An American expat who calls herself RiverGirl describes her gringa life in Cancun, Mexico, where she lives with her husband and their beloved pets. She describes her work, how she finds the locals, and the ups and downs of living in Cancun.	RiverGirl

Colorado, U.S.A.

-In which country and city are you living now?

Cancun, Mexico

-Are you living alone or with your family?

I live with my Mexican husband, 10 cats and 1 dog (all our animals were rescues).

-How long have you been living in Mexico?

4½ years

-What is your age?

I just turned 40.

-When did you come up with the idea of living in Mexico?

Because my husband is Mexican we always thought we would live in Mexico for a while.

-Was it hard to get a visa or a working permit?

Getting permission to live here was easy because I'm married to a Mexican and because Mexico has no visa requirements for Americans. Getting permission to work was more difficult. If I wanted to work in timeshare or for a large company here it would have been easier. But I have my own small business and getting permission to work for myself was difficult.

-Was it difficult for you to get medical insurance before you went there or when you first arrived?

Getting health insurance here is not hard, but many insurance companies are not very good, so you need to shop around. My husband works for the Mexican government which gives both of us access to the government's workers health insurance system called ISSSTE.

I am not happy with the medical service I've gotten in Mexico so far. It is much easier to become a doctor here than it is back in the U.S.; here they require far less training of doctors before they let them practice medicine than in the U.S. And I've see many incompetent doctors here.

-How do you make your living in Mexico? Do you have any type of income generated?

I work for myself in my own business, which is a web design business that I started back in the U.S. My clients are primarily Americans, and about half of them have their own business interests in Mexico. So I kind of have a niche market working with Americans who work in Mexico. I also just started working part time selling real estate.

In addition my husband and I own a condo here, in town (not on the beach) that we rent out, so we have rental income. If you know how and where to buy here your return on investment for rental properties can be very high. We are getting a 15% return each year on what we paid for that condo.

-Do you speak Spanish and do you think it's important to speak the local language?

I speak some Spanish, but am by no means fluent. My Mexican husband and I speak English at home. I read somewhere that relationships generally stay in the language that they start in; ours started in English and has certainly stayed in English. Each time he says he going to only speak to me in Spanish it lasts less than one hour.

I do think it's important to know enough Spanish to get things done and to be polite. Learning a second language has been very hard for me, I'm not sure why. I've had 7 years of lessons, and I have a bookshelf full of Spanish text books, and I still have trouble watching the Simpsons in Spanish.

Mexico has many customs which are interesting but because Cancun is a tourist destination I think traditions and customs are not observed as strongly as in other parts of Mexico.

-Do you miss home and family sometimes?

I miss my 13-year-old daughter every day. She lives with her dad back in Colorado now. Originally my daughter lived with us here in Cancun, but the school we had here in here didn't meet her needs, so her dad and I decided she would be better off back in Colorado. She's doing well there and is happier, but I still miss her.

As for recreation I'm an avid runner, and running in Cancun is not great. I can run in one lovely large park, the Parque Kabah, but they won't let me take my dog there. So the dog and I end up running in the streets, which is no fun in any city. Running on the beach is fun, but I live several miles inland, in the center of the city, so it's a more of a trek to get to the beach than I want to do first thing each morning. Also dogs are only allowed on a small number of beaches here.

One of my favorite things to do in this area is to visit the many ancient Mayan ruins here. Ek Balam and Coba are favorites of mine, and of course Chichen Itza is incredible. I also enjoy finding out-of-the-way beaches where not many people go (and where dogs are welcome). These get harder and harder to find, due to all the real estate development here, but I've still got a couple of secret beaches left.

-Do you have other plans for the future?

I'm working on a couple of big projects here which will take me about a year or so to finish, after that I would like to move closer to my daughter for a few years, until she goes off to college. And later we might move back to Mexico and build a house.

I have many places I would like to travel to. The first and closest is Campeche, it's an historic, beautiful city and there's no excuse for my not having already been there. Beyond that I have a lot of Mexico left to see, and I'm very interested in visiting Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Italy and Spain. And of course I need to take another pilgrimage back to New York City, it's been several years since I've been to the museums there.

-What about housing, have you bought, or are you renting a home? How much do you pay for it?

When I came to Mexico the economy here scared me, I preferred to leave most of my money in my U.S. investments. And so my husband, who is an architect (and is very handy), and I bought a fixer-upper. We paid $35k USD for our 3-bedroom house, we completely gutted it, did much of the work ourselves and now the house is worth 3 times what we paid. There are bargains here, if you are willing to fix up a house. But if you don't want to do the work you can buy a 3-bedroom house in good shape, in the downtown area, for between $150k and $300k USD.

The real estate market in Cancun has properties at all price levels and location determines everything. You can spend $1 million USD for a 3-bedroom condo on the beach or you can buy a shack in a crummy neighborhood for $10k USD, we've got it all here. But if you have between $100k USD and $500k USD you will have a lot of good choices, including some on the beach.

-What is the cost of living in Mexico?

Not including travel and extraordinary expenses my husband and I can live comfortably here on $1800 USD per month. Restaurants here are as expensive as in the U.S., but food is generally cheaper. Clothing here is expensive and of poor quality, so I buy clothes when I travel to the U.S.. Electricity here is expensive, so it pays to learn to live without air conditioning. My friends who use a/c regularly pay up to $200 USD per month for electricity, those who do not pay one quarter of that or less. We don't have heaters here, so there are no heating bills. Property taxes, if you own property here, are very low, I pay less than $100 USD per year for my home's taxes. Telecommunications here are very expensive, but Skype and Vonage have helped me bring down my long distance telephone bills; if you are creative you can get around the TelMex telecommunications monopoly.

-What do you think about the Mexicans?

Mexicans are very nice people in general. So nice, in fact, that they don't like to tell you what you don't want to hear. So if you need directions they will never tell you that they don't know how to get there, instead they will make something up. It can be frustrating, but you have to understand that it's a polite culture and they aim to please.

Generally people here are very accepting of foreigners here. Being in a mixed-nationality marriage is normal here, while back in Colorado it was not. One problem here is that many local Mexicans will raise the price for things when they see and American, so my husband has to be the one to contract services or negotiate deals. If they see me before the deal is done the price goes up.

-What are the positive and negative aspects of living in Mexico?

Mexico is largely a lawless country. This often just means that that society here runs on a kind of natural sense of manners, which can be both good and bad. People don't expect to be able call the cops here and they don't expect laws to be followed, especially not traffic laws. There is widespread corruption at all levels of government and the Mexican people often accept this as normal and don't fight it very well. Because of Cancun's location, close to Cuba and the US, it is a gateway for both drug and immigrant smuggling, which means we have organized crime operating here as well.

We also have huge problems here with the treatment of animals. There is an attitude among Mexicans that their pets should have the right to reproduce, and so we end up with a lot of unwanted animals here. One of the most rewarding things I've been involved with here has been working with charities to combat this problem. I've also become the proud momma of a whole mess of street cats and one street dog (who thinks he's a cat).

I've also enjoyed working with charities here to combat other types of problems. If you are someone who is altruistic and likes to make a difference then I highly recommend charity work in Mexico, it's very satisfying.

Two of the very best things about living in Cancun are that it has warm tropical weather and it has clean air. You don't have to heat your home or your body here. Arthritis and asthma all but disappear when people move here. I have severe endometriosis and it caused me pain on a daily basis when I lived in Colorado, but here I have pain only about twice a year. I also have significant lung damage, from having pneumonia 3 times as a child, but it almost never bothers me here. Cancun's clean air comes from its isolation and its location between the Caribbean Sea and the huge Yucatan jungle.

-Do you have any tips for our readers about living in Mexico?

Investigate the immigration laws carefully before coming here. Immigration laws in Mexico are more restrictive than those in the U.S. Also just because it's cheap to live here doesn't make it easy. If you want to live here I strongly recommend having a nice big bank account back home that you can tap into. If you need to work here it's best to get a job before you make the move if you can (and get that job contract in writing).

-Do you have any favorite Web sites or blogs about Mexico?

My own blog, Rivergirl:

http://www.hiddencancun.com/rivergirl

CancunCare great info about this area, it also has a busy message board:

http://www.cancuncare.com

Mexira has real estate info about this area (I work for Mexira):

http://www.mexira.com

Yucatan Living has info about living in this area and about nearby Merida:

http://www.yucatanliving.com

Playa.info has a lot of info about living in nearby Playa del Carmen, it has an active message board also:

http://www.playa.info