Pros and Cons of Living in Lake Chapala, Mexico: What You Need to Know

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Transcript

0:36

Lake Chapala is a very popular area with both foreigners and Mexicans alike. Now, we just moved out here in the last month from Guadalajara, and in this video we're gonna do a comprehensive pros and cons list of the lake chip area. For those of you who've been asking us about the Lake Alah area. Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat. I'm Justin, and this is Amanda. And on this channel we talk about everything to do with moving overseas, living the American dream, perhaps somewhere else here we're gonna call it the Mexican Dream. And being able to live a lifestyle where you've got a location, independent business, or perhaps retirement that supports your dreams to be able to live anywhere and have an even better quality of life than you might back home. If you like this kind of content, make sure you like this video and subscribe to this channel so that you don't miss a single video that will help you along your journey of moving to Mexico or anywhere else in the world that your heart desires. And for those of you who are interested in relocating to Mexico, make sure to visit entrepreneur expat.com/consult. One thing we have not mentioned is, while we were in the middle of moving and all this craziness and all this chaos, uh, we had clients who were getting visa appointments in the United States. Thanks to our legal team. Many of you have mentioned to us that it's been difficult to try and get these things on your own. We've seen people get denied, uh, because one document didn't match another. Our white glove relocation services. Make sure that you handle everything that you need in order to move to Mexico from immigration to tax strategy. So if that's something that you're interested in, go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult. So what are the reasons that we love the Lake Chappa area so much? We're gonna talk about some of those pros first, number one on my list for sure. And we've, we've said this in a few other videos, but it's just the. The ambiance here. Anytime you're around water, it's just so beautiful, so pristine. You've got the water in front of you, you've got the mountains behind you, depending on what side of the, what side of the, the road you're on here. Um, we have the, you know, the lakeside and the mountain side, but, but typically you're looking at the lake and a lot of the places around here will also have a lake view like ours does, and it just puts you in a totally different mindset. What, what else would you say about that, Amanda, in terms of just, just being around water? Because you, you lived right by the bay, right? In Miami? Um, I haven't had as much of a chance to, to live right with, with like an ocean or, or lake view. I. Um, as, as we have here. But it just changes you in, in a way, right. The water and being close to nature and all that stuff. Yeah. I lived in a condo in the Brickle area of Miami a few years ago, and I would wake up to a Bay View every morning, bisque Bay. And I was telling him like, listen, once you have a water view, you just, you can't go back. Mm-hmm. You just can't. Uh, now I did go back for several years. I, um, moved to another area, uh, in Miami that I also love'cause it was full of trees. I really like trees, uh, too. And then, you know, we were here in Guadalajara and we just couldn't find personally, us personally, we couldn't find like a Mexican beach that we would enjoy living in, like visiting, investing, that's one thing. But living in, uh, we found the energy to be too frenetic, like for us personally. Now that being said, that doesn't mean you wouldn't like living in a Mexican beach town, different strokes for different folks. Uh, so if you're concerned or you have any questions, once again, entrepreneur expat.com/consult because part of our process is helping you determine what would actually make sense, uh, for you. We have clients who come to us and they want beaches. We have clients who come to us and they say very funny things like, I'm retired, not dead. I wanna be in a city like Guadalajara, for example. So. Um, again, it depends on you and your profile, but for us, we could not find Mexican beaches that we were like, yes, we would absolutely live there. Like it wasn't for us, uh, personally. Um, and then the lake just kind of hit that nice little spot.'cause the lake is so huge, it feels like an ocean anyway. And then you're surrounded by these gorgeous mountains and forests. And then you were saying that it almost feels like a beach town. In a lot of ways it does. Yeah. Because you've got the water, you've got, uh, it's definitely a little more touristic than let's say some of the cities, but it's more local tourism, like people from the Jalisco area and Mic Oan and other places will come to Al. I mean, there certainly are foreigners here, but most of the foreigners here Yeah. Are are more living here actually. Yeah. Than just coming to, to visit. So it's, it's a nice vibe. Um, and then contrary to what the beach towns are like. You don't have the frenetic energy, you don't have a lot of those like drunk tourists. It's much more of a laid back type of tourist. Someone constantly trying to sell you something while you're laying on the beach. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So again, that's our opinion. Your opinion might differ, entrepreneur expat.com/console, and we can help you make the decision that makes the most sense for you. One thing I'll add to the nature, which is something I've been thinking about today is the weather here is freaking perfect. Yeah. That's actually something, and this is maybe its own point. Is really just how good the weather is around Lake Chip Paul, because there's water here, the climate tends to be a lot more temperate, so you don't have those, those really like low lows like in the winter in Guadalajara or the high highs where it gets into like the nineties for weeks at a time before the, before the rain hits. Uh, or I mean, I think, I think we had a few days where it was above a hundred or at least, at least really close. Like in Guadalajara? In Guadalajara, yeah. It got very, very hot. Here, it'll get warm. And I think, um, near the beginning of June, which is probably the hottest month, when we just got here, it was warm, but it was still like bearable. We still would've preferred to have the ACS at night. They hadn't arrived yet. So I had a little bit of a difficulty sleeping, but there's, there isn't as much of that really, really, really hot, uh, summer as you would find in somewhere like Guadalajara, or especially in the beach towns. In Oaxaca or the Pacific, uh, coast Beaches here in Jalisco and definitely a lot less humid than, uh, the East Coast, like Caribbean beaches, like Playdo, Carmen or Cancun. Yeah. And we were told by our neighbors that the Lake Chapala area almost has like its own little microclimate. Um, they're like, and a lot of our neighbors were like, this might be the most perfect weather in the world. And then you were saying, no, Metagene probably has the most perfect weather in the world because that's what it's known for. Yeah. But Metagene is famous. For its weather. For the city of eternal spring. Yeah, the city of Eternal Spring. Although three cities in Columbia are like that because you're, you're so close to the equator, but at the same time with the elevation, it makes things a lot more temperate. So how would you compare this to, for example, like Metagene, which is famous, um, for its temperate weather all year round? Well, Metagene, I think, I think is typically what, what I saw living there is that it rains a lot more of the year than here. Here it seems to be like a couple months that the rainy season is kind of confined to there. It's more of like this rainforest, uh, kind of climate, but. In Metagene, the, the temperature barely varied at all. Like it would, if at most, like vary by a few degrees here and there Fahrenheit. Um, here in Chapala it's more temperate than Guadalajara because Guadalajara has a decently big range, although it never really gets too cold except for a few, couple weeks in the winter. Um, here it's more temperate, but it's not as good necessarily as, as Metagene. But the difference is here you have less of a rainy season from, from what I. From what I saw. So there's, there's probably more sunshine, although, although in Metagene and some other cities in colo, uh, in Columbia where it does rain, it's usually limited to like an hour or two here or there of like downpour and then it stops. Versus here we had days where it was raining at least in the rainy season the entire day. Yeah. It's just a different kind of climate that might have been'cause of the hurricane iNaCA. Yeah. That could be. Yeah. It's a, it's a different type of climate for sure. We're still collecting data on that. Yeah. We're we're still collecting data. Yeah. Um. I, I like, I like the vibe here more though. For, for sure. Metagene has its own set of problems and now it's the price is there, like New York City, I mean, with all the, with all the, all the tourists for, for good purposes or otherwise that are down there. But yeah. Um, all the Passport bros in Metagene. I like, I like the vibe here a lot more. So other pros to talk about the Lake Chapala area is it's just, um, calmer. In a lot of ways I think we just reached Than the city. Yeah, than the city. Yeah. I think we just are in a season right now where we had two years that were very fast paced between moving to another country, uh, starting entrepreneur, expat, getting married, immigration, like there, there was just a lot of going on for like two years straight. And we were like, you know what? We're ready to just kind of chill out for a little while. And we found this area to be very easy to chill out in. Of course, we already knew that because we would escape out here, uh, in the, on the weekends. When we needed a break from the city. So we were like, what if we just lived out there and then we were, you know, 15 minutes away from the thermal spas instead of an hour. Yeah. How about we try it? So it's definitely a lot calmer out here. Um, we were both kind of seeking that in this season of our lives. Who knows where we'll be in two or three years, right? What we're gonna be feeling or what's going on. But at least for right now, uh, that is something that for us, was really important. So we would call that a pro. Another thing that I really like about this area is just how fresh all the food is. Oh yeah. So you've got meat that's, that's butchered, like literally right here, locally. I mean, chicken, they kill the chickens the same day, and then they bring'em to the, uh, to the market. And you can buy fresh chicken, you can get meat that's very, very fresh, at least compared to the city. Uh, and the fruits literally are made like right here on the other side of the lake by, by that volcano. All the berries behind us, all the berries and things like that. So we're a lot closer to the farms and you have to go through a lot fewer distribution channels for most of the food to actually reach you versus being in a city. Um, and then on, on that note as well, I think that the quality of produce overall just seems to be a lot better, and maybe it partly is because it's fresher. So if you like having local, sustainable, fresh food. Uh, it's definitely a plus for the AL area. Yeah, I mean, food quality in Mexico in general is already much better than what we're used to in the United States. Um, I mean, you, for example, were able to get off of a ton of medication. We've had many of you tell us that you just lost weight like this. In Mexico, not even really exercising, just because you were changing your food and either you were walking more or the food quality was better. Mm-hmm. So imagine that if those of you who are in cities or considering cities, like imagine that with times like a hundred, because now you're getting it straight from the farms. Yeah, absolutely. What else? Why, why else would people want to live here? Well, I mean, you mentioned it earlier, we're checking out another thermal spa today. Uh, I keep forgetting the name. Uh, or how to pronounce the name, but, um, it feels like a little beach club, you know? It does. Yeah. We have little spas everywhere. It feels nice. There's a, there's a lot to do. And we just did another video about all the things to do in the lake chip area, but if you, if you're more like, let's say retired but not dead, we hear, we hear that a lot from people like, Hey, I'm retired but not dead. I still wanna meet doing stuff. Um, if you like that, but you, you want more of a laid back vibe. I mean, if you're, if you're really into arts and culture and all that, perhaps Guadalajara is a better town or city for you, or Mexico City or Mexico City, and if you don't speak Spanish, it might be a little bit harder to get by here unless there's in somewhere like Ahah, in which case almost everyone speaks English. English. Yeah. Um, obviously it depends on the town, but there's, there's a lot for everyone. But, uh, it, it's definitely more of a local vibe. Um, but I, I like that. And there's, there's, there's just so much to do. I mean, that's really the main thing is there's, there's so many things to do that are like semi-retired activities. We're almost, we're elegant adventurers. We're, we're almost a little semi-retired now, obviously we're working, we're helping you guys out, but, but in our minds, in our minds, yeah, we're, we're just kind of like, um, enjoying life. So there's a lot of fun activities to do for the enjoyment of life around here. There's a lot less hustle culture here. Now, I would venture to say that Mexico in general has a lot less hustle culture than the United States and Canada, or what some Europeans. Uh, or Australians might be used to, but uh, in the city, you know, you're gonna get the Mexican version of hustle culture, which is still slower than the hustle culture we're accustomed to, but this is like even slower. Another pro on that note is just the lack of traffic here. So traffic in the chipa area is you're on the highway and maybe for five minutes, uh, because you're going through a little town for five or 10 minutes, you're going half the speed limit because there's a bunch of cars. Hus, uh, the, um, the traffic in Guadalajara though is like you're trying to get from one side of the city to, to another side. Almost any time between like nine and five or six, maybe even 7:00 PM uh, and you're bumper to bumper for potentially hours. Yeah. With people honking at you, cutting you off in traffic, people running lights in front of you, trying to get quickly to wherever they're going there. There just isn't that here because there aren't as many people. Um, and it's just. And, and, and on the traffic note too, like it's not as saturated with people. Yeah. So you feel a lot, uh, you feel a lot more just open space and you can, you can breathe and you're, there's not like people just on top of each other everywhere, like in city. I would wanna say caveat about the traffic. I think it depends what part of the lake you're on. Like, we're closer to like the HoCo San Juan Sala area. There's like zero traffic here. Uh, now once you get into Ahi and Chapala, there is more traffic, but it seems to flow pretty well. Um, at least at this point in the year, there isn't even a traffic light between like Kota and Ahhe. And that's like a 30 to 40 minute drive. But then you get into Ahhe and there are some lights, but it's not like a big city. I mean, it's like still large town or small city. I would imagine that in the winter when you have more snowbirds coming here and it's the busy season, then we're gonna see a lot more traffic in Akin Peak in Chip Paulo, which one of you like to bring up in the comments? Uh, last time. However, it is absolutely nothing in comparison to what we were dealing with, uh, in Guadalajara. So for us, I mean, our side of the lake has like zero traffic whatsoever. Once we get into aki, we'll see more of it, but it, it's like nothing. In comparison, like it's easy in comparison to what we were dealing with in Guadalajara with like the weird lane changes that don't make a whole lot of sense on Lopez Mateos. And you're like, what's happening here? And Google Maps is like totally confused because you're like trying, you like get off the highway and then you have to stay in this lane. But then you know when you're getting on like that lane closes and then there's just like these bumps and you can't go over them. And then there's like all of a sudden no lane, and here you just don't have any of that craziness. It's just one road up and down. Now let's talk about some of the cons. So. One of the cons that I've seen for sure is that there are a, a little bit less of the, the modern conveniences. Um, I will say that you can still get things delivered like to, to your house, um, depending on where you live as long. I mean, even, even here, it's not a super densely populated area, like right outside of Poko back, but we can still get groceries delivered. We can get stuff from the pharmacy delivered. We have a guy that'll just go to, uh, what, whatever, whatever area. Um, of hoko of hoko, you know, to, to pick things up. And he charges what you're gonna pay bills for you exactly like a, he charges like, like 60 pesos and he'll go and bring all the, all the, the meat and, uh, cheese and whatever, vegetables, whatever else we need. Um, so that, you can definitely do that. You can definitely get things delivered. A lot of restaurants deliver as well, uh, but you don't have the same type of conveniences. One example would be for, for instance. Rappy. They don't really have, well, they don't have rappy out here at all yet. Rappy is kind of like, um, DoorDash or, or similar where you can just order whatever you want, or Postmates or something like that. They don't have Uber Eats and they also don't have Uber. There are certainly taxis, especially if you go into downtown. You can get a taxi. You can probably get a taxi to pick you up for a fee depending on where you are in the Hoko Beck area. Definitely in Nah. Um, so this is more cons of like where we are particularly, but in, nah, they have Uber, I believe in CHIP as well. So if you're in a larger town or, or small city in the chip area, you can still get most of those things. But if you're a little farther out, it's gonna be harder to find. Um, the other thing is infrastructure. So we're really lucky because there's so many foreigners here now, especially coming to this area. And we can actually get most of. The things we need. Like internet, for example, internet here is actually as fast as it was in Guadalajara and maybe a little bit faster at times because it's not as saturated with people. But not all of the areas around the lake are gonna have such good coverage. So there may be areas where you, you're limited to like A DSL or a star link. Uh, for us, we got lucky because our condo complex on the mountain had was wired for total play fiber. So we're getting almost a gig each way I think. I think you can get up to a gig maybe. Maybe a little more than a gig up and down. Yeah. Which is pretty cool for like rural Mexico, right? Yeah. And we've heard a lot of people say not in our, uh, comp, not in our condo area because it seems most things are underground and were built that way. But in other areas, uh, especially, we had a lot of rain the last couple days'cause there was a hurricane out by Oaxaca and then we got the rains, uh, you know, wifi and power were going out. In some of the areas. I mean, it was torrential downpours for like two days straight. Yeah. So you, you definitely wanna make sure that you've got some type of backup system. Like we've got some panels. We have, uh, about two and a half kilowatt hours of, of energy storage, which is enough to keep most of the things on for at least half a day in terms of like our, at least the basic stuff, the lights, the fans, the computers, the internet routers, all that. Um, so it helps, at the very least have like a, a backup battery or two for the really important systems because if you've got an internet router and it's connected to fiber, uh, for the most part, as long as you've got power to that, to that modem that the, that the company gives you for your internet, you should be able to get internet just fine. They'll usually have backups or panels or something. At their, whatever offices they have. So they typically don't go down or your fiber will be connected all the way to Guadalajara, where there's a little bit better infrastructure. So as long as you keep your stuff backed up. Um, but it's important to note that those power outages can happen a little more frequently. I would say like specifically where we are, well, where we are, at least during the ra rainy season, the power outages happen a little more frequently, but they're not as severe as they were when they happened in. Where we were living in Guadalajara, um, they'll usually like flicker, maybe be down for five or 10 minutes and then come back up versus in Chapa Litta, because it was in the city, but it was an older neighborhood. Uh, if the power went out, it might be out a day for hours or or half a day. Yeah. And that only happened once a month or once every couple months. Especially during the rain or during the really hot season or brownouts. Brownouts, yep. Yeah. But you definitely wanna have some type of, uh, power stabilization system so the infrastructure isn't quite the greatest. And the roads too. I would say that the roads here, you don't need a truck or an SUV necessarily. We have a Lexus, uh, her name is Lexi and she's probably gonna have to go back up north when her permit expires next year. But she's not the ideal car. She's been all right. I've only like hit a couple potholes and she, you know, she's managed. Okay. Um, but Mexico's been a little rough for Lexi. Mexico's been a little rough and, and, and the city was all right. I actually think that the roads in the city were, were, yeah, were, were better because they're a little bit better maintain when we go traveling. Mexico's been a little rough e exactly. For Lexi. So, yeah, you may want to consider having a, a little bit higher of a car, at least an SUV. It's not that you need a four by four necessarily, but you do have those tope, which are like the speed bumps that, that are very, there's no standardization, so they might vary anywhere from, you know, a, a couple of those, like a row of those sort of metal. Little things that are, that are coming up, the little dots all the way to this like concrete pillar that's, that's there to slow down traffic. But if, if you're a little too low to the ground, you might be scraping and there's no signs for these things. There's no signs for a lot of'em. There's no signs for a lot of'em. Yeah. A lot of, I would say the majority of people do have higher, higher cars, um, versus Lexus. That's great. For American freeways, I definitely recommend trucker. SUV for Mexico. Yeah, for sure. Especially if you're out in the more rural areas, which is another con of this area is you might actually need a car. Depending on where you are. Like if you're an Ahi, Centro, or Centro, you're not really gonna need a car. HoCo, Centro, you can just walk to everything. But if you're up on the mountains like a lot of people are, um, or maybe you're more like lakeside on the road, then you're gonna need a car to get through the towns or, or get what you need. And again, most people do say Lio, so it's not that big of a deal. And there are buses, uh, that go through, uh, all the towns and you can even get buses to Guadalajara. If you need to. Uh, but yeah. Or to the airport. Or to the airport or things like that. But yeah, you might, you might need a car. You're gonna need a car here more than you would need it, like in the middle of Guadalajara where you've walked to everything. Absolutely. And, and on that note too, like things are definitely more spaced out if you are in a, in a downtown, in the chip area. You can certainly find like restaurants and, and coffee shops and things like that. But, uh, outside of those areas. You're either gonna gonna walk very far or bike or, uh, have to take a car to, to get to certain things. Yeah. So it's, it's more, I wouldn't even say it's like that coun that much country, because there are still towns pretty much everywhere. So at least on this side of the lake, maybe over there where they have all the farms, it's, it's more spread out. You don't really have supermarkets and things like that. Yeah. But where we are, you're usually about a 15 or 20 minute drive at most from a supermarket. Um, convenience stores, they'll usually have them like every couple miles on the road depending on where you are. Yeah. So it's, it's not, it's more like suburbs, like, it's more like American suburbs, if anything, in terms of how spaced out things are. Um, but with a little bit less, uh, population density. I just thought of a pro we forgot to mention. What's that? Real estate. Okay. Yeah. So we'll end it on this note. Bonus pro, right? Real estate. So if you're interested in real estate, and a lot of you guys have been asking us about real estate, so we've been building a network of real estate agents all over the country. And again, we can help you, uh, connect you to them and find the place that makes the most sense for you, whether you're moving down here for investment entrepreneur expat.com/console. But if you're interested in real estate, this area is, whoa. I mean, we were talking to our neighbor yesterday who's, uh, from Guadalajara, but did real estate for 25 years in the United States. He's been retired for about a year and now he's our neighbor and now he's getting back in the game'cause he's like, I'm retired but not dead. He's one of those. So he is getting back in the game. Uh, but he's gonna be doing real estate here in Mexico and he's like, the opportunity in this area. Of Jalisco is absolutely crazy in terms of what you are able to find, bang for your buck, return on investment. I know Ahi and Chapala from what I was researching, although we feel like that area is a bit oversaturated at this point and the prices have gone a lot higher. I was reading you could still get like a. Alia, what is that in English? Appreciation. Appreciation, yeah. Of like eight to 10% a year. Mm-hmm. Uh, in that area. Uh, but there's other areas of the lake that are prime for real estate investment. So if that's something that you're interested in, there's definitely a lot of more opportunity, uh, in this area than perhaps some other parts of Mexico, depending on where you are on the lake. So that's it for our pros and cons of the Lake Chip Paul area, like this video please, because it helps us with our mission of reaching a million entrepreneur, expats, and aspiring expats. Click that subscribe button right now so that you can join our tribe and not miss any amazing content coming out multiple times a week from our HQ right here on the lake. And as Amanda said, go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult to see if you qualify for a free consultation with us or a member of our team. And we will help you one-on-one on that journey to move to Mexico, anywhere else in Latin America. And we're adding more and more countries with our legal and immigration partners every single day. So definitely click that link, book your call, and we will see you very soon.