Best Places In The World To Retire

In the whole Yucatan Peninsula, one of the big players is Cancun, which is totally new-- 45 years ago it didn’t even exist.   Fonatur, a government agency, asked where they could bring tourists in and get what they and the tourists wanted.  Cancun is the closest thing to Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina, in that it is a planned community. It has a hotel zone, underground utilities, a water purification plant, a place where workers in the hotel live, a commercial...

In the whole Yucatan Peninsula, one of the big players is Cancun, which is totally new-- 45 years ago it didn’t even exist.   Fonatur, a government agency, asked where they could bring tourists in and get what they and the tourists wanted.  Cancun is the closest thing to Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina, in that it is a planned community. It has a hotel zone, underground utilities, a water purification plant, a place where workers in the hotel live, a commercial center, etc. When we first lived in Cancun, about 30 years ago, there were only about 13,000 people there and now it’s about to hit 1 million in population. 
 
Merida is the old town, which was founded in the 1500s. It is a big commercial center with a million people. There is manufacturing there, with lots of commercial retail.  Merida is the business commercial hub of Yucatan. Since we are half way between Cancun and Merida, I have my dentist in Merida, and we go to a major hospital there, too. We go there for some concerts because there are more social events being held in Merida.
 
Going north, about 90 kilometers, there are several beach resorts that are much less well-known but a number of expats are in them because it is very inexpensive. One resort is called Holbox, which is an island that you get to via a ferry. Other resorts are Rio Lagartos and San Felipe, which were originally fishing villages that have now taken on an expat and resort flavor to them but they are very low key and extremely inexpensive as far as real estate. 
 
If you go north of Merida, there are a number of beach resorts. Historically, the most well-known is Progreso.  The whole area both east and west of Progreso has a bunch of fishing villages and beach communities.  Developers are buying chunks of beachfront in this area and putting up some fairly lower cost condominiums with about 10 to 12 units.
 
If you go south of Valladolid, basically all the communities other the ones I have mentioned above are small. In between here in Yucatan and Cancun or between here and Merida, there are a number of pueblitos, or villages where you might find one with about 10,000 people but it’s fairly rustic and there are no major chain stores. In Valladolid, we have three national grocery stores – Super K, Sorianos, and Aurora Bodega, which is a Walmart subsidiary. You won’t find those in any of the smaller communities. 
 
Here in Yucatan, most of the people, and even our current mayor, don’t speak English. Our next mayor who will take office in January is a former teacher, and does speak English. She was here for the Lion’s Club installation dinner. I had the chance to talk with her. The majority of people in the city government do not speak English. The majority of police officers don’t. There are some traffic police who are riding bicycles in town that are much more assessable.
 
Valladolid gets over a million tourists per year. Their average stay is 30 to 45 minutes because they are on tour buses that are coming or going to Cancun or some other place. Some of them come in the morning but a lot of them come at 6 PM. I counted 17 big tourist buses, not including the vans all parked around the town square with all these people going to the main church on the square, going up to the city hall to see the murals, walking around the central park in the main square. They buy themselves some beer, ice cream, or a bottle of soda pop before they get themselves back on their tour buses to go back to the hotel. It’s interesting.
 
The good thing here in Valladolid is that we have had a bit of a hotel business boom. There are now small boutique hotels with 10 to 20 rooms and some of them are quite nice. That is happening now because of the Pueblo Majico. Most people put this place now on their bucket list. Most of the tour guides say, if you want to have a colonial experience and you don’t want to drive hours all the way to Merida, go to Valladolid.  It is the closest town to Cancun on a secure toll road. After you leave Cancun, Valladolid is literally the first exit on the four lane highway. More people are coming here to Valladolid on their own as well. We have almost 1,000 hotel rooms now. We have everything from backpacking places where two to three students can stay up to hotels that are about 100 rooms each. We also have a couple of boutique hotels or B&Bs, a lot of which are owned by expats.

 

(Outside the Banamex museum on the main square, Merida, Mexico, pictured/)

From my understanding, the LGBT community is accepted in Belize. Apparently there is a large LGBT community here in Ambergris Caye. I do not see them having any specific parties or anything just geared for themselves, but I do not think anything is exclusive. Everything is rather Inclusive down here. I know that Belize is heavily targeting the tourist market for gays and lesbians.
 
From what I gather, there is no real homophobia down here. It is not like in Jamaica where gays...

From my understanding, the LGBT community is accepted in Belize. Apparently there is a large LGBT community here in Ambergris Caye. I do not see them having any specific parties or anything just geared for themselves, but I do not think anything is exclusive. Everything is rather Inclusive down here. I know that Belize is heavily targeting the tourist market for gays and lesbians.
 
From what I gather, there is no real homophobia down here. It is not like in Jamaica where gays and lesbians have been told not to go because they will be beaten to death. In Jamaica, they are just very hostile and homophobic, while here in Belize, the attitude towards gays and lesbians is not nearly the same. In Belize, problems do not exist like that. 

One of the main things to be concerned about when retiring abroad (among other things) is health insurance. Often the health systems abroad are not even similar to those of your own country. However, with Latin America, specially Panama, as hot spots to retire, the change in public and private health has been huge over the last years. Panama is a medical tourism destination, and many health insurance companies now offer great plans for the best hospitals in Panama while also...

One of the main things to be concerned about when retiring abroad (among other things) is health insurance. Often the health systems abroad are not even similar to those of your own country. However, with Latin America, specially Panama, as hot spots to retire, the change in public and private health has been huge over the last years. Panama is a medical tourism destination, and many health insurance companies now offer great plans for the best hospitals in Panama while also including options to be covered back at your home country or for when you travel as well.

 

After you get health insurance covered, then you will need to worry about adjusting to language, different customs of the new city or town where you are going to move, things to do, etc. In the end the discovery of all those new things is what will make moving abroad exciting, and there will always be a way to make the most of it.

Also, the people who come to Nicaragua to live and retire tend to gravitate towards each other, so you have sort of a triangle where these people are.  You can visualize it as starting at Managua, going straight west over to the Pacific coast, down towards San Juan del Sur and then back along western edge of Lake Nicaragua to Granada.  That’s really the major area for accessibility, healthcare, shopping, the best beaches are on the lower west coast, and you have a wide variety of attractions.  You have the beaches, you have the lake, and you have the volcanoes, all of that is within that triangle.  You also have existing expat communities.

In the oceans of Portugal, there are no harmful animals like sharks but we do have jellyfish starting in the winter season. From November to January, you will find quite a lot of jellyfish on the shores. Some are still whole and some are bits but you just have to avoid them. Don’t step on them, which is easy enough to do because you would see them on the shore.
 
You’d usually see jellyfish on the rough beaches and where the sea is rough. You won’t see them on...

In the oceans of Portugal, there are no harmful animals like sharks but we do have jellyfish starting in the winter season. From November to January, you will find quite a lot of jellyfish on the shores. Some are still whole and some are bits but you just have to avoid them. Don’t step on them, which is easy enough to do because you would see them on the shore.
 
You’d usually see jellyfish on the rough beaches and where the sea is rough. You won’t see them on the bays. Cascais (an upscale area just to the west of Lisbon) is all bays. If you go up to the coasts of Sintra, where the seas are very rough and where they practice the radical sports, there is where you will see the jellyfish.
 
The waters in the ocean of Portugal are cold so sharks do not like it, especially on the west facing coasts, including the beaches west of Lisbon.  Because the air temperatures can be a maximum of 35 to 37 Celsius (95 to 98.6 Fahrenheit), it’s hot, so it’s a pleasure to go into that cold water.
 
The oceans in the Algarve (which face south) are completely different from the oceans in Lisbon.  The Algarve gets warms waters because of the Gulf Stream and because of the Mediterranean. The temperatures in the waters of the Algarve could be around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius (68 to 71.6 Fahrenheit) and up here in Lisbon, it’s around 17 to 18 degrees Celsius (62.6 to 64.4 Fahrenheit). It’s hotter and less windy in the Algarve as well. Lisbon is a windy area because we are on the westernmost part of the European continent. There is also a breeze here so we don’t use air-conditioning in the summer because we don’t need it.
 
The coasts of Sintra get rough waves but overall, the other coasts of Algarve and Lisbon are perfectly safe for swimming.  

 

(The village of Azenhas do Mar on the coast of Sintra, Portugal, pictured.)