Ive been there many times and love it!!! Gringos have to remember you are in someones country, NOT yours. Dont like the rules or customs, then just go home.
@@aaronsimpson5417 Exactly. I have dual nationality US\México, currently living one hour away from Chapala Lake. This comment really made me feel unconfortable. I guess we have "Karens" in México, too.
You mean how Mexicans and other immigrants do the same thing here in the U.S. and for the most part refuse to assimilate? By the way, I'm an American of Mexican descent. I speak Spanish, have dual citizenship, my family own a home in Mexico. Also, "gringos" aren't the only ones. There are many Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Armenian, Spanish, French, German, British, Irish, Russian, etc. communities throughout Mexico who do the same. They speak their native languages and practice their traditional customs. Remember, Mexicans AREN'T a race or ethnicity, they ARE a nationality. Mexico just like the U.S., actually just like every other country in the Americas is a country of immigrants. People, should be allowed to enjoy their lives. If "Bob" and "Ethel" originally from Saskatton, Saskatchewan feel more comfortable speaking in English to each other and other ex-pats in public then so be it. In the U.S. we see tons of Mexicans and other Latins speaking in Spanish to each other in public. If a person(s) feel more comfortable speaking their birth language and keeping certain customs them so be it.
White expats say this, but the question is does this apply to immigrants in USA or Canada? Imaganine I told an immigrant in Canada that had complants to leave. I would be called a racist by white people!
I owned a house in Ajijic in the best neighborhood for 9 years and sold it last year. Despite being originally represented by a leading real estate agency and using a leading notary found that the notary had altered the original purchase price and I was forced to pay considerable capital gains when the selling price was the same as the purchase price. My lawyer also well known told me I could do nothing that this was a common practice and no notary involved in the purchase and sale would rectify the situation. Renting is the best way to go in a country racked by corruption. I have to be grateful I sold before the pandemic.
Wow, after 9 years the value did not go up? What would be the motive for the notary to do that? Does he get paid by the Govt to do these things? Glad you are happy now. Hope you enjoyed your 9 years while there. Thanks for the info.
Hola, I live in Chapala, been in Mexico since 2004. You did a very nice job and I thought the interviews were an extremely nice touch, I enjoyed them and watched to the end/subscribed. I have a brand new channel too. Congratulations on your 100+ subscribers, isn’t it fun to watch the analytics? My focus is Whole Foods Plant Based No Oil, The Starch Solution/weight loss and natural health, helping my friends and family transition. My main audience is the USA, so fun to share what it’s like here and keeping it simple because we don’t have the same options as they do in other well developed countries.
Thanks, Lori! I got back from Ameca yesterday and did a similar video there but instead of talking to foreigners in Ajijic this time I talked to locals in Ameca to try something different. Looks like you're doing great on your channel! Saludos!
New subscriber...it was at angel number 444 when I hit it!! Keep getting angel numbers. Love the video. My friend retired there from US as she doesn't get much on SS and yes she's getting teeth done...lol
@@alain0323 Yes, I had to slow down a bit because of the pandemic but I'm getting back at it. I just posted a new video today. I'm still in Guadalajara. Saludos!
Really enjoyed your video. You’re showing people that Mexico it’s not as they show it on tv (of course there’s violence, just like everywhere in the world...) Great video! 👍🏻👏🏻🙌🏻 you’re Spanish is great, it sounds really nice 👏🏻 you definitely don’t sound gringo accent.
Great job on the video. Love the interviews with expats. I lived in Ajijic for five months, from May thru Sept 2018. Loved it there, especially being a retired photographer. It's definitely a peaceful and beautiful place, but if I return, i'll probably live in Chapala. Its a bit cheaper. Keep up the good work. BTW, here's a video I took of my first morning after arriving in Lake Chapala, capturing the early morning sounds. Man, I miss that place. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cuCQpJWXsl0.html
Hey, man. No problem! Pleasure to be here. I really think I would visit the Chapala area a lot (especially Ajijic) Meeting or interacting with folks from the US and Canada (and other places) would actually make me feel “at home.” It was really interesting seeing that guy from Andorra (I guess he came a long way!) Anyway, keep the videos coming! And once again, it’s a pleasure to be here. 😊👍
Yeah, I think he's the first person I've ever met from Andorra. I was really surprised when he said where he was from and kinda thought I was hot shit for a half second when I beat him the the punch in naming his country haha. Thanks again, Miguel. More to come!
Nestor Padilla maybe try not spamming your brothers link all over someone else’s content. Unless you asked if you could promote his channel here it’s really inconsiderate and comes across as tacky. I don’t even want to watch the Chanel now because of how you went about promoting it. Ethics are Important.
@@nestorpadilla4668 please don't spam my content. I understand growing a channel is difficult and don't appreciate the spam when I put so much work into growing my own channel
Does anyone know what the percentage of expats are in ajjijic? Is it mostly expats? I didn’t see many locals in the video. Not meaning for be offensive to anyone, It just seems like the city has been overrun with expats. Is this truly the case or is that just how it appears because of the video? It didn’t really feel like Mexico.
Great Video. Found you by your Facebook post on one of the expat forums and I think our channels have a lot in common. I'm here in front of my iMac working on editing a video, better get back to it. Jeff (Papaw)
SAD the Town of Aijici has become Too much of a Tourist Destination - Which forced Home Prices to Go-Way-Up - IF You're ReTired & Want to Live in Mexico; Look at Other Areas of the Country that are Super Nice & NOT so much of a Tourist Trap - There are Lots of Areas that also Have (Ex-Pat's) American's & Canidate's who Decided to Move to Mexico Permently 🇲🇽 .
I'd advise you to chose another location! The lake and river is polluted and highly toxic! The murcury is 500 times the acceptable amount! The native communities suffer from cancer, retardation, kidney disease, esp. the children! Industry along the river has dumped their effluence into the river for more than twenty years! Runoff from farms and ranches, pesticides and fertilizers dump into the river anytime it rains! The gov and local authorities have known this for years but money is more important to them than people's lives! The place should be known as "Deadly Paradise"!!!!
@@billyhuckaby941 Sadly, I think you're accurate. No-one wants to talk about water contamination in México. Kidney disease is a huge problem in Guanajuato state, although obesity and diabetes are probably the biggest problems here.
Tucson born and bread here. Moved away to NC and the thing I miss most about AZ is...... Mexico 🇲🇽😁 hoping and praying to get back to Tucson (Sahuarita actually) or Mexico . I’m interested in Jalisco but not around Chapala , also Colima , Oaxaca , , Chiapas & Vera Cruz And if it weren’t so dry (we want to grow food easily) my favorite, Sonora!
Have you very been in Mexico Estado de México?? At the north area as Cuautitlan Izcalli as invest to business so cheap is good for as induatry, wh, malls... it is so close from Mexico city and have everything to give the american retired people good quality life...they have many differents around 4 cardinals point around 2 hors from town as Querwtaro, Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Michoacan, Cuernavaca and Mexico city is in 60 min...
What are those weird phallic-looking things (3:35) for? Flower vases? I've never seen anything like that before (sold on the street). Weird. Cheers dude, have fun (no pun intended).
Google Translate: ¿Para qué son esas cosas raras de aspecto fálico (3:35)? Jarrones de flores? Nunca había visto algo así antes (vendido en la calle). Extraño. Saludos amigo, diviértete (sin juego de palabras).
Hi! I'm a British Born Indian, Lived in Denmark for 16 years. Moved to the U.S. in 1980. Author, multimedia artist, 30 years gentle yoga instructor, still teaching and now retired. Would a mildly eccentric brown face in the community fit in?
Absolutely you’d fit in. Watch The Yarbros channel to see their experience living in Mexico. They are a couple from the US where they’d be classified as “black”. Mexico is very accepting to all types of people. If you know Spanish you’ll fit right in. If you don’t , you’ll still be accepted . The language thing is important in social settings. In Ajijic English is spoken a lot as well.
Dental tourists, ha! Thanks for making the video. I have no interest in living in a gringo place but I am interested in the comments of others. Hopefully, tourism in México will recover in the near future. Saludos!
I am like you. I would never want to live in a foreign country surrounded by other Americans. We live in Portugal, in a small city, where we are the only Americans. Of course I had the advantage of knowing Portuguese having lived in Brazil for 20 years. It never fails to surprise me when I hear that Americans have to go to Mexico to do dental work or buy medicine. Here in Portugal dental work is quite reasonable and medicine likewise, plus we have a national healthcare system in which we pay next to nothing to use.
I understand why people from the US and Canada like Lake Chapala. The weather is listed as the main draw. Number two is almost always the large ex-pat community. Number three is that the local people are friendly. Number four is the cheap cost of living. For me, this just feels a bit like colonialism all over again. We're there for the advantages for us. We are able to exist in financial comfort among "our own" and speak English. The largely economically disadvantaged "others", however, are friendly and their food is good and cheap. I've lived in similar circumstances many, many years ago and was one who assimilated rather than isolated. The Lake Chapala is an American-Canadian colony that doesn't appeal to me.
Hello Traveler. Can I ask your advice or opinion? I'm NOT worried about Covid, but I'm not wantong to be stuck in a tight Mexico lock down. QUESTION: In your opinion, do you think it's still okay to move to Mexico City from the US? Wanting a 6 month experience and DENTAL work. I'm binge watching your videos. Thanks! .. Curtis in San Diego
Thanks for watching the videos! There never really was a mandatory lock down in Mexico and there never will be. You might get people in the expat forums yelling at you to stay home but there won't be any lock down here. The land borders were supposedly officially closed to non essential travel but from every thing I hear they've always been open.
A beautiful lake in which you can not go swimming, probably because of raw sewage being spilled into the lake. The climate is in fact the big selling point and I can understand why retired Americans and Canadians would want to live there. Very interesting that you met someone from Andorra living in Ajijic. Considering the population of Andorra (22,000) that was rare indeed. I bet he had lived in the States and was possibly married to an American. Once I met a girl from the Faroe Islands doing the Camino de Santiago. That was really rare.
well, to be honest about the video.. I was dragging my heals about making a video there. The idea of the channel, and what I personally like to do, is just to go places many other foreigners don't go. Even if there isn't "much to see" so to speak, I like getting a behind the scenes look at regular life. That being said, if people want to congregate in expat communities then good for them. It's not for me. May each find their own paradise or hell whatever the case may be.
Thanks so much for this video..very nice place..👌 can you please make a video on renting or how much it cost the rent or a house there please thanks...
You saw no gringos in Chapala, and only visiting gringos in Ajijic, and you call this gringo hell? Please don’t confuse Chapala and Ajijic, they are very different parts of the same municipality (like a county or parish).
I actually did see a few in Chapala but I didn't rush up and stick the camera in their face like I did in Ajijic. But you're right, the expat epicenter is in Ajijic. I actually delivered a commentary on that very topic likening municipalities to counties but didn't quite fit into the video. For another video in the future
@@colibritravel5994 I was there n speak English n Spanish domt say hell thas dumb u Ethier know Spanish n go to mexico n know English n be normal it's called traveling I do it all the time
Hi Craig, I live in Guadalajara. I've been here for almost 2 years now. I've also lived in Chile and Spain and several cities in the US. When my lease is up in November I might spend several months traveling around Mexico. I want to move back to Spain in the next couple years. Stay tuned, I'll be making videos along the way
pretty much anything. You can usually get beans, potatoes, cheese, etc instead of meat. Unless it has chunks of meat in it, it might not be vegan but it's vegetarian - that's my opinion
Just ask if they use lard (beef/pig fat) in their food. Authentic Mexican food will use lard for example in their beans, tortillas, fry bread. Also, ask if they use seafood in their salsa/hot sauce. Some cultures will grind it with shrimp or fish. I usually won't get fried food just because the oil might be lard. Also, they use that same oil to fry non- vegetarian food as well, so there will be cross contamination. My statement is also referring to other cultural foods that aren't typically vegetarian/vegan.
Mexico was always mean for the people spread across the US to come Home, especially since the Anglos stole the geographic potential of Mexico. It was never meant to be Disneyland south for the Anglos.
I have lived in Ajijic for a couple years already and even tho this is an amazing place, my family and I regret for not know by then about the existence of Mazamitla, another town, if we would know, we would definitely purchase a house there, down here it's called the Mexican Switzerland
The American and Canadian retirees come to the Lake Chapala Area to spend the winters or live on the cheap with their fixed income from their SS pension, but they never learn Spanish and don't associate or socialize with the locals, they just mingle with/among the english-speaking expats in the area, the local people are just service providers to the expats, and the well-to-do Mexicans from Guadalajara who have their weekend homes around Lake Chapala don't care to mingle with the expat community. That's the social dynamics around that area in a nutshell. .
@Luz Renteria : The gringos spend their days getting drunk and living on the cheap with the locals as their servants, charity work my calzones! That is just a smoke screen so they can claim they give something back to the community. Same thing in San Miguel De Allende, Gto. and the towns on the coast of Baja California. .
@Luz Renteria : Not many expats can afford to buy property in Ajijic or the Lake Chapala Riviera, most of them rent. And no, the upper middle-class Mexicans that own weekend homes in the area do not socialize neither with the local population in the area nor with the gringos, they belong to a different socio-economic class. .
@Luz Renteria : Racism and classism are inherently human, don't you see what has been happening in the USA since the 1600's? Do you also like to call out your gringo buddies on racism and classism or you just do it to Mexicans? .
@Luz Renteria : I see you have a lot of resentment probably due to bad personal experiences. Even though I am a white, educated middle-class Mexican I understand that resentment because I have seen racism and classism in Mexico, but I was raised by parents who didn't share that culture, nevertheless I also recognize that resentment in some people who are descendants of Mexican immigrants to gringolandia, who suffered race/class discrimination while in Mexico and they idolize the gringos and want to believe that gringos don't do the same, or worse to minorities and immigrants. When immigrants from Latin-American countries make the decision to immigrate they don't have an idea of how bad they will be treated when they get to the USA (does children in cages ring a bell?) that's why they immigrate with the "American Dream" ideal stamped in their minds after a lifetime of watching Hollywood movies and TV series that promise a mirage that will never materialize, and they will end up in the lower shelf of American society living in ghettos (segregation is starkly evident in American cities) with their children in gangs or addicted to drugs, or dead in foreign lands defending another flag. Especially today, with a fat guy with little hands who likes to wear a dead squirrel on top of his head, who hates brown people and isn't shy about saying it loud and enacting policies against them. I feel sorry for them, since they can't do anything to change their situation because they are discriminated against in the land they love and in the land they hate. P.S.- FYI Most of those retirees are Trump followers. .
@Luz Renteria : I wrote: "...I also recognize that resentment in some people who are descendants of Mexican immigrants to gringolandia, who suffered race/class discrimination while in Mexico... " Key word "also". And you really need to study USA History so that you will learn that President Polk first tried to buy those lands from Mexico for one millionth its worth, and when Mexico refused the "offer" he ordered general Zachary Taylor to provoke an "incident" at the border with Mexico to claim an "aggression" from the Mexican Army and have an excuse to retaliate attacking and invading Mexico and make Mexican President a prisoner and forced him, under threat to kill him and his family, to "sell" more than half of Mexican territory (as if it was legal for a President to sell part of a country as his personal property, it's like taking your neighbor as your prisoner and pointing a gun to his head threaten to kill him and his family to "sell" their home). The Mexican President was taken as prisoner and threatened with death by a firing squad and at the same time presented with a piece of paper with a hand-written "bill of sale" for a ridiculous amount (search online and find a copy of the "Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty" and read it). Later on they declared war to Spain and stole the Louisiana, Florida, Cuba and The Philippines from them. Not to forget they had already stolen all the land from the Native Americans after they massacred them, and those who survived were sent to reservations in the most arid parts of the lands they once owned (check in a map where most of the Indian Reservations are located). Highly reputed American historians have written about this, as well as some British historians. The plan to take possession of what currently is California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and part of Oklahoma had its origins since Thomas Jefferson was President and sent Lewis and Clark to explore the West and informed him of how rich in resources those lands were. You need to educate yourself about the causes for immigration from Mexico to the USA, it's not because of repression or lack of freedom or human rights, it's for economical reasons, as bad as the living conditions are in Mexico, economically speaking, we don't live in an authoritarian regime or under a dictatorship, as a matter of fact currently we enjoy more freedom than the Americans in the USA, we have a lot of problems, but freedom or lack of rights are not one of them. And the migration will stop when we can provide the conditions for Mexicans to make a decent living for them and their children, so that they can be fed properly, have access to good education and health care and have the same chance as anybody else to a decent life. My ancestral home is Mexico, I am not a Spaniard, I can't go anywhere else, and even if I could, I would never leave my country. .
been eating charales for the last 29 years in chapala and everything is good, so i dont see why being a vegan is another "ventaja" of being in chapala, if most, being a Vegan in Chapala is really a desventaja as there arent many places that fulfill your requirements
Great content. New sub. I was wondering do the expats usually take all there things from America to move to Mexico or do they just leave everything behind and drive to Mexico to start all over again?
I think that I like people to live there in that place, if it makes them happy that it gives more, they appreciate it and also it does them good to health, according to national geographic chapala it is the second place with the best climate in the world besides what It's Chapala Ajijic San Antonio and Jocotepec are the most popular places to retire in the world, that's why you not only see people from Canada, America or Europe but also from Asia I am from Guadalajara and I like ajijic very much I hope and I can move to there soon since I love that place
@@ExceedX3 I agree. I used to not think very highly of so called "gringo ghettos" but if they're happy and the locals are happy.. I liked the guys comment about the hiking group in Ajijic about a way to meet people. One of the reasons though that I came back from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara was I didn't want to live with so many foreigners. Maybe in the future but for now I like feeling like I'm the only foreigner around hehe
I just found your channel. I’ve subscribed to your channel and I like how you interviewed visitors. Can you do a video on expats of color? I like your way of talking to strangers, putting them at ease.
What is up with the mercury level comment? My in-laws have been eating fish from that lake for over 70 years and they are still pretty healthy and cancer free.
If you google "contaminación lago de Chapala" this is what you get from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.. "El Lago de Chapala se ve afectado por los altos niveles de contaminación debido principalmente a las descargas industriales, así como la falta y buen manejo de las plantas de tratamiento de aguas residuales son algunos de los principales problemas que afectan al Lago de Chapala."
@@snakeoilsoldhere1476 Almost 15 years ago it became very polluted when the water levels dropped super low rendering the contaminants in the lake highly concentrated, but for several years now the lake has been wonderfully full again and it is now not anything like it was in those days. I walk the shores daily and their are lots of bullfrogs singing in the water at night, frogs can´t live where there is lots of pollution. Also, they re-stocked the lake with tons of bass and the tourists and locals fish daily off the piers. All the native kids have high levels of mercury poisoning is a total lie, where did you get that from? There is a small impoverished indigenous village where the kids of the village have had problems with kidney disease. This village has been highly studied and it turns out that the villagers were not drinking bottled or purified water, they were drinking water straight from their contaminated wells. It is only in that area in the municipality of Poncitlán that this horrific problem exists. So, enough with the lies about Chapala. In Chapala and Jocotepec and Ajijic, no kids are dying from kidney disease, the kids here are every bit as healthy as American kids, and if the truth were known, they are probably much healthier. They eat more natural and healthy foods and they play outdoors everyday.
