メキシコのラパスで退職者が忙しく過ごす方法

メキシコのラパスで退職者が忙しく過ごす方法

I was recently doom scrolling on Facebook and I saw this question about what do retirees do in La Paz or in Mexico? Probably in general. I thought this was a great chance to make a video sharing with you what people are actually saying that they’re doing. Marc here says for all you well established retirees, what does your day look like? I know everyone will offer ideas for volunteering, exploring, cycling, etc. But beyond what one could do, what do you actually do all day, day to day? He’s looking for a snapshot of retired life in La Paz and this was in the local La Paz expats Facebook group. So you will find Facebook groups like this all over Mexico. So just type in wherever you want to go. Puerto Vallarta expats, Merida expats. You’ll find many groups in these different towns, so search for those and see if someone’s done a post like this. If not, you can do one yourself. So here’s some of the answers for La Paz. I’m just going to read them off to you. Pretty much anything we do in other places, hang with friends, do hobbies, enjoy the outdoors, maybe some fitness. Mary adds laundry, grocery shopping, chores, but somehow they don’t bother me. And then Lisa adds, yes, the chores take longer in La Paz. And that’s true. That’s something we’re going to see show up a couple of times in this list. But the sunshine and the sea make it worth it. So let’s scroll down here to Melissa. Some things take longer here. So easier to fill time hanging laundry, to dye, kind of to dry, kind of therapeutic. That’s true. We like we hang our laundry here. We don’t have a dryer, but it’s so dry out. It just takes a little bit longer to hang laundry and then pull it all down than it does just throw it in the dryer. So that takes longer washing produce. Yes, everything needs to be washed. And if you’re particular, you need to put some little drops in the water to sterilize the water first and then go through that process. We usually just wash our lettuce and things like that and our produce with just regular water. That little bit of water. We’re not too worried about it. We haven’t had too many problems just yet filling garafones. So garafones are the five gallon jugs of water. And that’s something that is part of my weekly routine is to take our jugs of our empty jugs up to the water place. It’s just like two minutes away or so. And it takes a couple minutes for them to fill them all up and then take them home. And they cost less than a dollar per five gallon jug. You can also get these delivered, but then you have to kind of coordinate with the delivery drivers and things like that. So I find it easier to just take it up there. And it’s a little cheaper too. And she mentions or being home for water delivery for us, it includes using the Eames healthcare system, which requires some monthly visits. Eames is kind of the public health care system here. So it’s possible for expats to pay into the public health care system and use the public health care system, but things are definitely slower there than they are in the private healthcare system. Kat and I use the private health care system and just last week I wanted to go to the doctor and I messaged her directly on WhatsApp and she said, hey, why don’t you come in tomorrow? I went in the next day. She had, you know, there were some tests she wanted to run. They need to be, they needed to be fasting tests. So I had to go the following day. I think that was Friday. And I was able to get in there just a couple of minutes, wait there. So everything is very quick in terms of the medical system. When you’re in the private medical system, if you’re in the public system, things probably take a little bit longer. There’s a learning curve to keep you occupied for a while. Just using, using the healthcare system down here or really anything. There’s definitely a learning curve where things are placed in the grocery store aisles. I’m actually thinking about doing a video specifically about this, where to find things in the grocery store. But they’re mainly consistent once you know where they are. We also use our bikes or walk more for errands now. So Katie says they start out with coffee on their rooftop or in bed, go on a walk some days, run errands, some days light chores, game night with friends, beach days, visits from family, friends, cuddle with our dogs, phone friends home projects, watch sunset, watch birds in our bird feeder, some TV, some phone games, crafts, read, swim, etc. Occasionally go on a road trip to Todo Santos or venture a bit further. Golfing. These are a lot of the things that we do here too. So light chores. Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of dusting, so dusting, mopping. Our cleaning service comes every two weeks or so, typically, so we do have to clean the house in between them coming. But then they get it like really deep, clean it every two Weeks. So that’s kind of nice. But it does take a little bit of time to do some cleaning around the house. I took the dog for a walk this morning, and cat went back to her garden to check on everything. Water things, kind of pick some veggies, things like that. Cuddling with dogs is definitely a big thing for us. And visits from family, friends. That’s something that does take more time down here because typically when we’re up in Portland, I can’t remember the last time someone came to visit us and stay with us in Portland. It’s been years. But down here, we’ll probably have four or five different house guests over the winter who come down to visit. So we do a lot of hanging out with friends and family. Also, Kat, right now, as I’m making this video, she is on the phone with her sister. She has lots of phone calls with her friends. Some tv. Yeah, we do watch Netflix. Typically, most evenings, we’ll watch a show or something before going to bed. So that, you know, pretty. Pretty typical of what we do up north, too. And then they talk about bird feeders. We actually. When the tide is low, we can. There’s all these birds that come into the. Onto the beach right in front of our house because it’s kind of like a. I don’t know, it’s more of a wildlife refuge when the tide is low. When the tide is high, it looks like a regular beach. So let’s go down to what Lisa is saying. Coffee on the terrace. So coffee is a common theme here. We did our coffee. I drink tea. But we did that this morning. We actually. It’s a little bit windy this morning, so we didn’t do it out by the beach. We just did it inside the house. Bike ride. Yep. We’ll do that every once in a while. Weightlifting. I really need to get that into my. That should be part of my routine. But it’s not a bit of office work. Consulting, personal finance. Both Kat and I work. So we get in probably, you know, six, eight hours a day of work each day. During the week, lunch and errands. Errands and shopping take longer in La Paz than they do up north. That’s a continuing theme here. Afternoon at the beach. Pool or volunteering? Yeah, we’ll. We have a plunge pool that we keep pretty hot. So sometimes if we want to use it at night, we’ll get it hot to be like, you know, 98, 99 degrees, and we’ll use it as a hot tub. Other days, I’ll try to keep it more in the low 90s, right around 90. And that’s for using during the day. So it just feels good. Just a warm, nice, not, you know, kind of bathwater warm for use during the day. But it’s a pretty small pool. It’s not like you can swim laps in it. And afternoon at the beach pool, volunteering, drinks, dinner, dinner, sunsets, music with friends, home for an hour of tv, bed. It’s a dreamy lifestyle. Tonight we are going to. We have a happy hour tonight. It’s Sunday night, so we’ll be going down to Clara fish. I expect 25, 30, 35 people to join us for happy hour. So there’s a number of different social events that happen around town. Like there’s newbies, lunch is a lunch on Thursdays, there’s a Wednesday dinner, Baja buddies. There’s some trivia events, things like that. So there’s a lot of happenings around town that you can attend. Sunday. When I’m in town, I usually do a happy hour. So downtown, they’re usually a little bit bigger. Every other week I bring them out to El Centenario. Here they’re usually a little bit smaller. Maybe 15 to 20 people versus 20, 25, 30, 35 people downtown. Let’s see here. So Laura says making friends to socialize and help each other attend parties, entertainment, farmer, fish market. Yeah, actually, so there’s often. I think it’s on Tuesday mornings when one of the comes in from Todo Santos so we can get some of our produce there. We have a lot here. We have a lot that we go to the grocery store for. A lot of people do go to the local markets for fish. We haven’t done that so much. Cat doesn’t like fish as much as I do. So typically I will go and eat fish when we’re out. And so we don’t really cook that that much. Gardening. Cat rescue, that’s not something that we have done much of. We’ve rescued a couple of kittens. But cat rescue is not as common, La Paz, I think, because there’s a lot more street dogs, quite frankly. So feeding cows, not something that’s very common. Fishing. Yeah, a lot of folks go fishing on a regular basis here. I’ll see people in restaurants too. They’ve spent the day fishing and then they’ll bring their fish into the restaurant and the restaurant will cook it up for them. So that’s something that’s pretty common. Swimming, walking the beach. Recycling. Recycling is not so easy here. So it is. It’s something that’s important to us. But like we will do an annual trip over to the glass recycling place because it’s not in a really convenient location. But we’ve got to sort our glass by blue and green and brown and clear and put it in the different bins. Also for aluminum and paper and cardboard and some plastics, you have to take that into different locations around town. That’s a lot more convenient. But it is a little bit more of a process down here. Go to the gym, feed stray cats, read. Yes, Kat does a lot of reading. I do a little bit of reading. I’ve been reading on my Kindle recently. Grocery shopping is a full time job. I go to 14 different places to get all the stuff I need. Not exaggerating, 14 is a lot. That is not so much for us. Typically we’ll go grocery shopping and just kind of get what we need. And usually when we’re in town we’ll just kind of like stop by the grocery stores. We’re heading back out to El Centenario. But we’re not really doing all those different grocery stores at once because usually it’s being tacked on to the end of something else. Meet with friends. Definitely having a lot. Like we go out to dinner with friends at least a few times a week. So it’s pretty common here. Not as common up up north. Walk a lot as we don’t have a car. Walked to my massage appointment. Stopped at a couple of stores. No new ice cream place open. So I stopped by and had a look. Ran into a liquor store to compare the prices to the grocery store. Came home, put stuff up and will later cook a fresh dinner. Tomorrow we are going to the community garden as they’re having an event. Just yesterday Kat had a garden tour that she was hosting. So we had about 30 people come through our garden and look at our garden and our house. So that was kind of fun. Same thing you do anywhere else. Mostly walking and needing to go to various stores to get the things I need for cooking at home, golf and drinks, says gym. Kim says physical therapy a couple times a week. And that’s actually probably pretty common because a lot of us are getting a little older. Physical therapy is pretty affordable here. Lunch walk. The Malecon People who live downtown spend a lot of time, I think walking on the Malecon. It’s about want to say 2 to 3 miles long. So it’s a great walk. A lot of people do that walk every morning down the Malecon and back. The Malecon of course is like the boardwalk right along the Water along through downtown. Other days, gym, lunch, Malecon. Sometimes lunch, beach. It seems lately I’m eating out all the time and walking to Malecon. At home I have a Roku and watch old TV shows, movies. My least favorite activity is driving around La Paz. La Paz isn’t so bad for driving. It’s definitely a process that you have to really pay attention to. Sometimes it’s easier to drive with two people. Go to the bank for a simple process, repeat. This is kind of funny, but it is a little bit true. Typically, I was just talking to a banker here from Actenver and I was saying, yeah, you know, to open an account is so much of a process here. And it’s because of the Mexican government, the rules and whatnot. The regulation of banking is very strict here. So there’s a lot of process. But I was talking to him about trying to make it as easy as possible and as quick as possible. Because typically to open in a bank account here is about a two hour process. We had just opened one up@Capital One. We already have accounts with Capital One to add another account. I swear it took 33 minutes online to have a new account and have money funded into there. So three minutes versus two hours. So you can see it does take a little more time. And banks are. It’s pretty common for them to take a while. The dentist, two hours a day most days. That’s interesting that this person must need an awful lot of dentistry. Waiting in traffic, 30 minutes a day. I’m not sure where they’re spending their time, but I don’t wait in traffic for 30 minutes a day. Waiting in line at the grocery store, 30 minutes. I have been stuck in line at a grocery store for about 30 minutes when they’re really busy. So definitely bring your phone with you. But it’s not common. So this person seems like they’re mostly just a little bit of a malcontent maybe. So learn Spanish, meet friends, go to the bin, go to the beach. Yep. Learning Spanish, that’s also part of my routine, is just going through. Typically when I walk the dog these days I’ve been listening to Coffee Break Spanish. There’s a few other things I’ll do to learn Spanish. Just looking up words as I go. So I’ll be walking somewhere and I’ll be like, oh, what does that word mean? And pull up my iPhone and look it up on Google Translate and kind of try to think about how that works. So definitely takes a little bit of time. Okay, Susan here says she’s got A long one here. Wake up and chat. Sit on the rooftop. Watch the morning evening skies. Yeah, the sun rises. Sunsets can be really beautiful here. Hang with our dogs. A lot of good people here end up with a tribe of them just because you can. And it saves a soul. So that is true. A lot of folks who are here, especially year round, tend to have more than the average number of dogs that you’d find in the US I guess. Walk, shop, mani, pedi, facials, massage. Definitely things like that are more affordable here than they are in the US probably half price, maybe even less. So it’s possible to enjoy some of those things more often than you would up in the US Cook dinners for friends. For and with friends. Game nights at different houses. I’m not really into games, but definitely could see how that would be popular. Swim in the pool. Beach walk the Malecombe. We’ve talked about that. Volunteer at different places. Learn Spanish. Explore a new area at least once a week. Meander through the streets. Explore local events and places like mineral pools. El Triempho. So kind of those road trips we talked about. Making jam and pickles. Nice. I did not know that. Susan did that. Have local Mexican neighbors over so that kids can swim in the pool. That’s very nice. Sing karaoke. Mostly at home. Karaoke is definitely popular. There’s definitely. I see things getting invited to karaoke and one thing that we haven’t seen here is going out and listening to music. That’s definitely very popular here. There’s a lot of bands that come through and a lot of local bands that people go out and listen to music, go out to dinner, do some cleanups. Dogs, sometimes cats in bed, exhausted by probably 9pm That’s. I think that’s what we call Baja midnight or gringo midnight. So Deanna says hobbies like mosaic work, gardening, home improvements. Visit with friends. Locals and foreigners. Take drives and explore. Date night with my husband and friends. Morning coffee or dinner. Dancing on a rooftop with her husband. I will have to watch for. Watch Deanna’s roof for these dancing nights. Music. Always spend time alone and reflect on our journey. Yeah, that is definitely a nice part of being down here too, is just having a little bit of alone time. Beverly says she has a greenhouse that she grows hydroponic veggies in. Canning and dehydrating those. Baking. Cool. Maybe that’s supposed to be pool or just being cool. Staying cool. Sitting on my patio overlooking the view while reading. Long walks with dogs. Listening to music while cooking on the patio. Or pit. Having Friends over to try to hang out and play train. I’m not sure what train is crafting dogs so much you can do. What do you like to do? Anything we want. We can do anything we want. Thousands of things to do. It’s your choice. Bev talks about having a horse. I know that Bev is spending a lot of times out. I see her Facebook posts about being out in the desert, riding the horse, beach boat and bars. So I felt like reading this stuff off to you because it’s just a different way to experience it and it kind of takes this post and makes it live a little bit longer because I thought it was a really, really good post. This morning Kat and I plan on going down to the Malecon to do a little bit of walk on the Malecon and also have breakfast downtown. Last night we were downtown with some friends, walked around a little bit, had dinner at Pasiana, I think an Italian restaurant with them and then we went over and had frozen yogurt where you kind of serve it yourself and they add the toppings. So yeah, there’s just a lot of things to do and no one down here seems to be kind of bored looking for things to do. So there you will be able to stay busy down here. That’s not something that you need to worry about. And I think it’s easier to stay busy probably down here than it is up north, depending on, you know, whether you have hobbies or just doing those day to day things. For some people that can be really frustrating that they take a long time. But if you’re able to kind of adjust to the speed of how things work down here, you will really start to enjoy how long some things take. And I just kind of like, yeah, it is what it is and as long as you can have a positive attitude. And I was just reading this book, I can’t remember the title of it. I’ll have a link to it down below. I’ve talked about it before, about Mexican culture over time and they talk about how Mexicans kind of make jokes out of frustrating situations and that’s kind of just part of life here. And I think if you can get that as part of your life, that would be something wonderful. So hopefully you enjoyed this. If you are living down in Mexico or if you’re retired up in the US or Canada, list down below the things that you do on a regular basis, on a daily basis and it might just inspire someone to say like, oh, I could do that too. That’s a good thing. I should think about doing that. I think it’s great to have these lists of things to do. So hope you enjoyed this one. Wish you were here from La Paz. Here’s some more videos to watch, and I will see you soon. Hasta luego.

Are you curious about what retirees actually do in their day-to-day lives in La Paz, Mexico? In this video, I dive deep into a lively discussion from a Loco La Paz Expats Facebook group that explores the diverse activities and everyday routines of retirees living in this vibrant town. From social gatherings and soaking in beautiful sunsets on the Malecon to embracing hobbies like gardening, mosaic work, and even making jam, retirees have found numerous ways to stay active and integrated into the community. Whether it’s cycling, volunteering, or taking advantage of the region’s rich outdoor offerings like walking desolate beaches or enjoying golf, there’s no shortage of fulfilling activities.

What sets living in La Paz apart? Well, routine chores like grocery shopping or filling up water jugs (garafones) can take more time but seem less burdensome because of the relaxed pace and beautiful surroundings, adding a leisurely rhythm to day-to-day life. Some expats also delve into learning Spanish and navigating the local healthcare system, offering another layer of engagement and challenge that fills their days.

In this episode, I bring to life the experiences and anecdotes shared by retirees through an engaging recitation of a Facebook post filled with vivid descriptions of retired life in La Paz. If you’re considering retiring in Mexico or are simply curious about what life is like in retirement in a different country, this video offers a comprehensive and inspiring glimpse into the laid-back yet active lifestyle La Paz offers.

So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and let’s explore the enchanting yet uncomplicated life in La Paz. Don’t forget to share your own daily activities or retirement plans in the comments below!

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