Episode 9: Moving to Mexico’s Pink City After 16 Years in Southeast Asia

In this week’s podcast, International Living Mexico Correspondent Wendy Justice meets host, Jim Santos, as she explains just why she moved to the highland town of Querétaro in Mexico. 

A long-time expat, until recently Wendy made her home on the other side of the globe, in Vietnam. Now, in Mexico, what similarities, and indeed, what differences does she find in her new home? Some things are universal, others are quite the opposite. When an experienced traveler and expat brings fresh eyes to a new location, you can be sure they’ll have a lot to report.

From climate to cuisine, the mid-sized city (1.3 million residents) provides Wendy with everything she could hope for in a retirement destination. A compact, historical centro is the postcard-pretty focus of the city, but in the surrounding zonas, practical details like large supermarkets, malls, modern housing, and prosperous industry take over. Add an international airport with excellent connections to the U.S., and it soon becomes clear why this is an up-and-coming destination for clued-in expats.

You can read Wendy's article in the May 2022 issue of International Living Magazine: Mexico’s Pink City: Tidy, Upscale Living on $1,600 a Month.

Settle in, press play, and find out as we welcome you to the latest episode of International Living’s Bigger Better World podcast.

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Transcript

Jim Santos 00:10 

Hello, everyone. I'm Jim Santos, and this is Bigger, Better World from International Living. In this podcast series, we introduce you to a bigger world, full of communities that are safe, welcoming, beautiful and largely undiscovered. A better world. A friendly, warm, great value world where you can live richer, travel more, invest for profit and enjoy a better life. We talked with our writers and other people just like you who took a chance and followed our guidance to create for themselves bigger, better lives all around the world. Let's get to it. 

Welcome to Bigger, Better World. Today we're joined by International Living's Mexico correspondent Wendy Justice, who was able to take early retirement at age 51 and take up living abroad. She's been traveling, writing and taking photos along her journey since 2005 and is currently living in Santiago de Quéretaro in the hills of central Mexico. Wendy, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.

Wendy Justice 01:13 

I'm happy to be here.

Jim Santos 01:15 

Now, Wendy, I do want to get into talking to you about Mexico and this region that you're in now. But first of all, it's kind of unique that you've spent so much time now living outside of the country. So wondering if you give our listeners a little bit of insight into the road that led you here, where did you start off in your life abroad?

Wendy Justice 01:32 

The first time I'd really spent any time abroad to speak of was in Germany back in the 1980s. And when I first went there, I was just certain that I was going to hate it. They weren't English speakers. The food was different, it was going to be unpleasant. But when I got there, I was just so surprised that I just loved it. And I think that was a really important step to take, to realize that if I could live in Germany, I could live anywhere.

Jim Santos 02:01 

And were you there for work?

Wendy Justice 02:03 

Actually, my ex husband was in the military, so we were there for about two years in a little town.

Jim Santos 02:10 

Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people that I've talked to in our experience also had that same kind of feeling. It seems like it's going to be this incredible challenge, and then once you've done it, you kind of wonder what the big deal was, what you were so afraid of.

 Wendy Justice 02:23 

My funny story with this is going into a restaurant, and I knew that coffee and German was kaffe, so I thought, Well, I can do that. I said, kaffe, and she brought me a cup of coffee. And then when I wanted to have a refill, I banged my cup on the table and held it out to her and she says to me, do you want another cup of coffee? in English. Some people here understand English. There's hope! I'm going to be okay with this. And over the next two years, I actually got pretty good with German. But I found that the majority of people and this is anywhere in the world you're going to find English speakers wherever you go, and it's really not that much of a barrier wherever you are in the world.

Jim Santos 03:09 

Yeah, I noticed that in Europe especially, because the countries are so close together and have so much business with each other. We had a waiter in Italy who spoke seven languages. So sometimes I think Americans ought to think about their own education when we focus so much on our own language and just expect other people to speak it. But it is a nice surprise when you run into it like that. So after Germany, what was your next stop?

Wendy Justice 03:34 

Yeah, so I came back to the US and lived for quite a while after that. In 2003, my husband and I took a trip to Southeast Asia, and it was a place I'd always wanted to go. My grandparents had been to Thailand back when I was really little, and just came back with these exotic tales of what it was like there. And it was a place I always wanted to go to. So in 2003, we took a trip to Thailand and Cambodia. 

And sure enough, I just loved the place. And I remember we spent three weeks there. And the whole flight back home I was crying. And I told my husband, I said, I don't want this vacation to end. I'm not ready for this. And we really made a decision right there on the flight back that we were going to work as hard as possible to retire as soon as we could. And that took two years. In 2005, we bought one way tickets to Hong Kong, and at that time we had the idea that we were just going to travel around the world. But as it turned out, we liked Southeast Asia so much that we ended up spending the next 16 years there.

Traveled around the area, through China, through that whole region. Ended up spending about a year in Chiang Mai in Thailand, moved from there to Kuala Lumpur for two and a half years, and then just fell in love with Vietnam. And lived in Vietnam for about eleven years.

Jim Santos 05:01 

Yeah. Wow.

Wendy Justice 05:02 

And stayed there until last summer, actually, a year and a half ago in 2021, ended up moving to Mexico.

Jim Santos 05:11 

Now, about Mexico, we know that Mexico came up in the number two spot in the International Living 2023 Global Retirement Index this year. So there's a lot to be attracted to there. But what was it that attracted you to Mexico?

Wendy Justice 05:24 

One of the reasons why actually I left Southeast Asia and left Vietnam in particular, is that there wasn't any way to legally live there. You could get tourist visas or temporary one month, three month visas, but unless you had a full time job with a Vietnamese employer, they didn't have any sort of retirement visa or any way to acquire permanent residency. And I end up having to leave because I couldn't justify being there. And the government said, hey, you've been here for eleven years now on a tourist visa or a business visa, but you're not doing business, so you need to leave. 

So I started researching different places and eventually had a choice in my own head between moving to Mexico or moving to Ecuador and checked out the residency requirements and the permanent residency options for both countries. And Mexico was just really easy. So that was really the primary thing that got me here. I already knew people who lived in this area. And everybody said, oh, you're going to love it here. Come down, bring a suitcase and, you know, see what you think.

And that was about a year and a half ago. I've been here ever since.

Jim Santos 06:42 

Had you traveled to Mexico before?

Wendy Justice 06:44 

I'd been as a tourist, never to live. I've been to Cancún and Tulum and Chichen Itza, been to the Baja before. My brother actually lived in Michoacán State in Morales. So I'd been to that area before, but I've never actually lived here until I guess it was August 2021.

Jim Santos 07:09 

Now, your article that we wanted to talk about was in the May 2022 edition of International Living. It was called ‘Mexico's Pink City. Tidy, Upscale Living on $1600 a Month’. Now, one of the reasons Mexico scored just outscored Panama and ended up in the number two spot this year is because of the strong US dollar and conventional version rates for the dollar in the peso. But I believe you say in the article that actually this is one of the more expensive places that you might want to live in Mexico.

 Wendy Justice 07:39 

It is, and to be honest, since that article was written, it's gotten to be a little bit more expensive. And the main reason why is because back then the exchange rate was about 22 pesos to a dollar. Right now it's about 19 and a half pesos to a dollar. So basically it's 10% more now than it was then.

Jim Santos 08:01 

The Mexico isn't the only place where that's true. Right now. It seems like everything's gotten a little more expensive since May of last year.

Wendy Justice 08:06 

Yeah, it has. And I think between the dollar being weak against the Mexican peso and then Mexico having their own inflation was just running about 8% a year, so it's definitely made a difference. But even so, it's very affordable. I can still go out and get a, get a four course meal for $3, so I can't complain.

Jim Santos 08:26 

Yeah. In the articles you brought up the local delicacy of gorditas. I think that's a play on the word gordo for fat. I'm picturing a big overstuffed sandwich.

Wendy Justice 08:36 

If you ate enough of them, I think that would be quite accurate, yes. They're basically just kind of a fluffy, a dense corn tortilla that's been filled with either meat or potatoes and carrots or cheese and then fried on both sides on a grill. So they're kind of a Mexican style fried dumpling. And from what I hear, it used to be in Quéretaro that if you wanted to go out to eat, you would have gorditas because that's all that was available. But this area, fortunately, has grown since then. And now you can get a lot of different things, but they're still really popular. The locals love them.

Jim Santos 09:12 

Yeah. How big a city is this? How many people are we talking here? I noticed it has its own international airport.

Wendy Justice 09:18 

I believe right now the population is about 1.3 million.

Jim Santos 09:22 

Okay. So it's a good sized city.

Wendy Justice 09:23 

And then the airport is also the main one that people would use if they live in San Miguel de Allende because we're only about 45 minutes from there. So it serves as a pretty big regional airport. And then you also have the option, of course, of the Mexico City airport. But it's a nice airport to fly in and out of just because it's little so it's really easy to get your way around. And if you go through customs, it takes about ten minutes. So it's pretty handy to have it here. And they have to direct flights to Houston, to Dallas, to Chicago, and I believe also to Los Angeles. So you can get to the States very easily and quickly.

Jim Santos 10:06 

Okay, so even though you are in the mountains there, it's not exactly a remote location.

Wendy Justice 10:10 

No, it's not remote. No. And we're only three and a half hours from Mexico City.

Jim Santos 10:14 

You paint a picture in the article of kind of an old world charm, especially in the historic district. Yet you mentioned that there's also things like Costco and Sam's Club.

Wendy Justice 10:23 

Yeah, it's got a lot of well, first of all, I believe it's the fastest growing city right now in Latin America. So you have the Centro Historico, which is where everything started, and then everything has grown out from there. So the Centro is very much an old world charm. You could be in Spain, you could be anywhere in Old Europe, and it's really nice. And I think most of the people who are retired in Quéretaro live in Centro. But you go a short distance out of Centro and then you're in the different commercial areas where we have a Sam's Club, we have a Costco, there's big shopping malls, there's gated communities and things like that. So you can really choose a lifestyle that you want to live here. If you want to just wander the cobblestone streets and eat at the little restaurants that have been in business for generations, or if you want something more modern, you want to go to Denny's or IHOP, we have that, too.

Jim Santos 11:22 

Your description also of the local shops where you have your own butcher and baker and everything. Just kind of in your own little area there. Really reminded me of places in Europe like Florence where you have this kind of real neighborhood feel. Is that something that attracted you to that area also? Just this idea of living in a small community inside a big city?

Wendy Justice 11:42 

Very much, yes. We actually live just right outside of Centro. We're close enough where there's a lot of overlap between the two. But we have a little fish store that we go to where we get our shrimp and tuna and things like that. For seafood. We have a little laundry lady we take everything to. We have a meat market where we can get a high quality of meat. If we don't want to go to the big stores, there's markets nearby, so we could go to Walmart or Costco and get everything we want. But I think part of the fun of living here is making those human connections with these little shops and the store keepers and the people in the neighborhood. I know whenever I go out, I walk down my street, or really anywhere in this neighborhood, and people are greeting me because they know who I am. And I do patronize the local businesses.

Jim Santos 12:35 

Yeah, that's something we really enjoyed in Ecuador also their mercados and seeing these same people a couple of times a week, because when the vegetables are that fresh, you don't stock up. You just buy them when you need them. And it was nice seeing the same faces and the smiles, and they know what you like. You ask for avocados and they say, ‘hoy o manana?’. You're going to have them today or tomorrow. So you get one that's just the right ripeness. It's just a really nice way to live.

Wendy Justice 12:58 

Yes. Or I'll go to a store and they'll go, well, where is your husband? Is he okay? I always have to take him with me or the whole neighborhood is going to be chattering. Her husband wasn't there. I hope he's okay. Pretty cute, actually. We've made a lot of nice acquaintances here.

Jim Santos 13:14 

So you do have local friends also. It's not just like an expat community.

Wendy Justice 13:19 

At this point, I'd say I have more Mexican friends than I have expat friends here.

Jim Santos 13:23 

Are there a lot of expats in Quéretaro?

Wendy Justice 13:25 

Retirees? I'd say that there's probably less than 200 in the city. When you get out into the suburban areas like Huracan, which are about 20 minutes drive from Centro, and you get a lot of employees there. They have a big aerospace industry and aviation and engineering and things like that. And you get a lot of younger expats and people with kids and families that tend to live in those areas. But for some reason they don't really like living in Centro, and we seldom, if ever, go to those parts of town where they live. So there's not really any interaction to speak of.

Jim Santos 14:06 

This is people who are there for their job.

Wendy Justice 14:08

Right. But as far as the retirees go, we pretty much all know each other and we have occasional get togethers or we'll take organized walks and things like that. So it's not a big community, but it's a closely knit community.

Jim Santos 14:23 

That's something that I used to hear all the time from people, is I don't know what I would do living in another country. Can you tell us what a typical day is like for you?

Wendy Justice 14:31 

I seem to have something to do every day. Yeah, I do. I'm busy all the time. I love going for walks in Centro, and I try to do that several times a week. I love just walking in the neighborhoods and the parks here when I do my shopping. That's often a full day thing because I'm going to stop in all these little shops and, you know, chatter and ask them how they are and how their families are and maybe have a cup of coffee with them or whatever. So there's a lot of community connection in my typical day, and then I'm always planning for new places to go to check out. In another ten days or so I'm going to go to Mexico City for a few days and kind of explore that city because I haven't been there yet. Recently came back from Mérida in the Yucatán Peninsula, recently came back from Oaxaca in the southern highlands and recently took a three day trip up to San Miguel de Allende just to check it out. So there's really a lot to do in this area, and it seems like the people I know, we're all busy all the time.

Jim Santos 15:40 

I think most expats feel like they never really have much in the way of plans, but they seem to always be busy.

Wendy Justice 15:46 

Exactly. Our landlord likes to come over and chat, so he'll come over for five minutes and it turns into a couple of hours, and there's always time to have that happen and it's always nice and again to make that connection with the local people.

Jim Santos 16:03 

One of the things the article that also stood out to me was one of the reasons it's possible to live there in so affordable budget is because if you're living near the central area, you have no need for a car, which is an incredibly big cost savings for most people. Is it very easy to get around within the city? How's the public transportation there?

Wendy Justice 16:23 

It's really easy. I can walk to 98% of the places I want to go to, and for me that's anything within about a mile and a half of where I live, which is practically everything. If I want to go to the supermarket or almost everything I want to do, I can walk to. They do have a good public bus system here. It's called Q-R-O which is really the abbreviation for Quéretaro, and it's called Q-R-O bus. Because I'm a senior. I have a senior discount card, which is called an inapam card, and I get a discount on my bus fare. So I can take a public bus anywhere in the city for nine pesos, which is about $0.45. If I didn't have the Inapam card, it would cost eleven pesos. So that's $0.55. So it makes it really affordable, and the buses go everywhere. And overall, I'd say they're reasonably efficient. If I'm really, you know, in a hurry to get somewhere and I don't want to take the bus, I can take a taxi. And we have both Uber and another company called DD which is the one that I usually use.

But usually you can put in an order for a taxi, and within ten or 15 minutes, they're picking you up and taking you to where you're going.

Jim Santos 17:39 

And the nice thing is, you're probably never really feeling like you're pushed for a time anyway, so it's another 15 minutes. Right?

Wendy Justice 17:45

If it's a matter of 15 minutes for me, I'll walk. And we do sometimes if the bus doesn't come along in ten or 15 minutes, it's like, okay, it's a couple of kilometers away, 1.2 miles. Just go ahead and walk it, and we're there in 45 minutes.

Jim Santos 18:00 

If you're tired, it's like a three or $4 cab ride back, right?

Wendy Justice 18:03 

Pretty much, yeah. Sometimes less. I took one just yesterday. I took a taxi. Think it came out to 38 pesos. So not even $2. Uber usually is a little bit more than DD. I think they offer the same service, but if I take an Uber, it would have been about 50 pesos, and DD is 38.

Jim Santos 18:23 

But it's still like Uber here the payments done online. You don't actually hand cash over with Uber.

Wendy Justice 18:28 

But yeah, we have bills. There's another one called Cabify, which does some has some taxis around the area. And you can always hail a taxi, too, but because I'm not really that fluent in Spanish, I speak some, but I don't speak it like a local.

Jim Santos 18:45 

Right.

Wendy Justice 18:45 

I like the idea of knowing exactly how much my fare is going to be beforehand. So that's why I like hailing a taxi rather than flagging one down.

Jim Santos 18:54 

You mentioned you chose the area because you had friends living near the area. Did you consider any of the other parts of Mexico? I know one of the reasons why it scored so high in the Retirement Index this year was because of the variety of climates and lifestyle opportunities in the country. It's really a very large country. Did you think about any of the other places or just decide to try that out first?

Wendy Justice 19:17 

We didn't really have that much of a plan when we went here. As I was saying, we kind of had to leave Southeast Asia, and when we initially we flew back to the States and we said, well, where are we going to go? We got to go somewhere. And everyone's saying, well, we're down here in Quéretaro, why don't you come and see us? So we didn't really consider the other places. We have thought about Pasquaro and Morelia because I like the climate there and it's nice, but I also like big cities and that was something that attracted me to Quéretaro. I like that to have that variety of things to do and shopping and entertainment and that kind of thing that you get from a larger city. But we really haven't explored a lot of the parts of Mexico that I would have been interested in had I been familiar with them. And I'm thinking like Oaxaca in particular. I think if I had been to Oaxaca before, that is a place I could imagine myself living at. But at that time it was just a place on a map, so I didn't know anything about it.

 Wendy Justice 20:22 

When I lived in Vietnam, I was used to really hot, humid tropical climate. And I thought, as long as I'm going to be in another country and I can pick my climate because in Mexico you really can, I want something that's going to be cooler and drier. So that was the thing that attracted me to the central highlands where we are now.

Jim Santos 20:40 

What is the climate like there?

Wendy Justice 20:41 

My landlord jokes that we have four seasons every day.

 Jim Santos 20:46 

That's a saying in the highlands of Ecuador. Also, there's four seasons in every day, so must be universal to that point.

Wendy Justice 20:53 

You dress in layers, right? You know, this time of year it's going down around between 42 to 45 at night. Getting up in the mid 70s during the day. It will get warmer in the summer, but it still doesn't get really hot. It might get above 90 for a couple of days, but that's really about as hot as it's going to get here. It's below 90 and then I've never seen it colder than maybe 38 or so in the winter time. So it's really nice. And almost every day it's going to be up in the 70s or the 80s during the day. That's typical. And I think for me at least, that's just a perfect climate. It's nice and cool at night, nice and warm during the day.

Jim Santos 21:37 

I believe it's just about under 6000ft.

Wendy Justice 21:40 

I think we're about 5800 here.

Jim Santos 21:42 

Yeah. Is that high enough to get you above most of the insect life?

Wendy Justice 21:46 

We have mosquitoes. I think they're happy living anywhere on Earth, so we don't really escape them here. I guess they're worse than other places, actually. But overall we don't get a lot of insects. I hear reports of scorpions sometimes.

Jim Santos 22:02 

Do you get a lot of rain there?

Wendy Justice 22:03 

It's dry. This is really pretty much of a desert climate. It actually did rain one day in December, which is kind of unusual. Last year we got a rain in early November, and it didn't rain again until October.

Jim Santos 22:21 

Wow.

Wendy Justice 22:21 

So I think our average rainfall, I'm not actually sure, but it's considered semi-arid desert climate.

Jim Santos 22:30 

It is a big change from Vietnam.

Wendy Justice 22:31 

Yeah, that's a big difference. And then our humidity is really low here, what will commonly have days where it's less than 20% humidity.

Jim Santos 22:40 

Now in a city that size, over a million people. I'd assume you also have some decent healthcare in the area.

Wendy Justice 22:45 

It's actually a medical hub. I think Quéretaro and Mexico City probably have the best healthcare in Mexico. And they have hospitals here that people will travel from all over the country to receive their medical care here. It's really good. I think I've had more experience with that here than I wish I had. But the care that I've received has been outstanding and really reasonably priced compared to US. Prices. It's just downright cheap. And the dental care, too is extraordinarily good. Most of the doctors speak English, the equipment is modern, the facilities are hygienic. I have nothing but good things to say about healthcare in this town.

Jim Santos 23:29

And is that all private medicine or is there a state run healthcare plan?

Wendy Justice 23:33 

Also, they have two different government run programs in Mexico. One is called IMSS, which a lot of employees are covered with under their employers. But people who have legal residency in Mexico are also eligible to have that. And that gets you care in an IMSS hospital where your medical care is included, your prescriptions are all included, and there's a small annual fee that they do it on a sliding scale, but it can be anywhere from about two hundred dollars to eight hundred dollars per year for one person. And that $800 would be if you're over the age of 80. So it's pretty good that if you're 80 years old, you can apply for the IMSS insurance and know that you have coverage basically at any IMSS hospital in the country. If you don't have the money to spend for that and you're a legal resident, you can also qualify for the INSABI public health program, which is free to anybody who is uninsured, whether you're Mexican or a temporary or permanent legal resident. And they have their own hospitals. In some areas they're considered to be quite good, in other areas, not so much. I've never used one.

Wendy Justice 24:49 

But people have said that you really have to have a good knowledge of Spanish or have a translator with you if you want to receive care there.

Jim Santos 24:55 

Right.

Wendy Justice 24:56 

But the good thing with INSABI is that they'll take anybody regardless of your medical condition, so they don't have any sort of pre-existing condition qualifiers or anything like that. And again, as it is with IMSS, which will exclude certain pre-existing conditions, and INSABI will pay for all your medical care and all your prescriptions.

Jim Santos 25:19 

And is IMSS also open to immigrants? If you just have a residency permit.

Wendy Justice 25:23 

As long as you're a legal resident? Yes. That means that you could not get IMSS care if you were a tourist, but as long as you have temporary or permanent residency, then you qualify for it.

Jim Santos 25:33 

When you went through the residency process, was it necessary to show that you already had insurance?

Wendy Justice 25:39 

No, there's no requirement at all to show that. And this is what I was saying earlier. It was really such an easy process to get residency. I know when I checked in with some other countries, they want to see that you've gotten a police report or FBI clearance check or have something lots of things apostiled or notarized. And with Mexico, you just pretty much you go there with your bank statements and say, Here they are, and they go, okay, you qualify. It was really simple. Didn't have to go through any of those checks, didn't have to show insurance. We didn't even have to show a marriage license. We just went in there and provided the proof that we qualified, that we met the financial guidelines, and it was approved initially in the US. And then we got the final approval once we came here.

Jim Santos 26:30 

What is the financial requirement? What kind of steady income do you have to show in order to qualify as a resident?

Wendy Justice 26:35 

They've just increased that. So if you are going to apply for a temporary residency, that's a visa that's valid for in one year, increments up to four years. So if you haven't decided you want to commit forever to living here and just see yourself working or living here for a period of up to four years, you can get that. If you can show that you have a monthly income or pension of about $3,111 or $51,860 in investments. And ultimately you can qualify for temporary residency if you own a home in Mexico worth at least $419,000. If you can show that you have investments or bank accounts with an average monthly balance of at least $207,440 or Social Security or regular pension of $5,186 per month.

Jim Santos 27:40 

Is that per person or per family?

 Wendy Justice 27:42 

That would be per person. And then I believe a dependent would be to show 25% of that figure. Now, the other thing with those figures is that it's going to depend very much on which consulate in the US you turn in your application for. And I'm not sure exactly how they do their calculations. It's based on multiple of the Mexican minimum wage.

Jim Santos 28:06 

Right.

Wendy Justice 28:07 

But it seems as if different consulates will take those minimum wages from different parts of the country. And as a result, the income requirements in Seattle are going to be much different from those in McAllen, Texas. And currently, McAllen, Texas has the lowest requirements of any consulate in the US. And I think what they're requiring right now is roughly maybe 75% of what you would have to pay if you were going through New York. Or Chicago, which are much higher. If you're thinking, well, I can't quite afford I don't have quite that much money in the bank, check at the residency income requirements and McAllen, because there'll be quite a bit less there.

Jim Santos 28:47 

Do a little due diligence and price shop before you do it, right?

Wendy Justice 28:50 

Yes, you go shopping around for the best deal, like everything else in Mexico.

Jim Santos 28:54 

I think, in life itself. Something else I noticed in your article, and this is usually very important when I meet people at conferences or just talk to them about expat life in general, they always want to know how safe it is. So I thought it was interesting to find out that Quéretaro is listed as the second lowest crime rate of any Mexican city.

Wendy Justice 29:13 

The second lowest after Mérida.

Jim Santos 29:15 

Yes. That's pretty incredible.

Wendy Justice 29:17 

You're always going to have some crime, and you can't get 1.3 million people together and not have some crime, but it tends not to be violent crime here. We don't have any cartel violence at all here, so it is safe. I think all of us expats will go out at night, walk in the streets, and I've never heard of anybody having any sort of incident with getting mugged or any problem like that. It just doesn't happen here.

 Jim Santos 29:44 

Our experience in Ecuador was basically that they were crimes of opportunity. If you left your purse unattended, there's a chance it might disappear. If you have your cell phone sitting on the table and turn around to talk to somebody, it may not be there when you turn back.

Wendy Justice 29:56 

I think it's the same here, but more than likely, it will be there when you come back. You'll go there, and it's like in fact, this happened to my husband just recently, and he left his wallet in a store, and we got home, and he reaches in his pocket and he goes, oh, no, I better go back over there. Hope it's still there. And I'm over there giving him dirty looks, right? 15 minutes later, he comes back with the wallet in the hand and said, oh, they had it behind the counter for me. So people are sweet, they're honest, and you don't worry about crime here. 

And I'll expand this a little bit, and it's a rumor, but it's a pretty widely repeated one. They do have violence throughout Mexico, and I think in terms to take the entire country, and you're going to have some figures that are fairly high for crime and especially for the cartels. But what happens is that the cartel people, they don't want their family members being hurt or being killed. So what they've done is they've taken a couple of prosperous cities in Mexico, and they've moved their families and their grandparents and their aunts and uncles to these places. And if they just kind of have this little agreement, that place is off limits. And that's what's happened in Mérida, and it's what happened in Quéretaro.

Jim Santos 31:18 

It's interesting.

Wendy Justice 31:20 

Sometimes we might see a Bentley going down the street or a Rolls Royce or something. There's one that parks over by a little taco shop near me all the time. And I know that they didn't get that by selling tacos.

Jim Santos 31:30 

Right.

Wendy Justice 31:31 

But you know, that's probably, you know, the son of, you know, he's visiting his grandparents, so yeah. So we don't worry about that here. It doesn't happen. It's a safe city.

Jim Santos 31:41 

Well, it's nice to hear. I assume you're renting your home there.

Wendy Justice 31:45 

Yeah, we could buy if we wanted to, but we want to live here a little longer and decide whether we want to make it more permanent or moved to another place, either in Mexico or elsewhere.

Jim Santos 31:57 

Yeah, that's the thing. I think once you start sampling as many different countries as you have, there's always that question in the back of your mind, what am I missing? What else is there out there I might want to take a look at?

Wendy Justice 32:07 

The first time I tried it, I'm going, oh, I'm going to hate this. And then I found out I didn't, and now I think about all these different places in the world, and it's like, oh, I want to go out there, and I'm going to love it. So it's a different mindset now than what I used to have. And I do love Mexico. I find that people here are just charming in every way. They're wonderful people. So it really has been enriching to be here.

Jim Santos 32:31 

I was about to ask you what was the favorite part about living in Mexico, but it sounds like it is the people.

Wendy Justice 32:35 

To me, it always comes back to the people.

Jim Santos 32:37 

Is there anything that surprised you about your life there now?

Wendy Justice 32:40 

Surprised me? Let's see. I'm surprised that I like Mexican food as much as I do. I'm originally from Ohio and in Ohio well, if you're in Tennessee, you know this, but Mexican food is not much of a thing in Eastern US. And I certainly didn't grow up with Mexican food. I used to think Taco Bell was Mexican food, but I've come here and I've expected everything to be spicy, everything to have rice and beans. And I had this preconception of what Mexican food was like based on my experiences in the US. And when I've come here, it's different and it's much better. 

There's a lot of really healthy Mexican food, and I don't have much of a spice tolerance. And I find that I have no problem finding food here that isn't spicy and it's very flavorful. So that's been a really good surprise. When I was in Vietnam, I would often find a restaurant where I could get a hamburger, spaghetti, or fried chicken or something that was familiar to me. I don't seem to have that urge in Mexico. It's like I'm eating comfort food every day. Right then down at my local taco shop. It's just good food and I like it.

Jim Santos 33:53 

I think a lot of Americans might be surprised about that. You go to what's supposed to be ethnic restaurants in the United States, and then you move to that country and actually try the real food and it could be quite different. We had the same experience in Italy. We thought it was going to be pasta, pasta, pasta, and really wasn't like that. We actually had more risotto than we had pasta.

Wendy Justice 34:11 

I think in some cases that can be a good thing. I grew up with American Chinese food, and when I went to China, I was shocked because it was so different. And really, it's the same thing with the Mexican. I think in Mexico, the food is very regional. So if you want a steak, you go to northern Mexico. If you want to have a molé or something like that, that's more in the south, we're more gorditas and tacos and things like that here in Quéretaro. And it's one of the delights about traveling around is that you get to sample all these different wonderful cuisines.

Jim Santos 34:44 

Absolutely. Travel can be a really eye opening experience, and that's something that we do try to make sure people understand in these podcasts. So I appreciate you bringing that up here.

Wendy Justice 34:52 

Yeah, and then we're finding foods that we thought they were just American style Mexican foods, like fajitas. But fajitas are a big thing in Mexico.

Jim Santos 35:02 

Right.

Wendy Justice 35:02 

And we've never known that before. Fish tacos is another one that you can get throughout Mexico.

Jim Santos 35:08 

One of my personal favorites.

Wendy Justice 35:09

That was something you get at the restaurants and in the US. So the food is great. The food is wonderful here and it's really affordable, which is nice.

Jim Santos 35:17 

Okay, well, Wendy, I'm afraid we're going to have to stop the podcast now because all this talk about great Mexican food has made me really hungry.

Wendy Justice 35:24 

Me too.

Jim Santos 35:27 

We've been chatting with Wendy Justice, the International Living Mexico correspondent from the charming and affordable city of Quéretaro, Mexico. If you'd like to get more information, things to do, medical and dental plans available, the expat community, and much more, you can find it in the feature story of the May 2022 issue of International Living magazine. ‘Mexico's Pink City; Tidy, Upscale Living on $1600 a Month’. Thanks again for joining us today, Wendy.

Wendy Justice 35:54 

Thanks for having me.

Jim Santos 36:06 

The Bigger, Better World podcast is the production of International living. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. If you have an idea for an episode or a question you'd like us to answer, email us at mailbag@internationalliving.com. And don't forget to put podcast in the subject line of your email. That's mailbag@internationalliving.com. 

We created Bigger, better world to help showcase the ideas we explore at International Living. Each month and grow our community of travel lovers, expats and experts who believe, as we do, that the world is full of opportunity to create a more interesting, more international life. You don't have to be rich or famous to do that. You just need to know the secrets. And that's what we bring you at International Living. If you haven't become a member yet, you can do it today with a special discount offer for podcast listeners. You'll receive our monthly magazine, plus a bundle of special extras. You'll find the link in our show notes, or you can go to Intliving.com/podcast. That's Intliving.com/podcast. 

Our guest next week is a real treat. I'll be talking with Janice Deerwester, who, at the tender age of 70, decided to strike out on her own and move to Fontainebleau, about 40 miles outside of Paris, France. Thanks again for tuning in to bigger, Better World. I'm Jim Santos for International Living, and I'll see you next week. And until then, remember, there's a bigger, better world just waiting for you.