a good point,
is kinding to like reassess the bucketlist because some places you've already been in,
Like I think, like you said, taking lou to Japan would like
be like a bucket listening and soespecially like as you know, more kids,
(39:10):
kids get older, that type ofthing, some of those like a
ventures, we've already done that andreally loved and like taking our family to
see them. I think we'll beon there, Yeah, excited to kind
of start exploring a little bit widerand farther as time goes on, Yeah,
for sure. And I think justlooking at our list and deciding what
(39:30):
makes sense in the next couple ofyears. Like I really am keen to
do an African safari, but Ithink they do have a minimum age limit,
so that probably won't be something thatwe do in the next couple of
years. While we have really smallkids. We'll wait till they're a little
bit bigger and can come along andenjoy that type of thing. So it'll
just be a matter of like,you know, what's a good fit for
us in this current chapter of life. And yeah, I was just talking
(39:53):
with a friend the other day whowas in Vietnam, and I was like,
Oh, I really want to getback to Vietnam. Like it's been
We've been in there since twenty eleven. That feels like a lifetime ago.
And so I would really love togo back there. And so I think
that the hard thing, especially nowthat we have more of a home base,
is like we need to be alittle choosy about where we go,
where we take our bigger trips andstuff like that, and kind of balance
(40:15):
exploring new places. Taking some thingsoff the list will also you know,
there are places we want to goback to and stuff like that. So
also doing that stuff, Yeah,definitely amazing. Well, thank you all
for your questions. Like we saidat the beginning, if you guys have
any other questions, feel free tosend them in and we can do another
episode like this. But it's beenfun to answer these questions and have this
(40:36):
chat. So thank you so muchfor listening to this episode and sticking with
us, and hopefully this has beenfun and enjoyable for everyone. Thanks for
listening. Okay, bye, guys, thanks for listening to this episode.
If you want more to make sureto check out the World Wanders Insider available
on Patreon at patreon dot com.Slash the World Wanders for show notes,
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(41:00):
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subscribe and leave a review. Itreally helps us find new listeners. See
you next time,
Hello, and welcome to the WorldWanders podcast, a proud part of the
wander Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan, I'm Amanda, and we're your host.
We're a traveling couple and digital nomads, taking you on our adventures as
we explore locations, destinations, andcareers. Enjoy the show. Yeah,
as always really appreciate you guys tuningin and extending to dive into some listener
(00:25):
Q and A today. Yeah,so, we haven't done a Q and
A episode in a long time,and so put out a little call for
questions plus some questions we'd received viadms and emails, so compiled some of
those together to hopefully give you guysan exciting and interesting episode. And just
before we dive into it, ifyou guys do have any questions for us,
(00:47):
or any questions you ever want usto answer, feel free to just
send us a message on Instagram orFacebook. It's at the World Wanders podcast
or info at the World Wanders dotcom. You can always email us and
send us a question. These episodesare always really fun to do and we
haven't done one for ages, somaybe we can start making it a more
frequent occurrence for sure. Yeah,should be diving. Yeah, So the
(01:10):
first question is how do you balancecooking versus eating out while traveling? And
I feel like this is a reallyinteresting question because I think for us it
kind of is different depending on whattype of trip we're doing. So if
we're doing something that's more of likea long weekend getaway somewhere, a weeklong
vacation style trip, or something that'smore of like one plus months, more
(01:34):
nomad style. So maybe let's start. If we're going somewhere for like a
long weekend, what does it looklike for us? Yeah, it's a
like ninety percent eating out. Iguess I guess our typical style, like
if we're going for a weekend andwe're staying at an airbnb, would be
maybe like cook breakfast in one ortwo days and then mostly eat all of
(01:55):
our other meals out. Yeah.In general, we like to book into
airbn bes. I think recently we'vestayed in more hotels, but I feel
like that's more like one nights,two nights, anything kind of longer than
that. In general, we liketo get an airbnb, and we always
look for airbnbs that have kitchens inthem, and then we will at least
buy snacks, because I think thatwhen we're eating out in general, we
(02:17):
often don't eat like three large mealsout, so we'll either try to like
cook breakfast and then go out fortwo meals, or maybe do like a
big brunch and then a dinner andhave something like light in between, like
snack type thing, or you know, buy some ingredients to cook something.
But yeah, would definitely say ifwe're doing like a weekend or a long
weekend, part of the experience forus is going out and eating and so
(02:42):
you know, we really only haveso many restaurants that we can eat at
in that time period, so we'regoing to try to eat at as many
as we can. And then whatabout those like week maybe a week long
vacation style trip. I know we'vedone this and in Panama a number of
years ago, we just did atrip to PV with vacation style. We
did Costa Rica vacation style. Yeah, I think not a lot changes.
(03:05):
I think that probably like the differentiationwould be when we are staying kind of
like we did that Medaine trip,going somewhere for like three weeks longer.
I think if it's a kind ofa week and it's more vacation style,
we're still you know, a heavymajority, but when we are staying somewhere
like a few weeks, that's Ithink when we're cooking a little bit more
so, like when we were inMedine for almost a month in an airbnb
(03:28):
with the kitchen there, we probablythat one was probably what likety fifty,
yeah, close to that, likebetween lunches and dinners, most breakfasts at
home, between lunches and dinners,probably like one of those. A day
at home was kind of what thething we're aiming for. Sometimes it was
less probably a few nights in arow it was more, but about that
(03:51):
type of thing. And then obviouslythis change is a little bit depending on
where you are. So we spentso much time over the past couple of
years in places where it's really affordableto eat, like I know, traveling
Southeast Asia, lots of places inLatin America, Like if you go to
the grocery store and start getting stuff, it's like, yeah, it's affordable.
But if you're shopping kind of likeyou would in Canada, buying like
(04:12):
you know, some of those importerproducts, you kind of get the sense
of like might just be cheaper forme to order in food. So like,
if we're going to the States,we're going to be cooking our own
meals more often. And if,for example, if we went to Europe,
we'd be looking at doing that.But just because kind of where we've
been, it's lended itself as wellto a higher percentage of eating out slash
(04:33):
ordering in. Yeah, yeah,one hundred percent. I think that's a
good differentiation too, is that wedo order in quite a bit, and
you know, so it doesn't alwayslook like going out, but we're ordering
uber eats or rappies, so we'rehaving a meal that's delivered to us,
but we're not always going out.And this is especially shifted quite a bit
(04:53):
with having the baby, just becausewe're on her schedule quite a bit and
stuff like that. But I alsothink the location thing is important, and
I think looking up where you're goingand seeing what the cost of food is.
And I think the States is areally great example versus Mexico, somewhere
where we are not going to saywe're going for a week, you know,
we are not going to eat ninetypercent of our meals out. I
(05:13):
think it's going to be like onemeal a day and we'll go and do
like a big grocery shop, andit's not really affordable the way it is
here to order our groceries online.So one of the things we look for
when we look for an airbnb oraccommodation is like, are we in walking
distance ideally or like a quick uberfrom a pretty major grocery store. So
yeah, I think definitely planning basedon your budget how much things are going
(05:40):
to cost in the place that you'regoing. But I think for us,
like a big part of travel andnomad life and living abroad has been the
food. I mean, one ofthe things that we love about living in
Mexico is the food, and soI think getting to experience new restaurants,
eating at places we like, supportingthe local economy in that way has something
has been something that's been important tous and continues to be important to us.
(06:01):
Yeah, I think too, withjust like the way budgeting works,
like we often end up staying inlike a smaller apartment, and so once
you start cooking in there, it'smaking a big mess you don't like,
especially with bouncing work too. You'rein the apartment, you're working all day,
you cook like there's a really nicefeeling of like getting out, going,
walking somewhere, sitting down, we'rea little bit more present, and
(06:26):
so all those things beyond budget thatmake it feel like it's it's worthwhile.
And I think we both love yeah, eating good food, experiencing like finding
new restaurants, kind of being outand about in like a community where you're
seeing lots of different people. Andso for us, that's a big part
of travel. And I think oneof the reasons we do look to travel
to places where the costs are lowerthan they are in Canada, the States,
(06:47):
Europe is that feeling of like,yeah, we can go out and
eat dinner like most nights if wewant to. Is something we look for,
not that we don't like cooking,but just for us when we're traveling,
that's something we like to do.Yeah. I think the last thing
I'll say about this is that kindof leaning into like the different rhythms,
Like I feel like, you know, we have cravings for different things and
(07:10):
sort of different chapters and cycles oflife. And I think that one thing
that we've noticed is that we gothrough these different periods of time, like
say, we're traveling continuously quite abit and we're eating out quite a bit,
we'll feel like the desire to settledown, and so that'll be like,
hey, let's get an apartment ina city for you know, maybe
(07:32):
three months instead of one month ormaybe even six months, and let's do
things like invest in a good fryingpan or invest in an instant pot,
and let's make a concerted effort tocook the majority of our food and give
back into things like going to thegym, etc. Etc. And So
I think that there's kind of theselike cycles that happen also, and I
(07:55):
think we just kind of lean intothat and trust that if we're in a
big period of eating out quite abit, at some point we're going to
be craving more of that, likehome cooked, eat at home, lighter
food, and just kind of goingwith the flow with that a little bit.
We haven't had that as much overthe last year because we have been
more stable. So I think we'vebeen cooking probably like the majority of our
(08:16):
food over the last little bit,and that's really nice. But I also
feel like when we go places likeour trip that we just did to Panama
and Medine, it was really niceto be going out more and trying new
restaurants and all that type of stuff. Yeah, for sure. Okay,
great. So the next question thatwe received is did you feel safe in
medine? And the person asked especiallywalking around in the evenings and in the
(08:39):
Pablato area. And so the firstthing I'll say with this is that we
do have an entire episode on Columbia. It's one of the recent episodes that
we released, and we talked quitein depth with this. But I think
the short answer for this is,Yes, we felt really pleasantly surprised with
everything in medicine. The entire vibewas really great, and I don't think
(09:00):
we at any point felt unsafe atall. Yeah, I think the first
thing I'd say is, I thinkwhen you're going in travel circles, there's
a lot of like feeling safe feelingunsafe, which I think has like some
value, but isn't necessarily like thebest metric like for your actual safety or
not. Like I know, there'squite a few black legitimate safety concerns in
(09:24):
medie, especially in evenings, especiallyin like bars and clubs and that type
of thing. When when you're inthose spaces around strangers were like you know,
more family oriented. Now, sowe're up more in the day,
not staying out late, not doingthose steps of things, which leads itself
to feeling a little bit safer andto being a little bit safer. So
I think we both felt like reallycomfortable. Not very many sketchy people around,
(09:48):
especially in those areas, and solike walking around, you know,
everyone's been super friendly, a lotof like exchanging like hellos with people,
and so yeah, it didn't geta sense of like unsafety or safety concerns
at all. But I do thinkkind of that that bigger point with traveling
of like on November first, theTurkey feels really safe, and sometimes when
(10:09):
you're traveling, you like nothing happens, you feel safer and safer, but
you're actually more and more in danger. And so I think there are legim
at safety concerns in many specifically Columbiagenerally most places generally especially at night.
But for us, like when wewent out in the evenings, we're never
really outpassed like ten pm, andI mean, let's be real, we
(10:30):
weren't out past like eight pm.Yeah, but like we're probably out like
to nine something at least one nightmaybe, but walking around pretty busy area.
So there's lots of people around,not very many sketchy people around,
and so just from like our perception, it didn't seem like there was a
particularly like a high risk of beingmugged in that area, that zone that
(10:52):
we're staying in. But I'm surelike once you get into like the one
ams, two ams, and maybein some other zones of the city that's
not the camp. Yeah, forsure. And I think that I would
always advise taking safety precautions. Imean, if you were traveling solo,
I think that that makes you athigher risk for all this type of stuff.
I mean, we were together,I think basically all the time.
(11:15):
I wasn't ever really really alone,and I wasn't really ever alone with the
baby. And again we weren't outin the middle of the night. I
think if you're alone and maybe you'vebeen out drinking that and it's three am,
that puts you in a more vulnerablesituation. So I think this taking
safety precautions, maybe not getting inthose situations, or if you do want
to do that, just knowing thatmaybe taking an uber instead of walking might
(11:37):
be like the better option for you, etc. Etc. We took general
safety precautions in Meding, though likeour passports were kept safe in the safe
in our apartments where we were staying. You know, we didn't really walk
around with a lot of valuables.In general, we don't have like a
lot of flashy things. We're notever out like waving around our cell phones
(11:58):
or anything like that. And thenthe other thing we do is we never
keep all of our cash in ourwallets, just in case purses do you
get stolen, our wallets get stolen, or muggings do happen. So always
making sure that you've got cards andcash kind of separated so that if somebody
does steal your stuff, it's it'snot going to be like the end end
of the world. You've still gotsome cards, some money, maybe in
(12:22):
a form of identification, that typeof thing. So I think that just
taking those general safety precautions is somethingthat I would definitely advise, and I
would advise that for most places inthe world. But in general, I
think we did feel, you know, quite safe and whatnot. In Medine
we had a really pleasant trip andyou can hear more about that in that
episode that we did. Yeah,definitely, and I think for us going
(12:43):
into so we'd been there before andkind of had addrenal sense of things going
into it had probably like more peoplebringing this up. I don't know if
there's like the narratives changing or whatthe deal is, but I think we
felt safer while we were there thenthe questions, concerns and thoughts kind of
(13:03):
beforehand. But that said, wenever really know if you're just getting lucky.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, AndI do feel like a lot of
those things are just like wrong place, wrong time, so it is important
to take precautions because you know,bad things can happen anywhere, all right.
The next question is what is thecost of living in Mexico. I
(13:24):
feel like this question is a reallyhard one to answer because it's going to
be really different depending on where youdecide to live in Mexico. I think
one I think comparison that I canmake is like when we lived in part
of Irata, for example, wewere paying about twelve hundred USD for a
one bedroom apartment in a really nicearea of town with a small ocean view,
(13:45):
a sizeable one bedroom apartment, butstill one bedroom apartment. And here
in Queetro we play, we paypretty similar for a three bedroom house with
a backyard in like a private communitywith like a pool and a gym,
also in a really nice area.So that just gives you the sense of
like a city that's more local versusa city that's more touristy, and the
(14:09):
difference in demand. So we havelike at least twice the amount of space
in this house as we did inthat apartment, probably like two and a
half times the space, plus thebigger outdoor space, plus amenities. So
I feel like, you know,the bang for your buck is a lot
better in a city like here thanit is versus PV. Yet being in
a city like PV offers a lotof benefits, you know, things like
(14:31):
the beach. I mean, ifyou don't speak a lot of Spanish,
it's great because there's a lot moreEnglish speaking there. It's more touristy.
If that's your vibe. If you'relooking for more, you know, people
from you know, maybe the USor Canada or your home country, you're
probably more likely to find them there. And then, yeah, like I
said before, the beach. Soif you're looking for a beach vibe,
(14:54):
places like Portavorda and plattl Carmen andTuloom are just going to be more expensive
than some of the more local inlineplaces. Yeah, I think you really
hit on it varies a ton,almost feel like you could be like the
cost of living in Mexico's whatever youwant it to be. Like you could
live really far out of the cityin like, you know, a not
so nice small apartment and eat Tamali'sand tacos and spend like, you know,
(15:18):
under a thousand dollars a month.Easy that you can live in the
center of Mexico City in a twobedroom apartment and eat out most nights and
spend probably more than you're currently spendingunless you live in New York like four.
Yeah, I think in general,my sense, like in a totally
non scientific way, would be itseems like two to three times like either
(15:45):
the cost difference for the exact samething or the quality difference for the exact
same cost. So like if you'recomparing living in like one of the nicer
areas, like a kind of ahip area of Mexico City to like a
hip area of New York City,Like the rents next city are quite high,
but they're at least double or moreif you were in New York City
and kind of something like if you'recomparing PV I don't know, like La
(16:08):
or San Diego, Yeah, orlike maybe San Diego or somewhere like a
beach town in Florida. If youwere looking at paying the exact same rant,
you'd be looking at like a significantlynicer place to stay. And then
you go to the bar, yougo to the restaurants, Like if you
go to a similar like quality place, usually the prices are going to be
(16:29):
like two to three times lower forlike a similar level of quality would be
kind of like my real thumb rightnow. That said, the Mexican paso
is like really strong. So overthe past year, the things in Mexico
relative to US dollar prices have gottengotten higher or more expensive here, significantly
more expensive compared to the Canadian dollar. Inflation is happening here, So I
(16:55):
think kind of over time we'll seethat trend a little bit lower, like
where they difference isn't so great,especially in like the nicest areas where there
are people from other places in theworld coming to Mexico. Yeah, for
sure, for sure, I thinkthat you touched on something important there where
you said like you can kind ofspend what you want to spend, because
even the prices we're spending is likewe could be spending quite a bit in
(17:15):
this city if we are living ina different area, maybe not in a
private community, we could certainly beliving in a smaller space. You know,
we have friends that pay like,you know, five hundred, seven
hundred dollars less per month than wepay, and you know, they have
quite a bit less space and livein a less ideal area, but at
least in our opinion, but youcan spend less. And I remember when
(17:38):
we lived in Mexico City back intwenty seventeen, we thought we were getting
like an excellent deal on rent.Like I think we were paying about seventh
sorry, about a thousand dollars Canadianseven hundred and fifty USD a month for
a small, one bedroom apartment inRoman Norte, which is an amazing area
of the city to be in.And I mean this was like cutting down
(18:00):
on our cost of rent pretty significantlyfrom Canada. And then we went to
Medita and we were there with afriend and our friend was moving into this
like I think, two bedroom,two story house that was like probably twice
as big as our apartment, andI think he was paying like four hundred
USD or something like that. Sohe was paying like almost half of what
(18:22):
we were paying, and I waslike, oh, we are like definitely
in the wrong city. And obviouslyprices have shifted quite a bit. They've
gone up quite a bit over thelast couple of years, just with inflation,
demand, just the nature of theeconomy and stuff like that. But
I think just looking at your budgetand what you'd ideally like to pay,
and then looking at what is apriority for you, like what amenities are
(18:44):
the most important thing for you,you know, even with like the fanciest
apartment that you might want to livein in Roman Norte. Like Ryan said,
if you're comparing this to like amajor city in the US, you're
still going to have a lower costof living, but it's not going to
be cheap cheap, Like you're notgoing to get a ball in penthouse in
Condesa for a cheap price, Likeit is relatively expensive to live in that
(19:08):
area in that city at this time. So I think that narrowing down maybe
a couple of cities that you're kindof interested in because they are related to
your values, and then just doinga little bit of research on you know,
areas you might want to live inthe cost there and then deciding based
on that. And while there wasmany reasons that we decided to live in
(19:30):
Curetro, I think cost of livingin what we could get here relative to
some of the other places we livedwas definitely a factor for us. Definitely.
Okay, next question is the nextquestion is what are the biggest downsides
of raising a child in Mexico versusyour home country? And I think that
this is a really interesting question becauseyou know, obviously, I think for
(19:52):
us, we've identified more upsides thandownsides. But I think the two major
downsides that I would identify are one, I do feel like there are more
safety concerns in Mexico and we dotake more safety precautions, especially with having
a child, than we would ifwe lived in Canada. And then too,
I feel like the other downside forme is that we are just further
(20:15):
away from family. If we livedin Canada, particularly Western Canada, we
would be able to see, youknow, our families more, which I
think would be really special for forLou, We're really lucky that our families
are willing to con visit us hereand we get back to Canada once or
twice a year to see them.But I do feel like that's a downside
of being, you know, livingabroad. Yeah, I think there's really
(20:36):
honestly not too many downsides. Likeobviously we think upsides outwegh the downsides,
but like you said, those,I think you're the big ones. I
think the safety thing because when youhave like a child that's under two,
like you're not letting them play alone. Really, it doesn't make itself as
a parent. I think some ofthose downsides will probably start to be more
(20:59):
apparent she gets older, like thoseages where you want your child to kind
of like roam free, which obviouslyisn't that's a concern, and like lots
of different cities in Canada in theStates now that is safety, but I
think it's more apparent here, andthat's more of a downside of like and
you're like ten year old, tenyears old and you want to go like
roam all around on your bike byyourself. I'm not sure how we're going
(21:22):
to feel about that here. Andthen distance from family, especially if family
gets older, And then I thinkfor me, like there's maybe that downside
of like we're second language speakers inthis country and kind of what's it gonna
look like when our like if ourdaughter is like kind of identifies Spanish as
like the way she prefers to communicate, and there's like always a little bit
(21:42):
of like, you know, maybelack of ease with us talking to Spanish,
Like could that be a downside aswell? Those things that come to
mind for me, yeah, orvice versa, if you know, she's
speaking English at home and that's kindof her dominant language, Like how does
she navigate? I mean, one, she holds a Mexican passport, so
she's a Mexican national, and youknow, how does she navigate the world
(22:06):
around her. We're hoping that she'llbe like confident and fluent in both,
but I think it's just definitely anuncertainty. I think similarly to that,
one thing that I have thought aboutis just like, you know, like
what does she identify with culturally?And obviously we don't know what our long
term plans are, but I thinkthat if you're born in the country that
(22:26):
your parents are born in, Sohad she been born in Canada and our
base was in Canada and we werein Canada for half the year every year,
then I think there'd be like she'llidentify as Canadian, but it's a
little bit more tricky when it's likewe're living in Mexico. She is a
Mexican national, but like, we'renot Mexican and we're Canadian. She's also
(22:48):
a Canadian citizen, but we don'tspend that much time in Canada right now,
so I definitely do think about that, like what are the downsides of
being like I guess, like Ithink they call them like third culture kids,
you know, like is that somethingthat's gonna packed her? And I
know talking to a friend of minewho actually is American and Canadian. She's
a dual citizen, but her familyis originally from Mexico, so when she
(23:10):
was growing up in Texas, shehad a lot of influence from the Mexican
side of her family, and shemoved to Canada quite young. And she's
like, I don't know if Iwant my daughter to have to get her
the second passport, because she canget her the US passport through birth.
She's like, I don't know ifI want to get her it quite yet,
because she's like I feel like Inever really knew exactly where I fit,
(23:32):
Like I was never fully American I'venever been fully Mexican and I was
never really felt like fully Canadian,and she's like, I kind of just
want her to like be Canadian.And obviously she can make that choice when
she's bigger and stuff. But it'sdefinitely something that gives you, like food
for thought in terms of like whatwill this be like? But I kind
of trust that we will navigate thatstuff as it comes and do what's best
(23:55):
for her. But I think rightin this moment, you know, we've
had a lot of conversations about justthe opportunities here, the quality of life
here. I think it gives usa lot of stuff that we wouldn't be
able to get and give her inCanada, which which definitely those upsides kind
of outweigh the downsides. Yep.Okay, I think this is my favorite
question we received, and we gotthis from from our good friend Sasha,
(24:18):
So shout out to Sasha for thebest question on this list. He asked,
what is your favorite taco? Ithink for me, it's gotta be
taco or an al pastour taco wouldbe my favorite. Okay, that's mine
too, But I feel like youneed to give a caveat that it needs
to be like a good ol passtorewith like a good trompo, because I
don't want just like any ol pastoorwhere they've like maybe shaved the meat previously
(24:42):
from a trampo, like days anddays earlier, and they're just like heating
it up in a frying pan.That's not my vibe. So I feel
like a good ol pastore taco.I feel like second to that would be
like a really good shrimp taco,and and also a barbacoa taco. I
(25:02):
feel like those are kind of mylike close seconds. And if I was
at a place that had al pastorand the menu but they didn't have the
trumpo, which if you guys don'tknow, it's like the big spit with
the meat on it that they rotateand cut it off, kind of Donaire
style. If they didn't have thatbut they had al pastora, I would
order something else. Yeah, Ithink that's that's about where I'm at.
Taco's Governor, which are like shrimpbut like in melted cheese, are a
(25:26):
go to for us. And thenwhat was I going to say? Oh,
Taco's the Canasta, which are kindof like soaked and like meat juice,
are pretty tasty. But again it'slike you can have some good ones
and you can ask some bad ones. So those would be the top of
my list. Okay, nice,Okay. Next question has a couple of
parts that says, what was itlike getting set up in Mexico from getting
(25:49):
residency, deciding on Catro, gettingyour car down, and finding a place
to live. Yeah, I thinkthis is basically that would be like an
hour long episode, and I thinkit's stuff we've hit on in different episodes,
so we're willing to point to those. But overall, it was like
incredibly smooth, like it was agradual process for us, and kind of
(26:10):
when we came here and got ourselvesmore set up full time, like we'd
already spent a bunch of time inMexico, knew a lot about how things
worked. But then kind of there'sso many different Like if you were in
a city, normally there's a communityand there's people who can help you navigate
a lot of these things. Sofor us, like we worked with someone
great going through the residency process whenwe first did it, and then that
(26:34):
was more of a law firm,and then this person's more of just like
you call her like a fixer ofsome variety, just someone who can help
you book appointments, translate documents,prepare things here. And she was helpful
for like renewing our temporary residency,changing to permanent residency, all that stuff,
and then kind of going through thecar process. One. Our drives
(26:56):
were great, super fun and enjoyed. Like on the way down, if
you haven't listened to those episodes,we shipped our card to Utah because at
that time you couldn't cross the USborder in a car, and then drove
from Utah to Caretro. Last summer, we drove from Caretro back to Canada,
sold our Canadian car, came backdown here and bought bought a car
(27:17):
here in Mexico, and that thewhole process was like pretty pretty darned smooth
as well. In same finding aplace to live, we actually kind of
did it through our network, butagain, like most communities have some great
real estate agents and people who canhelp you kind of identify what are the
best areas of town to live in, what are the different options, all
that type of stuff. Yeah,that was a really good, like sistinct
(27:41):
answer, and yeah, we dohave podcast episodes on a lot of this
stuff. But I think, justto kind of add a couple of things
to that, I feel like ourpath with Mexico has happened really organically,
Like when we came down back intwenty seventeen. I don't think either of
us saw a future in which wewere like permanent residents living full time in
(28:02):
Mexico, you know, owning acar, having a child who has Mexican
citizenship like that was not at allon our radar. I think it was
just we needed to be more settledthan we had been previously in our nomad
stuff. We wanted to be ina time zone that worked, and we
felt like Mexico was a great optionbecause we had six months on a tourist
(28:26):
visa, it was on Central Standardtime. We'd heard great things about Mexico
City, and then I think thatas we discovered more of Mexico, we
just got really like I guess,kind of sucked into it and just fell
in love with the people, theculture. We learned more and more Spanish,
and I think that being more advancedalmost fluent Spanish speakers now has helped
(28:48):
us a lot, I think forthis whole process. But another thing I'll
add to is that one of thegreat things about Mexico is that there was
a lot of people willing to assistwith these types of services, So things
like arriving and getting set up,Like there's an amazing real estate agent slash
house hunting company that we've used herein Queretro and she will like take you
(29:11):
in her car from you know,area to area, show you around the
area and two or you through houses. She'll help you navigate like signing a
contract in Spanish, She'll walk youthrough it all in English. And you
know, those are the type ofthings that I think people don't realize because
they think, like, oh,I'm going to move to this place,
I don't speak the language. Youknow, maybe I'm going to get like
(29:33):
taking advantage of And there's a lotof people who are willing to help.
There's a lot of people who offerservices like this as a business, like
even from things like we'll pick youup at the airport and we'll get you
set up with like your first placeto live until we get you into like
a more permanent place. And thegreat thing is is that these services are
affordable, so you're not going tobreak the bank doing things like this.
(29:53):
So we're big fans of stuff likethat. But yeah, getting residency was
something that kind of came from like, hey, you know, Canada was
going pretty crazy during the pandemic.We were actually unable to fly back due
to flight cancelations. We were ona tourist visa. Everywhere else was kind
(30:15):
of closed. There was a lotof restrictions, and we felt a little
bit like trapped, and so welooked to see if temporary residency might be
an option for us and decided tojust go for it and apply, and
that was one of the best decisionswe've ever made. We did that back
at the beginning of twenty twenty one, and then things have just kind of,
I guess snowballed from there in termsof like the more we set our
(30:37):
life up here, we just decidedto kind of stay. And then when
we got pregnant, we decided tomake the move to Queretro. And part
of that was like who we wantedto birth with. I really wanted to
birth with a midwife and in eitherat home or with a birthing center,
and I found somebody who seemed reallyaligned here, so we came to meet
her earlier in my pregnancy. Wetoured the city a little bit. We
(31:00):
looked around and we kind of feltlike, yeah, this is definitely something
somewhere we could stay for at leastsix months. So we kind of thought,
bring our car down, We'll stayfor my last trimester and at least
the first three months of the baby'slife, and then if we don't like
it, we can move on.And spoiler alert, we really liked it
a lot, so we decided tosign a lease and get into a more
(31:22):
permanent situation here. But yeah,I think that things are really similar if
you're an American or Canadian, thingswork differently here, but also really similarly,
so the way that you know ofthings like buying a car or finding
a place to live, Like,in general, things work pretty similarly and
people can help you navigate the differences, Like there's lots of locals that have
(31:45):
those services, like we've mentioned,So I would say overall, it's been
a lot of paperwork, a lotof language learning. Definitely some like ups
and downs and challenges, but overallquite smooth. Yeah. Yeah, And
the only things I add would belike, we used lots of different services,
but did find most of our accommodationson our own. Over Like most
(32:07):
of the years living here, likeusing Airbnb and then kind of getting set
up meeting people and going about itthat way. But we've never really regretted
hiring someone to help us with anythingfrom the immigration stuff to other stuff.
So um, yeah, that's beengood I think, or generally too,
like just trust. Like I thinkcoming in you're like really skeptical a lot
(32:28):
of things like oh I gonna getscammed here whatever, But trusting your gut
and kind of like you know,trusting people but using discernment has really led
us in good directions and to workwith people who have been really helpful,
whether it was the car, houses, etc. Yeah, We've found a
lot of good information through Facebook groups. I feel like most cities we've spent
(32:51):
significant time in in Mexico have reallygreat like expat or digital nomad groups.
And you know, if you gointo like the XPAC group in Kietro for
example, and you start looking likewho could help me with my residency or
who could help me find a house, Like, the people that we've worked
with are the people that are thatare going to be like most recommended.
So I feel like you can kindof trust when like hundreds of people in
(33:14):
a Facebook group are recommending the samepeople you know you've found like good people
and they don't want to scam you, Like this is their livelihood, this
is their business. They're here tohelp. They're not looking to make a
quick buck off of you, especiallyif people are recommending them. So yeah,
I feel like, use your gutin your judgment, like you said.
But I think also like there arereally great people out there in all
(33:37):
countries around the world that are reallygenuinely wanting to help you have a good
experience for sure. All right,So last question on our list is what's
on your travel bucket list? Andwhich of these do you think you'll be
able to accomplish this year. Yeah, this is a really good question.
I feel like the whole twenty twentiethor twenty twenty two got us off of
(33:57):
like thinking what's on our bucket list? About to be want to do kind
of change our direction and kind ofreconnecting with that. Now, I guess
start with, like what's on mytravel bucket list? I feel like I'm
not super clear on this right now, Like what are the things that are
on the top of it? Goingto every state in Mexico is definitely there.
I'd love to go to like someplaces in like Central Asia, like
(34:17):
Mongolia or Kazakhstan or something like that. I think one day I'd love to
travel Russia. I would like togo to some like interesting island countries,
like go to like the Falkland Islands, or go to you know, some
of these these random kind of geographicand political isolated things. So all that
(34:40):
stuff is kind of still on mybucket list. Probably going to antarcticast on
my bucket list, spending a summerand Patagonias on my bucket list. This
year, I think, well,hey, let me answer the question before
you get into what we're doing.Okay, So a lot of those are
really similar. I think some otherones I actually have like an around the
world bucket list on on my todo list app so Safari in Africa is
(35:02):
something I would love to do.I would love to do some like bigger
hikes, maybe like Mount Kilimanjaro.Maybe ever space Camp obviously need to train
significantly for those. Going to Bhutanhas always been on my bucket list.
Places like Madagascar, Easter Island,Jordans, swimming in the Dead Sea.
(35:23):
I really want to go to Turkeyand do a hot air balloon ride and
also see the Petrified waterfall there seeingthe Northern lights through a glass igloo.
I think you can do that inlike Finland. That's something that I would
love to do. And then Ifeel like doing the Trans Siberian Railway.
I think that goes through a goodportion of Russia. That's something that's definitely
(35:44):
on my bucket list. The Maldivesare on my bucket list. Going to
ender arcticas on my bucket list becausethat's our last continent. So lots of
big things that I would like todo, and I feel like, now
that we have a little one,I feel really excited to think about giving
her these experiences and letting her seethe world in this way. So those
are mine. Oh the Egyptian Pyramidsas well. I would love to see
(36:05):
the pyramids in Egypt. So lotsof things. I'm sure there's a million
more, but those are kind ofthe top ones that come to mind.
So, yeah, what if thoseare we doing this year? I feel
like basically none, I was goingto say. I think part of my
bucket list seems to be like justgoing back to the places I've already been
and enjoyed, So doing well onthat part of it with like this Japan
(36:29):
trip and Colombia. I think thatmost likely is like making some progress on
Mexican states out of my list ofthings, and then maybe like getting some
stuff planned for bigger adventures, kindof like a year from now. Maybe
a little bit more than a yearfrom now, Yeah, for sure.
So I think just for a littlebit of context. So obviously we weren't
(36:49):
traveling a ton during my pregnancy,and then when lou was really little,
and so as she kind of hita year, we were like, Okay,
we're feeling a little bit more comfortablewith parenting, a little more stable.
We've saved some money, We're readyto do a couple of trips,
and I feel like we've been kindof just doing the trip so far that
got canceled during the pandemic, soMedine was one of them. So now
(37:13):
we've done that, I feel likewe went back to Panama, which felt
like we've maybe kind of closed tochapter for now on Panama because we left
so quickly. We actually had flights. I don't know if we ever talked
about this in the podcast, butwe actually had flights to Japan for twenty
twenty one. I think it waswe booked them at the end of twenty
twenty, thinking this will be amazing. We've got a great flight deal.
(37:35):
Japan stayed closed, so we aregoing to Japan for the month of April.
I think that we've been really reallykeen to get back to Japan since
we went there in twenty seventeen,and I think taking lou there is kind
of a bucket list item for us. And yeah, we were just talking
the other day about what the restof the year looks like. We've got
a big trip to Canada planned inthe summer, and then not too sure
(37:57):
about the fall. I think we'rekind of looking at maybe taking some more
states off the list in Mexico.But when the pandemic was happening and we
were living here, we were likefeeling kind of a bit depressed with all
the places we couldn't go, andso we kind of made this sort of
big but smaller goal for ourselves oflike, hey, could we just explore
like a lot of Mexico. AndI think one of the beautiful things about
living in a country that's so diverseis that there's a lot to see here,
(38:22):
and there's a lot we still haven'tseen. I think we're just a
little over half in terms of thestates we've been to here, so we've
still got a lot of this countryto explore, and we've got some cool
trips planned or on our radar forover the next I guess like six to
nine months, the rest of twentytwenty three, so taking off a couple
more states here, and then we'llhave to decide what's aligned on our bucket
(38:45):
list and what's most important for usfor twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five.
Where where do we want to go? Yeah, yeah, definitely,
But yeah, I think, likeyou said, that's a good point,
is kinding to like reassess the bucketlist because some places you've already been in,
Like I think, like you said, taking lou to Japan would like
be like a bucket listening and soespecially like as you know, more kids,
(39:10):
kids get older, that type ofthing, some of those like a
ventures, we've already done that andreally loved and like taking our family to
see them. I think we'll beon there, Yeah, excited to kind
of start exploring a little bit widerand farther as time goes on, Yeah,
for sure. And I think justlooking at our list and deciding what
(39:30):
makes sense in the next couple ofyears. Like I really am keen to
do an African safari, but Ithink they do have a minimum age limit,
so that probably won't be something thatwe do in the next couple of
years. While we have really smallkids. We'll wait till they're a little
bit bigger and can come along andenjoy that type of thing. So it'll
just be a matter of like,you know, what's a good fit for
us in this current chapter of life. And yeah, I was just talking
(39:53):
with a friend the other day whowas in Vietnam, and I was like,
Oh, I really want to getback to Vietnam. Like it's been
We've been in there since twenty eleven. That feels like a lifetime ago.
And so I would really love togo back there. And so I think
that the hard thing, especially nowthat we have more of a home base,
is like we need to be alittle choosy about where we go,
where we take our bigger trips andstuff like that, and kind of balance
(40:15):
exploring new places. Taking some thingsoff the list will also you know,
there are places we want to goback to and stuff like that. So
also doing that stuff, Yeah,definitely amazing. Well, thank you all
for your questions. Like we saidat the beginning, if you guys have
any other questions, feel free tosend them in and we can do another
episode like this. But it's beenfun to answer these questions and have this
(40:36):
chat. So thank you so muchfor listening to this episode and sticking with
us, and hopefully this has beenfun and enjoyable for everyone. Thanks for
listening. Okay, bye, guys, thanks for listening to this episode.
If you want more to make sureto check out the World Wanders Insider available
on Patreon at patreon dot com.Slash the World Wanders for show notes,
head over to the World Wanders dotcom. Find us on social media at
(41:00):
the World Wanders podcast enjoin the privateFacebook community at World Wanders, a community
for travelers. You can always getin touch with us at info at the
World Wanders dot com. And ifyou enjoyed the show, don't forget to
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you next time,
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