Our First Christmas in Mexico

 We moved into our lovely house on the western outskirts of Ajijic on Friday 27th November with only 3 weeks to spare before our daughters and grand daughter arrived for Christmas.  I guess, normally, this wouldn't have presented a problem but as we'd sold every single one of our possessions and had arrived in Mexico with only our clothes, golf clubs and our dogs we had a reall challenge on our hands. Although we'd bought the main furniture with the house, we hadn't even a coffee mug to drink from ........ oh yeah, I forgot - we hadn't even got any coffee!

A very steep and frantic learning curve ensued - finding out where to buy household stuff, bedding, dog beds, food and drink, navigating our way (mostly unsuccessfully) in and around Guadalajara where the traffic is manic. BUT we succeeded! I don't think the girls have lacked any creature comforts while they've been here. They all have their own bedrooms and bathrooms, so why, I wonder, do they all congregate in our bathroom to fix their hair and make up?

As I write, they're all shopping in the Gallerias in Guadalajara giving me some much needed peace and quiet. The Naisby girls are nothing if not full on party animals!

So far we've managed a trip to Tonala to buy some artwork for our house, somehow managing to cram five adults and a large picture into a very small Nissan Note much to the amusement of onlookers who watched all the contortions involved in getting in and out of the car. Gill & Lyn had broken body's by the time we got home!


The following day we recovered by taking ourselves to Aguas Termales, the wonderful restorative thermal pools which are only 5 minutes drive from our house. Being Christmas Eve, the place was wonderfully quiet and we had personal waiter service all day long. The hottest pool was a scalding 41 degrees so we only managed about 3 minutes at a time in that one! Christmas lunch was a treat at Maria Isabel's Restaurant on the shores of Lake Chapala although someone had a warped sense of humour in providing Dave with a shot glass for his Diet Coke!

Then there was the Tequila Trip! A mahoosive 12 hour car trip to Tequila via the unique, circular pyramids at Guachimontones, a fabulous lunch at Hacienda El Carmen which dates back to the mid 16th Century and then on to the small family owned and run tequila distillery, La Alborrada. What a wonderful, personal tour we had, followed by a mega tasting session of all the tequilas made here. It has to be said that you really do need to go with a tour guide because 10 tequilla shots in 40 minutes was pretty heavy going even for the dedicated drinkers in our group!

Meantime, as if we hadn't been busy enough, we rescued a stray dog from the lakeside. The streets of Ajijic are full of stray street dogs which tend to run in small packs but little Braxie, a 10 month old German Shepherd / Alsatian was all alone on a patch of land between two established packs. She appeared about two weeks ago and we thought she belonged to a couple of fishermen we camp out there from time to time but apparently not. She followed us on our daily walk with our two dogs every day but two days in a row she was attacked, though not hurt, by a pack of dogs guarding a local farmers cows. She's such a happy, friendly little thing so ...... we brought her home and she's settled straight in with our two dogs. Now we start the round of vet visits to check her over, vaccinate and then spay her. The vet doesn't think she's been on the streets too long because, although skinny, her teeth and gums are in good shape but we now have a very loyal pup - a wonderful Christmas present!

Our First Month in Mexico

Well what a month it's been! I can't actually believe how much we've achieved in one short month. Dave & I arrived here in Ajijic very late on Monday 23rd November followed by our dogs on Wednesday 25th. We spent the first four days as the guests of Ralph & Felipe in Villa Eucalipos, a beautiful pet friendly B & B which I can highly recommend.

The first three days were pretty manic ...... we had appointments at the bank, with the Notario who was dealing with our house purchase and with Thomas Hellyer our wonderful Estate Agent who has guided us through all the legal stuff. Then we had to collect my new car, collect the dogs from the airport (twice, because they weren't there the first time!), visit the new house to check the inventory then off to see the Notario again. All this by Thursday lunchtime - it's no wonder my body & brain took some time to catch up with each other!!

We moved in to our beautiful home on the Friday 27th November and have spent the last three weeks  finding our way around, adjusting to driving here (Dave is definitely more comfortable with the crazy driving habits than I am) and frantically buying enough household goods before our rabble come to stay over Christmas and New Year. As I write, they are somewhere in the blue ether above the USA.

I've taken to carrying my camera with me everywhere because every day there's something crazy or new to photograph. Here's a wee selection below & there'll be more news and photo's after the festive season as we'll be exploring further afield while the girls are here.

Some of our morning dog walk friends

Horses crossing main road outside Sorianna supermarket

We counted 9 Mexican men in this wee truck!

Highway into Guadalajara- just hangin' on in there!

Spotted in Jocotepec - what can I say?

Money, Bank Accounts & other hassles!

Oh the joys! Setting up our peso bank account and actually getting some money into it has been one long, uphill battle ......... BUT today we've almost (maybe) reached the top of the hill.

Way back in April, when we were still in Inverness, Mrs Hugely Organised Naisby decided to drag Mr Coudn't Give A Damn Naisby into the local HSBC branch in Inverness to set up an Expat Premier Bank Account in Sterling and US Dollars which could then be mirrored  with an Expat account in Mexico in Pesos. All well and good in principle. The UK (Jersey) account was opened without any real hassle so we duly launched a few pounds here and a few dollars there into these new accounts. We then filled out a new mountain (and I mean a real mountain) of paperwork to start the process of opening the Mexican account. Rules and regulations are really tight in Mexico due to the fact that many banks, including HSBC, have been fined millions of pesos for money laundering over the past year or so.

       
           And so began the fun!

It took until the end of June to finally receive our account details, cheque book and debit card - notice the singular "debit card". On phoning HSBC, Mexico I was informed that in Mexico, the man of the house is the account holder although the woman of the family is allowed to use the cheque book (which doesn't bear her name) and her husband's debit card. As an independent woman used to earning my own money, operating all the household and business finances, this totally freaks me out! So much for not sharing PIN numbers and stuff either. But then there was another issue - getting internet access so we could transfer dollars to our peso account. Just try following rapid fire machine gun type Spanish down a phoneline when you want to complete your registration process. Speaking a bit of real life Spanish is absolutely no help here!

So ...... not to be totally daunted, I knew I was coming out to Mexico in September so thought I would just pop into the local branch of HSBC to get the problem sorted. Luz Elena, our local Customer Service adviser is lovely but delicately explained to me that she could not help me with internet access because my husband wasn't with me and he is the main account holder. GRRRR! So, here I am in Ajijic, wanting to buy a car but I have no pesos - solution ...... just pay in dollars. But that's another story in itself so back to the bank account .......

Dave & I eventually arrived in Ajijic permanently in November, all of 2 weeks ago and promptly went into the bank again to see Luz Elena. Although we were there for almost 2 hours, it was most comforting to know that she had to make about 15 phone calls to various departments to get our internet access up and running and some even hung up on her when she asked if anyone spoke English as Dave was struggling with phone communication with them in Spanish. Internet access all sorted, special gizmo key thingy for online banking access ordered, we returned home only to find our account had been suspended :-(((

Back to the bank again a couple of days ago, Luz makes more phone calls to find out why our account was blocked and discovers that because our Scottish address is still listed but we received our online access gizmo in Mexico, there was a security issue. DOH! Finally, we mow have an unblocked account, have managed to transfer pesos into it - via Dave's log key as I'm not issued with one - and we can see Sterling, Dollars & Pesos in the Global View section of our account ...... via Dave's log in of course.

I think we can now chalk this up as a success story despite it taking over 6 months to reach its conclusion.

Bringing our Dogs to Ajijic

Now here's a thing! Where do you start when you decide to emigrate and have pets to relocate?

Our lovely mutts, Deefa, the black labrador and Zoob, the Patterdale Terrier already didn't know which end was up after living in a series of temporary homes with us after the sale of our own house. In the space of four months, they'd lived in Culbokie on the Black Isle in the Highlands, Orkney, Inverness and Eathie, back on the Black Isle. So just to add insult to injury, we then load them into the car and drive to Glasgow where they are packed up in dog crates and suffer through three flights over 3 days and 5,500 miles to Guadalajara, Mexico.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here - let's look at exactly what was involved in arranging for them to be shipped (OK, flown) to our new home in Mexico. We looked at the costs with a couple of firms but when one of them, Transfuranimals.co.uk was highly recommended to us by our financial adviser, we decided to go with them.

I have to say that Transfur animals provide a very personal service with either Andy or Paul always available to answer queries and organise the trip. They were extremely good at researching the most pet friendly companies offering flights to Mexico and they booked the dogs' travel with United Airlines. One point to note is not to book your own flights until the animals flights are confirmed. This is because you can't change your own flight without financial penalty but you can change the animals flights free of charge!

Zoob & Deefa Dec 2014

Transfur have a detailed animal measuring chart and once they have the size of your pet they then order appropriate crates for them which are sent to you in advance of your travel date. Unfortunately, although they had informed me that United Airlines charged by the weight of the animal plus crate, they chose to order wood crates which inevitably cost a heck of a lot more than plastic crates. I've since found out that because of this weight per crate charge, other pet export firms use plastic crates whenever possible when shipping with United Airlines. (NB. Different rules apply for different Airlines, some of whom insist on wood crates so check before ordering). The other downside was that these crates resembled coffins and I couldn't bear the thought of putting my dogs into one of them.

We had arranged via Transfur animals to take our dogs to PetsOnTheMove.co.uk, Glasgow Depot the afternoon prior to our flight and having spoken to them about our crating concerns, they assured us that they had plastic/metal crates to fit both dogs which we could exchange for ours at their depot. This proved to be a real godsend at the other end because we'd never have been able to lift the wooden crate containing our outsize labrador and neither is there any way you are allowed to take your dog out of the crate before you leave the airport! I most likely would have used PetsOnTheMove.co.uk for the whole export service if I had know about them sooner. they also offer a very friendly and personal service and the Glasgow concern is run by two sisters, Gail and Karen.

Now comes the interesting bit ........ we'd sorted out the Animal Passports, organised their shipping and overnight accommodation, found an animal friendly B & B for our arrival in Ajijic until our new house was ready but we couldn't find out from anyone in the UK where we needed to go to collect our dogs in Guadalajara! Now correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't the export agent provide end of journey details for a client when the fee is a whopping £3500? These are the people who ship pets all over the world for a living but they just tell you to phone United Airlines at Heathrow to find out what to do at the other side of the world! I called United Cargo, Heathrow but needless to say, no-one could tell me where the animal cargo depot was in Guadalajara and they weren't prepared to find out. After a bit of wheedling, I did manage to get the phone number for United Cargo in Guadlajara and then I struck gold..........

Gold in the name of Ricardo Cardenas who works for United Cargo in Guadalajara. We spoke in Spanglish, e-mailed in Spanglish and eventually I understood what he wanted us to do. As we were arriving in Guadalajara the evening before the dogs, we had to declare two pieces of missing luggage - the dogs. As passengers, we are apparently allowed one dog each as luggage so when we filled in the customs form we were under strict instructions not to tell the authorities they were coming as cargo, just to act dumb and say we were coming back the next day to collect them. Ricardo, in the meantime, had worked his magic behind the scenes and had arranged to offload the dogs himself from the aircraft, neatly ripping their air waybill numbers off the crates as he did so. This ruse meant that the dogs did not have to go to the cargo warehouse and could come straight in to the terminal as luggage for veterinary checking. It also meant we wouldn't have to pay a huge fee "impuesto" for getting them released from the airport. This man deserves a medal! He stayed with us all the way through the vetting process, called an external vet for dog worming (see below), even persuading her to leave her clinic in Chapala and come immediately as the poor dogs had been travelling for 4 days. I am deeply indebted to Ricardo Cardenas.

You need to note that you or your UK vet need to liaise with DEFRA regarding the very strict rules for exporting pets to Mexico. We complied with every aspect and more but despite this, the authorities would not release our dogs until a vet had been called to give them a worming tablet each. This was not on the list of requirements and even though we regularly worm them ourselves, it apparently should have been done by a vet and certified on their animal passports before we left the UK.

We are now happily installed with the dogs in our beautiful home in Ajijic and the very stressed pets we met at the airport are now relaxed and happy once again

Postscript ...... Deefa was released from his crate in the airport carpark and promptly threw up thereby neatly disposing of the offending worming tablet!

The Dream Begins .........

My name's Barbara Naisby and I'm starting this blog as my hubby, Dave, and I reach the final stages of our preparation to leave the UK for our new retirement adventure - living in Mexico.

Some say we're mad, some say we're brave but the vast majority of people tell us they're just pure jealous!

I guess we've always been a bit crazy, relentlessly pursuing business dreams which many thought we're impossible to achieve but which we just knew could be attained - like setting up a membership only, referral only dental practice in the middle of a field, four miles from the nearest bus stop and inviting our clients to visit us on horseback. Bonkers? Not really; just different and creating stories people could tell about a mad dentist who chose a very different and relaxed way of practising dentistry. As this blog isn't about our dental lives, you can read the full story (if you're interested!) at
http://www.paddilund.com/content/view.asp?name=SuccessProfiles

Our home & dental practice in Culbokie, Scotland

As retirement approached and business adventures were no longer our priority, we decided we'd quite like to embark on a really different lifestyle. Having been tied to the business by on call schedules and our clients needs, we'd rarely managed to go on holiday for more than one week at a time so it was time to spread our wings a bit ...... mainly via the internet at first to find some areas of interest.

We looked at Ecuador, Costa Rica and Belize and then discovered a little known place in Mexico called Lake Chapala which just happens to have the second best climate in the world (Kenya taking first place). The more research we did, the more forums we found, the more interested we became and so in May 2012 we set off on our first trip to Ajijic, Lake Chapala.

If this small place had attracted our interest online, it succeeded in capturing our hearts in real life. The old way of families caring for each other, the kindness we were shown as obvious incomers by Mexicans and expats alike could not have been any more attractive. And then there are the colours! Everywhere you look, colour just leaps out at you, the flowers, the walls of the houses, murals on the street walls, the clothes - I could go on and on!


We took the local buses everywhere and despite our rusty Spanish language skills we got on fine because the local people just love it when you try to speak the language (I'm happy to say our Spanish skills are much improved now!)

Back home, we decided to book ourselves onto the Focus on Mexico programme for prospective immigrants in 2013 which was the best money we've ever spent. The seminars, information packs, home tours, mentoring and much more have paved the way for us to prepare ourselves for emigration to Mexico. www.focusonmexico.com

It's now November 2014 and by the end of this month we'll be starting our retirement dream in Ajijic, Mexico