Here’s the story behind how my wife Ali and I ended up choosing to live in Zihuatanejo. “Choose” probably isn’t the right word. We really fell into living here.

When I quit my job in 2014 I was determined to spend at least a year living outside the United States. I still owned a separate small business, so at that time I was somewhat tethered to Washington State. But the wheels were slowly in motion.

My first time visiting Zihua was through clients at my job in Seattle. Over the years we had become good friends, and they owned a condo in Ixtapa and would spend several months a year there. They were awesome and said any time they were here in Mexico I could come and crash at their place. This was pre-2014 so I still had my regular full-time job, but was able to escape for 4 or 5 days each year and visit. It was nice, but Ixtapa has an any-resort-town-in-the-world feel to it.

I did love visiting, especially in February when the weather is pretty amazing here and pretty awful in Washington. And they had a great condo on the beach. Then in 2014 those friends moved to Zihuatanejo. My first trip to their condo in Ixtapa was my first trip to Mexico. And for many people Ixtapa is what they think of when they visit Mexico, touristy resorts and beaches and Señor Frogs. I’m totally cool with that, but this is not what Ali and I look for in a destination. We can enjoy just about anywhere, from Hong Kong to Havana. But a place built for tourism generally isn’t for us .

Zihuatanejo was much more my vibe. In the previous visits to Ixtapa we never really spent any time in Zihua. We just passed through and I was ignorant to what it had to offer. I brought Ali here to Zihua for the first time in 2016 and we joke that we made an impulse purchase of a condo on that trip. She actually is quite clear that the condo purchase was 100% my decision, and she was adamantly opposed to it. Ali is like me in that she loves to travel, and her fear was that if we bought a place in Mexico we would stop traveling and only visit Mexico. At this time in 2016 our travel was about four weeks per year, which was great. But the thought was owning a condo in Mexico would eat up those four weeks of travel.

The true reasons we, or I, decided to purchase a condo in Zihua were:

• Our friends had purchased in Ixtapa and Zihua, so that eased our concerns of buying in a foreign country.
• The price seemed fair and the timing was right with where we were in life.
• I did not want to go back to work full-time, so I was looking at investment opportunities.
• We did our due diligence and felt as confident as we could that there could be a positive return on our investment.

There was zero thought early on that we would live here in Zihua, at least for me. I think originally we thought that we’d be here a couple times a year for a couple weeks, and family could use it occasionally. It was an investment, so I knew we wouldn’t be able to live in the condo even if we lived here in town.

So we looked at the condo project in April, 2016. I didn’t actually commit to my “impulse” buy until December of 2016. The condo was finished in mid-2017. We were down here finalizing the purchase in June 2017 when I sold my business. At that point we had to figure out what we were going to do. It just made sense to both of us to come down immediately for 6 months and finalize the process of getting the condo rental ready. We rented out our house in Seattle and came down in October 2017. Ali was able to take a year sabbatical from her job in the school system. Over that 6 month period we were able to string together enough of an income from other sources.

We made a few friends here, enjoyed the pace of life compared to “home”, and before we left Zihua the wheels were really in motion to make this our permanent home. Neither of us wanted to go back to working proper jobs in the States. We fell into making this our permanent home base. And Ali’s one year sabbatical became a forever sabbatical.

I don’t know if Zihua is the perfect place, but this is a pretty great place to be.

What we like:

• Cost of living: In Mexico I think this is one of the more budget friendly touristy or beach towns.
• Local government stability: Over the past four years, for sure, the government has made the town noticeably better. The roads are improved, the street lights, Centro, the public spaces, bike paths, malecon, and more. It’s a better place to live now than it was four years ago. We don’t have any issues with electrical outages, or days without water service, or internet not working.
• Safety: There are only 2 routes into town which I think makes it difficult for criminals, we aren’t a party hot spot for spring breakers, and the town still has a bit of the small fishing village feel to it. Tourists are treated very well here, and we have never felt unsafe.
• Also, the Friendliness of the people, the weather, it’s pretty easy to get back to Seattle, there is a good mix of tourism with locals, good grocery stores and market, a nice movie theater, proximity to an international airport, plus of course the beach and there’s enough outdoor activities to keep us content.

Biggest difficulties:

• When people visit us they think we are on vacation and drink margaritas all day every day. And they want us to drink margaritas all day with them. We do work a little.
• Limited resources. There isn’t a Home Depot, or a simple use google to call a reputable company that could install AC units. There are no drive through restaurants. Sometimes you need some crap fastfood. Healthcare is fine, but for anything real serious you need to go 3+ hours away to Morelia.

Ali and I still travel a good bit. Over the past 4 years we’ve been to a half dozen other countries and have done some travel within Mexico as well. Zihua wasn’t the original plan, but it has worked out like it was planned all along.