Preparation – Pat the Expat

Lake Chapala: Clean AND dirty

2025, from the International Space Station

If you check out social media, you’ll sometimes see a new expat ask about the pollution of Lake Chapala, with long-timers chiming in with their favorite (often unsourced) rumor: “It’s a cesspool!”, “full of toxic metals,” “locals swim and fish in it all the time,” or “better than some beaches in southern California” are some of the more frequent responses.

Let’s review the bidding, with sources, por favor. First, the basics. Lake Chapala is Mexico’s largest freshwater lake, approximately eighty miles long and eight miles wide (bonus question: what is the largest freshwater lake entirely within the United States? Lake Michigan, which is seventy-five times larger than lake Chapala). Lake Chapala is the remnant of a much larger lake system that used to cover much of the region, evidenced by several seasonal or dry lake beds in local low-lying areas. Lake Chapala formed in a mountain-ringed basin fed by the Rio Lerma, a river which runs east-to-west and is part of a water shed including León, Querétaro, and even the suburbs of Mexico City.

The lake is shallow, averaging only about seven meters in depth, with a top depth of only approximately ten meters. Newcomers who notice the distinct haze over the lake in the drier months should disregard those who claim it is airborne pollution; there is not enough industry or agricultural burning to create this haze. It is simply the effect of water, dry air, and direct sunlight: evaporation. Local farmers do burn-off stubble every year, but it is primarily in the Spring and can easily be identified by the odor.

You will also hear locals discussing the importance of the rainy season for “filling the lake,” and this is true, to a point. The lake varies between sixty and eighty percent fill, and the shoreline moves considerably since the lake is so shallow. However, direct rainfall in the lakeside area is far less important to the lake fill-rate than rainfall upstream along the Rio Lerma. Dams and reservoirs along that river fill up during the rainy season, and when full, discharge water down to the lake. You can also tell when those discharges occur because they are often accompanied by massive isles of lirio (water hyacinthe) which have to be manually removed.

Lake Chapala formerly drained into the Rio Santiago, again at the estern end of the lake near Ocotlán, but the direct flow of lake water into that river dried up decades ago. While some discharge no doubt still leaks through, lake Chapala is essentially endorheic, meaning it loses water solely through evaporation or water removed by humans for treatment. The lake is the primary water source for Guadalajara, a city with five-and-a-half million people. The lake also is the primary cause of the famed local micro-climate, a mild, semi-tropical highland climate moderated by both elevation (mile-high) and the lake.

As the chief source of drinking water for Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, the quality and purity of the lake is a source of major political concern. The lake is tested repeatedly and the water removed via an aqueduct near the city of Chapala is treated to ensure its safety. Yet the municipal water quality in Guadalajara is variable and often terrible. Some areas in the city have dealt with brown, odiferous tap water for years. This is not due to the quality of the lake, but rather the quality of the water transportation and treatment systems. The aqueduct from Chapala is over thirty-five years old, approaching obsolescence, and wastes over forty percent of the water removed. Meanwhile, the Guadalajara metropolitan area continues to experience rapid population growth, and the Jalisco government is considering building a new aqueduct, which might reduce water waste but could also permit greater removal of the lake’s limited resources.

What about pollution? The major cities mentioned earlier and their associated agriculture and industry discharge pollutants (fertilizer, heavy metals, sewage) into the Rio Lerma, and thence lake Chapala. There are also about 300,000 people living at or near the lake, and again pollution levels are worse near the major municipalities: Chapala, Jocotepec, Ocotlán, Ajijic. The lake suffers from concentrations of Cadmium (Ca), Chromium (Cr), and Lead (Pb). The former is concentrated near the mouth of the Rio Lerma, which is likely the source; the latter two are concentrated near lakeshore towns, probably the result of untreated municipal runoff. The Cadmium appears to be from historical discharge prior to 2006; the Chromium and Lead continue to enter the lake as Mexico has no requirement for pre-treatment of such pollutants.

Runoff from agricultural fertilizer is also prevalent throught the lake, due to the large amount of phosphorous and nitrogen fertilizer used by local farmers. This runoff contributes to unhealthy nutrient concentrations, which feeds extreme algae growth and fuels the lirio, although some environmentalists believe the lirio also remove some pollutants back out of the water.

Likewise, high fecal colifor levels are noted near lakeside towns due to excess runoff during the rainy season, when the sudden/large volume of rain overwhelms sewage and discharge channels, moving all manner of human and animal waste directly into the lake. This is a normal phenomenon, and occurs throughout the globe. When people say the lake’s pollution levels are “better than some California beaches” they’re essentially correct, because beaches near towns or cities worldwide suffer the same problem. But in both (or all) cases, it is a temporary issue.

All that said, you’ll still see people swimming in the lake, fishermen out with nets in the water, and lakeside towns selling charales and other lake fish for human consumption; what gives? The studies confirm what the locals already know. You’ll see far fewer people in the water at the eastern end of the lake, where some of the worst pollution is concentrated. For fish, the studies show carp and other bottom-feeders are the types most likely to have harmful concentration of pollutants, but the fishermen catch and serve the tilapia and charales that are safe. All along the lake, locals know not to enter the water immediately after a strong rainstorm near a town, because that’s when the water is most polluted. Ignore this common wisdom and you’ll get a rash or worse.

The lake does have some contamination, but the levels are generally not serious, at least away from the Rio Lerma and lakeside towns after storms. Some fish are safe, others are not. Plenty of people boat, fish, and kayak with no problem in the lake. The shallow nature of the lake–as well as the tendency for locals to leave things in the water (fences, for example) when the lake reclaims the shore–makes it less inviting for swimming. Like any precious resource, it needs to be monitored and protected. But it’s neither a cesspool nor pristine.

For those interested in some of the many studies about the lake, here are further sources:

XVI World Water Congress, 2017

Harvard Study, 2014

Environmental Health, 2010

World Lake Database

EsperanzaProject 2026

Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 2013

Giving In

I have often cited the amazing weather here lakeside. As I ponder the live news and weather from WTOP in DC, I sit on my veranda and enjoy bountiful sunshine over the lake. It’s early morning in winter, so I have to wear sweatpants and a long-sleeve t-shirt. It drops below 50 degrees (F) at night here, but quickly recovers to the 70s. My morning coffee outfit will return to shorts and short-sleeve t-shirt . . . shortly.

I say this not to gloat (ok, a little gloat, a gloat-ee perhaps) but to introduce a surrender on my part. For years I have been telling people we don’t have heating or air-conditioning in our house, because we don’t need it. My dear wife bought an electric heating pad for the bed, which she installs for the winter, but which we rarely ever use. Local friends have warned me that eventually I would feel otherwise and want heating and air-conditioning. I resisted. Some cited climate change, and while the summers have become a little hotter and the winters a little colder, the data say nothing more than that: a little. Others were more persuasive: “you’re getting older, and the temperature will feel more extreme.” This was an inevitability staring me in the face.

I already noticed that “my blood had thinned” when we returned to the States annually for Thanksgiving. Back in the day, I dodged dinosaurs while running in shorts and t-shirts in howling DC snowstorms. I took perverse delight in running on “black-flag” heat-warning days, when breathing outside was allegedly equivalent to chain-smoking a pack of unfiltered cigarettes (nobody who has ever smoked an unfiltered cigarette agrees with this comparison, BTW). But now I shivered in the 40s, snugly wrapped in multiple layers of fleece and down and anything else I could find. Yes, I had hard evidence that age was turning me into a weather wimp.

One technique we used to avoid the warmest, driest part of the year here (April-June) was to travel. Late Spring is an ideal time to head to Europe, before the crowds and heat settle there. Alas, as Don Henley crooned, “But there’re just so many summers. And just so many springs.” What to do when our world travel plans diminish and end?

I could wait and see. Perhaps the adjustment will be gradual enough I will accommodate it with some extra cool margaritas in summer, sweatshirts in winter. Perhaps. Or I could prepare for it. Those who know me already know which I chose. So, we’re putting air conditioning units into the bedrooms. They are capable of heat or cooling, and sufficient to ensure a good, comfortable night’s rest regardless of the ambient conditions. Of course, it can’t be that simple, can it?

We already max-out electricity use, and adding air conditioning will push us to the very top of the spectrum. To explain, electric power in Mexico is a state-run monopoly. The most basic usage is practically free, and accommodates the average poor Mexican household with a small fridge, a television, and a few electric lights (oh, and cell phones, always cell phones). A secondary level doubles that usage, covering the majority of Mexican families who might also have an electric appliance or two. The third level triples the usage and costs, and this is where most gringos pay, owing to the plethora of electric devices we have. Finally, there is a penalty rate for extreme usage, called DAC, which doubles or triples the total cost. You enter into DAC by average use exceeding a standard for a set period of time, and stay in it (thus fined) until the average dips below the limit. Now that sounds horrible, except that even in high gringo usage, our monthly electric bill runs USD $75. It’s insanely high by local standards, but I’ll bet most readers would gladly trade bills with me!

Adding electric heating/cooling would undoubtedly push us permanently into DAC. And we live in a place with year-round, abundant, strong sunlight. So we’ll be responsible and install eight solar panels and a whole-house power wall back-up system at the same time, which also eliminates the need for future blog posts about the occasional power outages which force us to play beat-the-clock with our fridge and freezer.

I consider it being prepared, but it is fair to say I am giving in. Time stands still for no one, but the local power utility stands still all the time during outages. Better to go solar, add a battery, and a little heat and cooling now. Maybe it’s not a surrender. Maybe it’s just a tactical retreat. Or even I’m attacking the problem from a different direction! Whatever. As Mr. Buffet said, “but there’s booze in the blender, and soon it will render . . .”

Power & Consequence

As an expat, I write frequently about how much we enjoy this lifestyle: living in a different culture (a less expensive and less acquisitive one), still full of new things to learn, new people to meet, new places to see. We know it’s not for everyone, and that’s fine. If we didn’t love it, we wouldn’t still be so happy after eight-and-a-half years as expats!

This is not one of those times. We recently had a few, shall we say, challenging experiences I wish to relate. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m going to complain, but rather, shed light on something common to expats that may go missing in the glossy pages of International Living or the TikTok feeds sent to you about the glories of expatdom.

Late last year, for absolutely no valid reason at all, my state of Jalisco announced it was invalidating all old licence plates and replacing them with new ones. Actually, they did state the new ones had a QR code embedded in them, but some of us already had such codes on our old plates. The good news was the turn-in and replacement would happen over the course of the entire year, in an orderly fashion (right!) based on the last digit of your current plates. The better news (from the government’s perspective) was you could pay in advance online for your new plates, your required annual registration, and your emissions inspection, all bundled together at a discounted total price. It was good news for the government because virtually no one went and got emission inspections, so now the government at least got you to pay extra, whether you ever went and got your emissions inspection or not. I give them credit: that part was clever.

The bad news for the rest of us was the “orderly fashion” turned out not to be so. People due to change plates early in the year reported long delays, because the new plates weren’t ready to be issued yet. The website we were supposed to use didn’t work at first, then it only worked with FireFox browser (who knew FireFox was still around?) Or you could go to the clothing shop next door to the recaudadora (DMV) office–and no, I am NOT making this up–and the woman there could use her desktop to make your appointment for a small fee.

Others reported a quintessential problem of Mexican bureaucracy: the petty bureaucrat at the recaudadora. The government specified what you needed to bring in: proof of residence, proof of identification, proof you paid online, and your original factura (the original sales receipt for your car, which passes for a title down here). That last document is a real challenge: there are many types, based on whether you bought new or used, and you’re never supposed to have it in your car, as the paper itself proves ownership: if someone steals your car with the factura in it, they can claim it’s theirs!

Those necessary documents are pretty straightforward: here’s where the pettiness comes in. Original and one copy, or just original? Copy on both sides, or one per page? How many forms of identification? Copies in black and white or color (the latter being considered a sign in Mexico of potential forgery, so . . .)? I guarantee you, whatever set of copies you have, they’re incorrect.

I let the matter rest for most of the year, until I saw about one-quarter of the cars on the road with new plates. Then I saw some online posts that the system was more regular now, so I figured it was time to bite the bullet. I downloaded a Chrome Extension to run FireFox, accessed the website, made an appointment, and made all the appropriate copies (or so I thought).

But wait, ¡hay mas! as they say down here. We arrived for our appointment to find that citas (reservations) are just a thing, not real. You get in line like everybody else. I noticed while we waited that about two-thirds of the people trying to get new plates were turned away: not a good average. At least it wasn’t a gringo thing: the pinche burócrata was treating the poor Mexicans in line just as badly as he would soon treat us. We dutifully arrived at the front, where the official told us we needed copies of our Permanente cards, not passports, and a different form showing we had already paid. Strike One. He sent us to the helpful office around the corner where another enterprising pair of women had set up a copier and printer to help us. We made new copies and printed another receipt. “Nope, copies too dark, and this still isn’t the correct receipt” he told us. Strike Two. We didn’t have any more options for receipts, so we retreated to eat a delicious lunch of sesame-crusted tuna, then home to lick our wounds and scour our receipts for the right one.

In the official’s defense, we did have the wrong receipts. In Mexico, when you pay an official fee online, you often get three or more documents verifying your payment, but some of them are just links to a different government website where you have to print out yet another form. You have to have just the right form, although ALL the forms show you paid the correct amount, and in fact you couldn’t even get this far in the system (if one wants to call it that) without having already paid the right amount. *Sigh* In our defense, we pointed out we used the helpful ladies the official pointed us to, so how come their copier wasn’t sufficient? He shrugged, called his boss over, who also shrugged. We left the line. Maybe next time. This was all just a reminder that humility and acceptance are graces in high demand for expats.

There’s the culprit, hiding in plain sight. Are all the wires supposed to be hanging like that?

All this happened amidst a power outage in our neighborhood. Seems Monday night, something went “BOOM” and we lost power around 1:00 am. By the time we woke up the next morning, defrosting was already happening. But such outages are not uncommon here, usually lasting a few hours, so we ate a larger than normal breakfast of things not likely to last and tried to resume normalcy, awaiting the return of la luz (literally light, more generally electricity). Except our community has a well, and a pump, and that requires luz, so we had no water in addition to no power. As I said, we’ve been through this before: we have a garrofón, a giant plastic jug full of 20+ liters of fresh water lying in wait, just in case. We have smaller reusable water jugs in every bathroom, for extra water to flush in the same circumstances. We have a gas stove top, so when the power is gone, we can take out the matches and still cook, old-school. We have fancy French presses, a high-tech/lithium-ion/one-shot espresso maker, and a small mocha pot from Italy, so coffee is always available, as long as mankind doesn’t forget how to make fire (or push the button on the portable espresso device).

So the first morning wasn’t so bad. Except it was only the first morning. Seems the power company, a federal utility that goes by the initials CFE (and no, there is no truth to the rumor it stands for Can’t Find Electricity) saw a blown transformer and repaired it, but they never checked to see if that fixed all the homes that had lost power. It didn’t, and our community were the lucky hold-outs. When recontacted the second morning, they snapped to, and we had power restored (with water) in just thirty-six hours. If you’re counting, that’s well past the “throw-everything in your fridge out” limit, but just inside the “throw everything in your freezer out as well” limit. Phew.

Why am I regaling you with this? Mexicans adjust to the frequent absence of water and power. They primarily rely on garrofónes, since they don’t have wells and municipal water systems are not always potable, which means not at all. The basic level of electrical use, meaning a small refrigerator, a small television, some lights, is practically free. And if it goes out, you can always call up a relative and go visit to recharge. Or do without (gasp!). That fridge usually contains only a few items, as mamá goes out to the local tienda or mercado a few times a week to get fresh foods or perishables, and liter bottles of Coke never go bad (or is that never get worse?). And there’s no giant (capable-of-hiding-a-corpse size) freezer full of things Costco convinced you to buy, either. Storms come (in the rainy season), the power goes, life goes on.

But for expats, power and water loss are a bigger deal. Luz is what brings in North of the Border (NOB) television and the internet via Starlink and TelMex connections. Expats have things like Alexa devices, air purifiers, air conditioning, music systems, treadmills, power garage doors, a host of kitchen gadgets, and an untold number of personal apparatus from cell phones to computers to tablets to ear buds to hearing aids to CPAP machines. No power is no bueno. As much as we try to adapt to local culture, most expats are NOT trying to become Mexicans, nor do they seek to mirror how the locals live. If we did, we’d be immigrants, not expats.

In the thirty years we lived in and around Washington DC, we only had two major power outages. One was Hurricane Isabel (2003), which felled so many trees we in suburbia were without power for three days. The other was two days without power when the transformer for our apartment building in Shirlington blew up. A minor outage of more than a few hours meant untold pain for the local power company, and they fixed things up quickly. In our eight-plus years lakeside, we’ve had three or four major outages, and many, many minor ones. Enough to convince me that reliable power back-up is a necessity here for expats, not a convenience. We’re scoping out some home power stations, in effect large rechargeable batteries which can pull us through the outages we have experienced with a full fridge/freezer, internet, and maybe even TV. They are not cheap, but they are dependable, and that’s the cost of peace of mind. At the rate I am replacing fridge food, it’s a bargain.

If you’re especially observant (and my friends are), you’ll note the common theme in this post: relying on big, government-run utilities or services generally doesn’t work well. If Dante were alive today, the Mexican recaudadora would certainly merit its own ring in the Purgatorio, if not the Inferno. And CFE doesn’t respond to customers because, well, it doesn’t have to. Somewhere in the United States today, there is some slick, young huckster telling people that what we need is government-run grocery stores and child care centers.

Yup, it’s going to work this time. What could go wrong? And that still isn’t the correct receipt!

Sicily

Word association time: what word comes to mind when someone says Sicily? Probably mafia or Godfather, first. Maybe cannoli, but that could be linked to the famous “Leave the gun, take the cannoli” line from the movie, too. Until fairly recently, it was fair to connect the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea with organized crime. Mafia control, portrayed in the Godfather movie trilogy, got so bad in the 1990s that they literally blew up several judges who had the audacity to question their hold. But la Cosa Nostra (as they are known) overplayed their hand, and the bombing led to a sustained campaign to break them down. Successive Italian governments tracked them down, and even Pope Francis joined in, excommunicating them in 2014. After thirty years, organized crime has returned to the shadows, unable to flex its muscles in the daylight.

But Sicily remains a poor, underdeveloped place with an abundance of history and culture. Whether the former attributes outweigh the latter is a matter of personal opinion.

We started our tour in Palermo, the island’s one-time capital and largest city. Palermo was a royal city, and a must-see part of the Grand Tour for European nobility in the eighteenth century. It has a proud heritage that mixes Phoenician, Roman, Greek, Norman, Arab, and Spanish influences. But today these influences largely reside in monuments and meals, and the main feel of the city is a blue-collar, slightly grimy vibe. I’d call it Naples without the cachet.

The other large city is Catania, on the east coast, literally in the shadow of Mount Etna. It has some of the same challenges, but seems a little more successful, having more a university town vibe than Palermo. The volcano is a must-see tourist stop, so that’s one advantage; it also accounts for unique soil and terroir, benefiting wines, cheeses, vegetables and the like.

One small lava field on Etna, which dominates the eastern shore

Getting around Sicily is a challenge. First, it’s large. Second, it is mountainous. It does have a bus, train, and car routes, but all of it runs on a sinuous network that could make a Formula One driver queasy. Palermo and Catania have decent airports, the latter subject to Mount Etna’s whims. So you can spend a lot of time getting from one site to another, or even around a town.

Monks built a earthen wall to protect against the 1669 Etna eruption. Now they have a two-tiered campus

The small towns in Sicily are inviting, once you can get to them. There life operates on a different level. They benefit from the fertile volcanic soil and the warm and (usually) moist climate, but mostly from the history. On the island, you can find some of the best Greek temples, Roman villas, baroque churches, and even Punic sites.

Maybe you like history?

How about scenery?

Of course there’s always the food:

Sicilian street food lunch at Florio winery

Sicily? Worth a visit. Given the geography, I suggest a tour, especially one themed to what you like: history? Food? Wine? Your ethnic background? One challenge is that Sicily is already warm in the traditional “shoulder” season, so the crowds start building earlier in the Spring than elsewhere in Europe. As to our sweepstakes for another expat site, this visit confirmed it is off our list. While it is charming and alluring, it is too hard to get to and too hard to get around. If I was an Italian-American looking to rediscover my Sicilian roots, it might be a different story.

Hands down, still the best photo of the trip!

Bari, Puglia

I know, you’re thinking, “Bari? Why are you in Bari? Wait, where is Bari?” Answering the last question first, Bari is a port city on the Adriatic coast of Italy, across from Albania, and it’s the capital of the Italian region of Puglia, often referred to in English as Apulia. But to make it easy, Puglia is the heel of the Italian “boot.”

“Why” merits a longer answer. This part of our trip is to experience a taste of expat life in southern Italy. Like we did in Spain’s Andalucia in January, we’re visiting this expat hot-spot to see how it “feels” to us. No agenda, no list of must-see/do’s, just six nights in Bari Vechia (old town). Southern Italy has become something of a magnet for American expats, especially those with Italian roots. The region has great weather, great food (‘natch), and decent value for cost of living, including housing.

We arrived on a Wednesday evening, expecting a quiet, work-night scene for a regional capital of 300,000+. So we were surprised by large crowds, closed streets, and a very festive atmosphere. When I asked the taxi driver if this was a normal sight for a late Spring weekday, he said, “no, it’s the festival for San Nicolas.”

Basilica of San Nicolas (very Norman or Romanesque!)

Now I knew Bari had an affinity for Saint Nick (San Nicolas de Bari is one of his official titles), and I knew all about Saint Nick in his Santa Claus personna, I even knew he originally was Bishop of Myra, in present-day Turkiye. But his feast day is December 6th, not May 9th. What gives? Seems we stumbled into an interesting historical phenomenon which goes back over 900 years, involving Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox, Turks, Byzantines, Venetians, relics, miracles, and Vladimir Putin. Seriously.

The Saint, back from his boat trip and walk around town

Nicolas was a famous Bishop in Myra, martyred during the Diocletian persecution around 343 Christian Era (CE). He was a Greek living in the Roman Empire, known for his piety and many miracles. Although there are no definitive accounts of his life, his cult emerged after his death. He is beloved by both the Orthodox and Catholic Rites of Christianity, becoming the basis for Santa Claus in the latter, while there are more churches dedicated to him in Moscow than any other Orthodox saint. He is the patron saint of sailors, prostitutes, repentant thieves, brewers, pawn-brokers, and students, groups which are certainly not mutually exclusive.

The saint’s remains resting place, and the devotion they attract

In 1054 CE the Church split into competing Catholic and Orthodox branches in the Great Schism, and in 1087 the Seljuk Turks overran the Bishopric of Myra, capturing the tomb of Saint Nick. A group of merchants and sailors in Bari, Italy, decided to raid and return (most of, Venetians later grabbed the rest) the saint’s remains to Christian hands. They brought them back to Bari on May 9th, establishing a “feast of the translation” (i.e., transportation, which sounds so much better than “theft”) at a new church in Bari. We had wandered into the middle of that feast.

And what a feast. Dignitaries from East and West attend, this year the biggest being the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. The statue of San Nicolas is collected up by the faithful and processed down to the docks, where sailors take it out for a night at sea. The next day, they re-enact the “translation” and the faithful gather to welcome their beloved saint home. The statue has a “skirt” attached to it (covering up the men carrying it) so it looks like it “walks” up from the port to the basilica. It moves to a spot on a promenade where it stays while masses of Thanksgiving are held in the Basilica Catholic Church upstairs and the Orthodox Crypt Church below, where the saint’s remains, well, remain. During the final mass, a priest crawls under the altar to the tomb containing the remains, unlocks it, and draws out: water. Although the box containing the bones is sealed, some form of liquid, called manna by the faithful, has been accumulating since the saint died. Of course this manna has miraculous properties and is diluted and widely shared among the believers.

One of the clothes used to collect the manna

What’s really a miracle to me is the way Catholic and Orthodox get along so well during all this, whereas in Jerusalem and elsewhere they are usually at each other’s ecclesiastical throats. For example, even Putin was allowed to make a pilgrimage to Bari in 2007! So Bari is full of Orthodox and Catholic faithful.

The view from our balcony: three eras of church wall

Bari Vecchia, where we stayed, is a typical medieval maze of tiny streets, repurposed castles, palaces and churches, with a blossoming harbor and new city spreading out landward from the small peninsula. The entire area is easily walkable: mostly flat, and our evening passeggiata often went completely around the seafront. There are oodles of cafes serving up espresso, osterias for seafood, pizzerias for focaccia barese. The locals are especially proud of their local pasta, called orecchiette or little ears. Women still set up tables in the narrow streets and make the pasta fresh while you watch. We were impressed with the local Primitivo and Negroamare red varietal wines. The pasta and focaccia were excellent; we have yet to find pulpo (octopus) which rivals what we find in Mexico, but the search goes on!

In addition to all that Saint Nick history, Bari has a surfeit of other historical regimes. Its earliest traces are Phoenician and Greek, then Roman, Byzantine, Norman, and finally Spanish, with each group leaving a mark architecturally. Under the Aragonese Queen Isabella, Bari passed to her daughter Bona Sforza as Duchess. She later married and outlived King Sigismund the Old of Poland, holding both titles (Queen of Poland and Duchess of Bari, among others) at the same time. So much for the patriarchy.

We took two day trips from Bari: thirty minutes south (on the local train) to Polignano a Mare, and forty minutes north to Trani. We wanted to see what smaller, less touristy towns in the area were like. Polignano is a small town famous for its cliffs, and Red Bull even sponsors a cliff diving event there every year. Trani has a bustling port and a fantastic cathedral.

Seaside Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

To be honest, the entire coast of Puglia is filled with small-to-medium sized towns that are very similar. Each has a small beach or port area, an old city, then a newer development (usually around the main train station) which consists of apartment blocks. Weekend or Summer vacation apartments for Italians stretch out from there. I would be hard-pressed to tell you which to select to visit; all have something to offer, but there isn’t a lot to distinguish between them in my opinion.

Puglia has been a tourist destination for Italians–looking for a quiet, inexpensive beach/shore trip–for a long time. It delivers on that promise, and remains less expensive, less pretentious (I’m looking at you, Amalfi coast), but still pleasant. Whether it has what it takes to be right as an expat haven for us? That’s a question still pending!

I only had to pay the tour guide five Euros to concoct a story requiring everyone to kiss under this arch to ensure a happy marriage.

Currency Speculations

In discussing the cost of living for expats here in Mexico, I have at times mentioned the exchange rate. I’ve never spent much time discussing it, because I have always felt it’s an environmental condition, or as the saying goes, “it is what it is.” Over the six years we have been expats, I have noticed many expats who are fixated on the exchange rate. It obviously does have some implications, but perhaps not for the reasons many expats think.

Here’s a handy chart showing how the Peso had varied with the dollar over the period we have been visiting/living in Mexico. We bought our first home here in 2012 (just off-chart), but the Peso had been steady at around 12 MXP – 1 USD for several years. We finally retired and moved here in February, 2017, and the Peso had depreciated to 18 MXP to the dollar.

US Dollar to Mexican Peso conversion rate, 2013-Present (from Xe )

Now we had done our research and knew that the cost of living in Mexico was already less expensive than in the United States. But by the time we arrived to live as expats, Mexico was on a half-price sale. And with a few perturbations (more on those later), it stayed there until the pandemic hit.

Those were very good days to be an expat, especially if your income, pension, or investments were denominated in dollars. The only exception to the rule was for American products. For example, what if you wanted to buy a jar of Skippy’s Extra-Chunk Peanut Butter, labelled in English and imported from el Norte? If the domestic price there was $8.00 USD, you would incur a mark-up and tax leading to $10.00 USD total price, but you were buying it in Mexico, which meant the price also had to be converted to Pesos. At a 12:1 rate, your cost would have been $120 MXP, but at an 18:1 rate, your price was now $180 MXP! Basically, the stronger your dollar was, the more expensive any US products you wanted. But in general, buying local products and services, expats with dollars benefited from a strong dollar.

What causes those spikes and drops in the chart? It’s a complex process, which leads most investment advisors to caution against currency speculation: there are just too many variables which are entirely out of one’s control. For example, if a country undergoes political disruption, that causes investors to pull money out of that country, weakening the currency. The same goes for if a national leader starts doing things like nationalizing industries, or decides to devalue a currency overnight to fight rampant inflation. While there are warning signs of such events, they are hard to read, and can be disastrous to currency traders or investors.

There are also some pretty consistent factors affecting the relative strength of a currency. In addition to monetary and political stability, there is remittance flows, foreign direct investment, the overall state of the nation’s economy, and foreign demand. These combine in the case of the US dollar to keep it the world’s (unofficial but real) reserve currency. Everybody wants dollars when exchanging goods and services, because they know the value of the dollar is strong, stable and universally respected. That’s also why that factor is unlikely to change in the near future, and certainly not quickly.

In the case of Mexico, remittances from Mexican migrants (legal and otherwise) in the US are at a record high. Jobs are plentiful, pay is increasing, and they are sending more money back to their families than ever before. Large chunks of foreign direct investment (FDI) are moving to Mexico as part of the move towards friend-shoring, that is, moving manufacturing to closer, more friendly countries rather than places like China. Mexico’s inflation rate is slightly less than in the US, and Mexican banks are offering high interest rates on savings/investments. Which makes the Peso stronger against the dollar.

Those with dollar reserves notice they don’t go as far, but they don’t notice that US products are a little cheaper, too. It all depends on what you spend your money on. Some expats live on fixed incomes and can really feel 10-20% price swings. Others try to buy extra Pesos (by exchanging at an ATM) when the rate is favorable. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you have a secure place to store them and you take into account the fees you might incur with the bank. The thing is, even if you’re exchanging $500 USD at a time, the difference remains small. At 20:1, you received 10,000 MXP; at 16:1 you get 8000 MXP. Most people are exchanging far less.

Some expats try to get around the currency changes by having their income/pension/social security deposited directly into Mexican accounts as Pesos. Of course, the bank is either charging a fee or determining your exchange rate, and they’re making money either (or both) ways. Not to mention for American expats, there is the issue of FATCA and FBAR compliance if you have foreign accounts. Never heard of it? You should!

FATCA is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Essentially, it requires banks to submit data on any foreign accounts held by Americans. It’s why some American banks discharge expat accounts or refuse to permit expats to open accounts, because the banks don’t want the headache of the reporting requirement to the IRS. FATCA also requires expats holding more than $50,000 USD in foreign accounts to file a report to the IRS and pay taxes on those accounts.

FBAR is the Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, a form American expats are required to file annually (with their taxes) but this report goes to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), not the IRS. This report is mandatory if you have a total of $10,000 USD in any number of foreign accounts (bank, mutual fund, bonds, etc.) at any time during the year. Since this is a tool to combat financial crimes (not for tax purposes), the US regards failure to file as a very serious offense (likewise, conscious attempts to avoid filing, like manipulating transactions to stay below the $10,000 USD limit). The US also does not recognize ignorance as an excuse for failing to file the FBAR, although there are ways to avoid criminal penalties through voluntary make-up reporting. Needless to say, all this is a lot of work to go through.

Post-pandemic Peso-Dollar exchange rates settled in around 20:1, which was really great as it was easy to mentally calculate (drop one digit from the Peso price and divide by 2= Dollar price). Lately the Peso has strengthened to under 17:1 to the Dollar. To me the biggest change is mental (dividing by 17? Fuggedabouit!). Mexico is still inexpensive at this exchange rate. So I have to make my Skippy Extra-Chunk last a little longer? No problema!

The Smiling Retiree, Part Four: Getting to the Smile

Many of you might have felt Part Three sounded pretty good, so what are we doing in Part Four? I’m going to argue that Parts One through Three are necessary but insufficient for Smiling Retirement. Part One is essential, because if you don’t understand the concept, you’ll get it wrong for sure. Part Two removes the greatest friction: resources. Part Three puts you in the right position, but just. By Part Three, you’re existing (as a retiree), but you’re not living. You can’t get to the smile until you’re living.

So what’s the next step? It’s the hardest one, I’m sorry to say.

Many people go through their whole lives just existing, not living. They work to provide shelter, food, and some degree of comfort. They rest to recharge and resume work. They recreate for the same reason. They procreate (or not) because, well, that’s what we do. This is consistent with all animal life on the planet. Whether you think what differentiates us from other animals is a soul or higher intellect (or both), there is a difference. What’s the purpose of the difference? It gives us the opportunity to consider the big questions that the higher intellect inevitably raises.

Who are you in particular? We often answer that question in terms of relationships (“I’m a father, a husband, a son”) or associations (“. . . a former official, a Catholic, a fan of . . . “). But who are you essentially?

Why are you? Not in contingent terms of “when your dad met your mother” but why you, why now? For what purpose?

These are tough questions, easily avoided while working to live (i.e., existing). But you understand the concept of retirement. You have prepared financially. You have vacay-ed and experimented to a place of comfort. You can ask those questions, and better yet, you can start to find answers!

What are those answers? Yours might be different from the ones I would share. Mine are based–as you no doubt have guessed–in the Gospels and my Catholic Faith. I believe in Truth (the capitalization is important here), and truths. The latter is contingent and personal, but must in the end lead to the former, if they are indeed “true.” So there is no reason to fear them. The search itself is satisfying.

Is it possible to just continue existing, and never address the hard questions? Sure. Birds do it, bees do it, even dogs do it. And billions of people do it too. Retirement as I have described it is a rare blessing, an opportunity not to be missed. And what an opportunity! Because seeking those answers (whether you find them or not) leads to a certain satisfaction. And that satisfaction generates a smile.

What’s with the emphasis on the smile? It’s a simple gesture, universally recognized. It’s a moderate emotion, not a belly-laugh. It’s pleasant. There is a degree of amiability, knowledge, and just plain old friendliness in a smile. And it’s genuine. It makes life easier, for the one smiling and for everyone who sees it.

Here’s hoping you not only retire, but you get to be a smiling retiree!

The Smiling Retiree, Part Three: Retiring

You “get” the concept that retirement means not working, and you’ve arranged a pension or nest egg which should cover your costs till you head for the great beyond. So now you just retire and start smiling, right? Wrong. The transition may be jarring, and if not done well, can lead to many outcomes other than Smiling Retirement.

That video I mentioned in Part One talked about the Vacation Phase of retirement: the few weeks or months where the lack of structure provided by work gives the new retiree the sensation of being on vacation. Days become irrelevant, or as retirees joke, a week consists of “six Saturdays and a Sunday.” Things like school calendars, holidays, and long weekends can creep up on you since they no longer seem relevant. Most everybody enjoys this at first, but eventually the sameness of the lack of structure begins to grind on you. We generally limit our tours and cruises to ten-to-twelve days for the same reason; otherwise, it all begins to blend together.

Turns out, humans need routines. If work doesn’t provide one, you have to come up with your own. The beauty of retirement is you’re free to develop your own. Perhaps you’re a night owl who had a career which required an early morning start; now your day can start at 10:00 am and end at 3:00 am, if you like. Never had time to fit in exercise? You do now. When do you eat, and what’s your big meal? All up to you. And you can change it, to see what works.

I started eating a huge breakfast (bacon or sausage, eggs, avocados, tomatoes, hash browns or a bagel) every morning, after a career of having only a banana and a cup of coffee. It was heaven, and I didn’t need to eat again until dinner. But while I enjoyed this schedule, my digestive tract didn’t, and it made its objections known. I switched to some fruit or yogurt and coffee in the morning, and a large lunch in the mid afternoon, which my body ratified. I moved exercise to the late morning after only exercising after lunch for decades. I found starting my day with prayers meant I didn’t skip them later, and I was in a better mood regardless of how I slept. You get to experiment with things you always did one way, because now you can.

Bill Murray Ice Sculpture GIF by Groundhog Day

If you don’t establish a routine, you’ll get bored. Then you’ll feel a powerful pull to go back to work, if only for the routine. Or you might substitute some other thing (volunteering, for example) for work to provide your routine. But that is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Find the routine that works for you, makes you comfortable, then fill in your hobbies and activities around it.

Experimentation is just as important when developing your new (or rediscovering your old) interests. Take up the guitar? Why not! Learn to cook Welsh Rarebit? Sure! Join a charity or service organization? Of course. But whatever you do, never, never, never impose a “success” filter on it. It’s ok to consider whether you can afford a hobby (financially or in terms of time), but don’t start evaluating “am I any good at this?” or “is this doing any good for that?” Those are business/work concepts, and you don’t do that anymore, right? If you like it and can afford it, keep doing it. If not, don’t.

It is easy to fall back into workday notions of success, competition, and merit. But you’re living, not working. Perhaps we can learn something from the way children behave. When a child finds something they really enjoy, they’ll get lost in it. They don’t start asking “how good am I?” “or “what’s the purpose of this?”, they just enjoy themselves. They haven’t met the work world yet, but they have mastered one key to retirement!

The vacation and experimentation periods of retirement are incredibly rewarding. Getting to try out new things without any pressure to “do well” or “succeed” is liberating, once you understand it. How long do they last? How long do you last? To some extent, the two timelines are the same. As time goes by, you’ll find a daily routine that fits. You’ll find hobbies and interests that fit, and people who also fit. But all that may change. Friends asked me why I stopped attending a group, and I said (truthfully) “it seemed too much like work.” You may get too tired for pickleball, or too old for globetrotting, too bored for politics. It happens.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that this phase is just a transition. You may enjoy the transition, but you haven’t reached Smiling Retirement yet!

The Smiling Retiree, Part Two: Finances, or “it’s always about the money”

St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy (chapter six, verse ten) tells us “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Hard to improve on that. Mark Twain allegedly did so, quipping “the lack of money is the root of all evil.” When it comes to retirement, both maxims apply. As with working life, more money means more opportunities. Worker or retiree, you can be a happy, poor person, or a miserable rich person. The differences appear in the many ways you get there.

The key point is this: since you’re not working (remember our definition from Part One), your ability to generate resources may become limited. If you have a pension indexed to inflation, consider yourself greatly blessed. If not, there’s social security as a safety net (if you’re an American). If you have invested in a retirement account, it may continue growing, but you’ll be tapping it as you go, which limits the overall growth and total available. The inputs side of the equation, less a winning lottery ticket or a rich uncle’s will, is a fairly constant constraint.

Meanwhile, you do have great control over your expenses. Your spending for commuting, maintaining a wardrobe, and business expenses all drop dramatically. You can live where you want, which could be much less expensive. You can take time to comparison shop, and seize opportunities for deals and discounts which were out of reach during the workday. But you’ll also want to do things previously postponed (like travel or a hobby) which might be expensive. And you’ve got to place a bet which most of us avoid: how long am I going to be doing this? Most importantly, you control this variable (expenses, not when you check-out).

Since financing retirement is mostly a math problem, it is actually the easiest part to master. When should you start saving for retirement? Yesterday. Money set aside early compounds (remember the magic of compound interest?), turning the few dollars you saved in 1978 into thousands today. The amount is much less important than the fact of investing and not tapping it early. By the way, this is my biggest complaint with Millennials and Zoomers today who are living the digital nomad lifestyle, in effect moving retirement forward so they can enjoy it while they’re young. Your traditional work years (ages 20-50) are your peak earning years. By reducing your income in this period, you reduce what you can invest, and thus surrender significant compounding of your investments. I hope they are doing the math, too, while trekking across the globe!

How about those other young folk buying into the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) concept. Basically, the idea here is to restrict your spending while young, invest wisely, then retire very early and live off the wealth you created. Some challenges here are: (1) actually restraining your spending while young (hard, not impossible), (2) investing smartly to maximize your wealth (hard, not impossible), (3) guessing how long you’re going to be retired if you do so very early (damn near impossible, but essential to solving the FIRE calculation). It’s a simple math problem for a 65 year-old retiree to project they’ll live approximately fifteen more years, and a small error is easily covered. But a 40 year-old retiree planning to live another forty years? This is double jeopardy, where the “scores can really change!”

Would you like to go for "Double Jeopardy" where the scores can really change? — Great Christmas Movie!

What if you don’t have a pension, didn’t save much (or anything) for retirement? Well, you have a lot of company: 45% of baby boomers in the US have zero retirement savings. If you’re planning on retiring under these conditions, you’ll need to seriously consider how to drive your cost-of-living down to meet your social security level means. Folks who through no fault of their own found themselves retirement age but with no other resources were a major source of expats in Mexico once upon a time. That is becoming more difficult to pull off, as the Mexican government keeps raising the income requirements for residency (temporary or permanent) while tightening up enforcement of tourist visa overstays.

I’m not going to get into all the ways one can amass wealth, as that is a path well-trod by many financial planning experts (which reminds me, retaining one of these experts, especially one who gets paid by the size of your holdings and not by the amount of trading, is a great idea!). Suffice it to say: live within your means, invest and diversify, avoid keeping up with the Joneses, and don’t get divorced. Maybe I will write a blog on how to amass wealth.

Just a fly in the ointment, Hans. A monkey in the wrench. — more life lessons from Die Hard

To finish with one more Die Hard reference, the “fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench” of retiree financing is your health. Health care costs, whether routine or traumatic, can bankrupt even the frugal, life-long saver. Having good health insurance is critical, but hard to do. You can’t really save your way past the risk of long-term care expenses. You will get old, you will get sick. Maybe you’ve won the genetic lottery. Maybe you exercise and eat a healthy diet. We all do what we can. I prefer to think of it this way: if you face life-or-death health issues, retirement financing is the least of your worries.

In Part Three, we’ll consider how to transition to retiree, smiling or not.

The Smiling Retiree, Part One: Definitions, or “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

I recently saw a Tedx talk (link) which did a good job of discussing the phases of retirement. Still, some things bothered me, since some of the language (e.g., “squeezing all the juice out of retirement”) seemed to convey the exactly wrong sentiment in my opinion. So I decided to gather my own thoughts and write about it, as that’s what bloggers do. I’m not exactly an expert on retirement, but I do have some credentials, which I’ll cover as we go. So far we (important change of subject pronoun there!) have faced none of the financial or existential challenges which are so common among retirees. So we got that going for us. . . which is nice.

Before we dig in, may I take a moment to point out just how weird the concept of retirement is? For all of human history, people worked and raised families until they were too old or infirm to do so, then they died. The rich never needed to work, so they found ways to spend their leisure, and eventually they died, too. But nobody “retired.” Rome gave its soldiers a pension, but that was because having poor-men-with-combat-experience-lying-about is bad public policy. Otto von Bismark introduced the modern concept of retirement in the 19th century by forcing Germans over the age of seventy to quit and accept a government payment. Even as late as FDR’s successful enactment of social security in the States, many people of retirement age were opposed to the idea of having to stop working! Population growth, the industrial revolution, and the rise of the middle class all combined to popularize what we now call retirement. So it’s fairly recent and not at all surprising humanity hasn’t quite mastered the concept!

So what is retirement? In its simplest form, it is a period of life in the absence of work. To differentiate it from other times without work (i.e., unemployment), I would add “the need to” before work. Pretty simple, but you would be amazed at the number of people who fail to get this definition. I think here of friends who talk about their “retirement job,” “part-time retirement,” “semi-retired,” or “retired except for. . .”. Nope, not retired, that’s all. Not that there’s anything wrong with continuing to work, or working less hours, or working with less stress: all great concepts, and rightly to be praised. Just not retirement.

Notice that in the definition I have proposed (a period of life in the absence of the need to work) need does not necessarily denote resources. Need can be financial (e.g., I have to keep working to pay off my mortgage) but it can also be purposeful (I have to keep working because I’m the boss, that’s who I am), or evasive (I have to keep working because I don’t know what I would do with myself), or well anything. Need just represents the “what” which comes after “I have to keep working because . . .”

So the person who takes on huge responsibilities in volunteer positions during their retirement? Are they truly retired? Perhaps, since only they can answer “why?” they do so. The point here is not to judge what options anyone chooses, but rather to clearly identify what we are talking about when we say “retirement” so we can then move on to how to be a smiling retiree.

Next up, Finances, or the way we go about retiring!