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Lybargerjc

Jan 14, 2010, 10:18 PM

Post #1 of 19 (6862 views)

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Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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We are new to this site and new to the Idea of relocating to Merida. We are looking for other
expats to get to know as we gather more information of the area. We found the library meeting
that we will most defiantly be attending. we are planning our first trip in mid March of 2010.
Neither one of us speak any Spanish but we are trying to learn. We are in our late 40's
Thanks in advance for all comments.
Jim and Dina
Ps. you can email us directly at
lybargerjc@yahoo.com

yucatandreamer

Jan 15, 2010, 8:30 AM

Post #2 of 19 (6843 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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I believe that there are only two of us Meridinos on Mexconnect. I live in Centro and the other person lives outside of downtown. I am sure either one of us would be happy to answer any specific questions that you may have. There is a local forum called Yolisto where there are many people available for discussion. I believe that Yolisto is heavily populated by people who live at the beach. Even so, some of them do know what they are talking about :). The library is a good place to meet fellow expats at any time and if you introduce yourself to a librarian who is not busy they are usually very knowledgeable people. There is also a IWC (International Women's Club) and a Men's Club. Late 40's is younger than many of the regular retirees here but there are younger couples and even young families who live here full time.

The site or blog Not the News(one of my favorites) http://maloso.blogspot.com/ has a good list of links to other Merida and Yucatan specific blogs and websites . If you start reading from those links you will get a really good background on what it is like to live in Merida. Just remember that some of those sites are in the business of selling the romance and tend to gloss over anything that might seem critical of the area. It is a nice place to live, but hardly perfect and not nearly as inexpensive as some would have you believe. It can be unbearably hot and in town it is noisy and dirty. You have to be a very flexible person to survive all the various frustrations that will come your way--with or without Spanish. I like it here as does the other local on Mexconnect, but we both have had to learn to adjust to Mexico and Yucatan specifically.

Lybargerjc

Jan 16, 2010, 6:59 AM

Post #3 of 19 (6795 views)

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Re: [yucatandreamer] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Yucatandreamer,
Thank you for your reply and all of the information. We will check it out. We
want to think that we are flexible people and we currently live in Northern Cali.
It can be quite Hot here as well 100-117 Deg. F. during our summer months.
We are planning a 2 week trip in Mid March. we have Located a house.
about 4 blocks from the Zoo. The rent for the 2 weeks is only $700 US.
That sounded pretty reasonable to us. Do you know anything about this area?
Thanks again for your conect.
Jc

yucatandreamer

Jan 16, 2010, 9:03 AM

Post #4 of 19 (6785 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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The area near the zoo is quite nice, it is possible that it will be noisy depending on whether or not the location is on Calle 59. Calle 59 is a major bus route but that can be an advantage for getting back and forth to the center of town.
You should have a really nice place for $700.00 US for two weeks. You will be close enough to two grocery stores of not great, but OK quality and the Santiago Market. We use the Santiago market for pork and chicken(at least in the cooler months) and some vegetables.You can walk to town and several local restaurants(I recommend Frida's on 61 x66y68 but you will discover your own favorites)and to The English Library. If you are baseball fans you might be able to get to a Leones game and the zoo is worth a visit-there is a young giraffe, a good aviary and some animals particular to this area. It is also a popular spot with the locals and a good place to people watch.

Mid March should still be reasonable in temperature and humidity. Forget what you think you know about heat and that advice comes from people who came from Arizona and Texas. Of course if you do not care what you spend for electricity you can air condition your whole house. Most people I know only air condition their sleeping area due to Mexico's high cost of electricity when you use a lot.

Lybargerjc

Jan 17, 2010, 8:22 AM

Post #5 of 19 (6746 views)

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Re: [yucatandreamer] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Thanks again for the info. Might I asked how do you tolerate the heat? Do you stay there during the
Hot months? What do you?
Thanks Jc

yucatandreamer

Jan 17, 2010, 2:11 PM

Post #6 of 19 (6725 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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We mostly whine and huddle in dark stone houses half-naked in front of a fan.

Last year we left for the month of May(the hottest month but not the most humid) and stayed in San Cristobal de las Casas which was a joy. We go to a whole lot of baseball games in the evening where there is a breeze up in the second tier of seats. We go to movies and malls during the day for the free air conditioning and we don't cook much. Most people have air conditioning in one room and use it as much as their tolerance for high CFE bills allow.

Living in Centro has many advantages but the concrete holds the heat 24 hours a day. Living in the country or at the beach is more tolerable. You have to decide which is more important to you. Last year we built a pool and hope that this year we can use it to cool off. I originally thought we could do without since our house did not come with one, but I realize now that it is a much better way than cold showers and baths to lower your core temperature. Some houses do better than others in the heat and catch more breezes. Before you buy it might be worth checking out Merida in both May and September. September, while not as hot as May, is extremely humid which becomes exhausting at times. We have the dust season and the mold season.

However this time of year is glorious with cold nights and warm sun in the daytime.

Hound Dog

Jan 17, 2010, 2:25 PM

Post #7 of 19 (6721 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Lybargerjc:

I find it difficult to understand where you are coming from. How can you be planning to move to a mostly nondescript city consisting of endless kilometers of unattractiive and boring concrete residential buildings stretching forever into nowhere lacking architectural interest and interspersed with ugly, sundrenched and treeless nondescript plazas with a horrendously hot and humid 12 month a year climate located in an unattractive scrub-bush plain filled with endless rows of undernourished pulp pines of no discernable interest to the traveler seeking topographical diversity in an enclave possessed by locals who will foist off upon you unproductive swamplands out of disrespect for your thought processes as they seek to escape the drudgery of run-down barrios for ticky-tacky suburban enclaves adjacent to WalMart plazas and where you will almost certainly greatly overpay for real estate they thought they could never unload but that is your decison.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Jan 17, 2010, 5:48 PM)

Lybargerjc

Jan 17, 2010, 4:13 PM

Post #8 of 19 (6701 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Hounddoug,
I am not quite sure where you are comming from. what one man dislikes another just might like.
I have never been there and I here the people are great. So I am looking forward to meeting others who
truly do not care about material things and that can love on anotherer reguardless of their finicial situation.
Thanks for your views I do appreciate them.
Jc

Lybargerjc

Jan 17, 2010, 4:17 PM

Post #9 of 19 (6698 views)

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Re: [yucatandreamer] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Yucayandreamer thanks for the info. The home that we are going to rent has a pool
so I hope that will help.I suppose time will tell. I have lived in some pretty interesting living conditions
in my life time and I am looking to see just how others do it. I am open to change and I am willing to seek
out other means and ways to do things. Other than the easy way as most americans do.

La Isla

Jan 17, 2010, 4:39 PM

Post #10 of 19 (6696 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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In Reply To

Hounddoug,
...I have never been there and I here the people are great. So I am looking forward to meeting others who
truly do not care about material things and that can love on anotherer reguardless of their finicial situation.
Jc

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for Mexico and Mérida, I wonder where you got the idea that Mexicans "do not care about material things". Just wondering...

Lybargerjc

Jan 17, 2010, 5:01 PM

Post #11 of 19 (6692 views)

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Re: [La Isla] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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La lsla
This was intended for Hounddoug based on his description of the Meridia area and people. Like I said I personally do not feel this way.
I have respect for mankind and there environment. I have respect for a mans way of life if that is what he chooses to do.
I am open to new things and new ways of doing things. I based my reply to him from his statement.
"the drudgery of run-down barrios for ticky-tacky suburban enclaves adjacent to WalMart plazas and where you will almost certainly greatly overpay for real estate they thought they could never unload but that is your decision."

I am not a shallow person an d I am not here to base an opinion on ones desires or the way one chooses to live I am here seeking information of how other people live and to see if I can life the same way. I find it interesting to here the things about the Mexican culture and the way they choose to live as a family and to continue to respect their Name. This is just the beginning of my journey and I am looking forward to growing and learning more and more about the Mexican people and the way of life.
I hope this brings some clarity of who I am and where I am coming from. If not please ask for more details. I will gladly share.
Jc

yucatandreamer

Jan 17, 2010, 8:10 PM

Post #12 of 19 (6670 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Ah yes, the landscape is poor and there is more concrete than anyone needs but we have music that involves more than a xylophone and we can buy groceries at all national chains as well as the various mercados sprinkled about the city.. We can shop at stores for housewares and clothes without ending up at Coppel or driving for an hour. We can get to the airport and be in Houston in short order or we can bus to Cancun and go almost anywhere in the world. We have art museums with special displays of Goya, Dali, and Picasso. We have visiting ballet companies from Cuba and Russia. And if you have money to burn you can see Elton John or Placido Domingo at Chichen Itza. We have free nightly entertainment and we have more restaurants than you can possibly ever eat in. Some of the restaurants are very good.
We have more than one world class medical center, we have multitudes of malls with national and international chains. Each of these major malls has cinemas so for example you can see “Avatar” in English with subtitles or dubbed in Spanish or 3D in English or in Spanish. We have several daily newspapers and a good library full of English reading material.
Yes, it is damned hot but we can call one of many firms to install an air conditioner, we can drive to the beach in 30 minutes. We have good baseball, OK basketball and a new soccer team. We have thousands of archeological sites within a half days drive which can provide hours of adventures and we have cenotes that we can cool off in. We have haciendas where you can sit under trees and have a lovely meal. We have the State Fair once a year and artisan expos all the time.
We have enough expats to find a few good friends, but not so many expats that we are overrun with us. The people who succeed in living here are interesting folk and those that try it for a while and move on probably made a wise decision.
Yes, it is nowhere near as inexpensive as it used to be, either to buy a house, refurbish a house or to live day to day. I still think that it is a bargain compared to most other full size cities in the world.
It is a big noisy hot dirty vibrant and interesting city. Every day there are things that make you angry, things that make you smile and things that you know you will never comprehend. In fact the longer I live here the less I know for sure.

Lybargerjc

Jan 18, 2010, 7:14 AM

Post #13 of 19 (6655 views)

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Re: [yucatandreamer] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Yucatandreamer,
Thanks for the reply again. You see this sounds more like reality to me. I truly do appreciate your
positive outlook on life and your way of living. I suppose we could all ponder on the Bad if we choose too.
I see life as it is what we make of it and we teach people how to treat us. We are looking forward to march.
Have a Great Day and please do share more. Thanks again.
Jc

geri

Jan 18, 2010, 7:33 AM

Post #14 of 19 (6649 views)

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Re: [yucatandreamer] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Yucantandreamer...I love your last two sentences. That goes for Oaxaca also. Even though it's not as hot as Merida, folk from the north wear shorts and complain of it being too hot here even in January. (Not this year, however!!!!). One's body does acclimate. My first year here, I wondered how people live in such a hot climate. That was 12 years ago. Now, I seldom go out in the winter without a sweater. Like Merida, our hottest months are April/May and Sept./Oct. and those are the best months for world travel also since it's before school lets out and after kids are back in school. More travel deals, less people traveling. So, I would say to anyone worried about climate: You will find your level of comfort. Look at all the folks who are in subzero temps right now and still adamantly maintain they need/love the change of seasons so would never move to Mexico. As you say, everyone is different and the more you peel off the onion skin layers, the more that is true. That is why I love Mexico. If you are intrigued by cultural and social differences, you don't have to go far from your front door.

Hound Dog

Jan 18, 2010, 8:21 AM

Post #15 of 19 (6644 views)

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Re: [yucatandreamer] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Xylophone??????!!!!!!

That really hurt.

OK, so we don´t have any daily newspapers in San Cistobal but we get the Tuxtla Gutierrez papers every day and sometime around 4:00PM we get the Mexico City dailies only, by then, many are too looped to read them. The nice thing about the Tuxtla rags is that you do not need to read Spanish to enjoy them what with the front pages featuring ghastly traffic accidents or gruesome murders and the back pages with daily photos of exposed female buttocks. Who says we are not cultured around here.

By the way, for those of you not yet living in Mexico, do not be mislead by geri´s comment comparing the climate in Oaxaca City with that in Merida. That is like comparing the dry heat of California with August or September in New Orleans. Absolutely no comparison.

The best thing you prospective retirees planning to move to Mexico can do for yourselves is move to the highlands and vacation in places such as Merida and Veracruz City. One reason we chose the Chiapas Highlands is that we can easily visit the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean on the Yucatan Peninsula or the Pacific in Chiapas or Oaxaca if things get a bit chilly on the mountain.

To each his own.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Jan 18, 2010, 8:24 AM)

Hound Dog

Jan 19, 2010, 9:17 AM

Post #16 of 19 (6597 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Lybargerjc:

Just ignore my post of the other day with the negative comments on Merida. To be honest with you, Merida and the Yucatan Peninsula are among my favorite places on the planet. We try to visit there for a few weeks every year if possible. I was just being being contrary for no particular reason. You should find Merida a very interesting town.

Lybargerjc

Jan 19, 2010, 10:23 AM

Post #17 of 19 (6580 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Hound dog,
I took it for what it was worth and from who it was coming from.
I have read several of your other post and that just seems to be your nature.
Have a great Day.

mcm

Jan 19, 2010, 3:24 PM

Post #18 of 19 (6556 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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I'm the other Merida-based gringo(a), to whom Yucatandreamer referred. Ditto for everything she said, especially the part about huddling in dark stone houses in front of the fan during the month of May. Except I use a hammock and stretch out while whining.

Merida is a big city, but a big provincial city (vs. a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city). You can find plenty of (expats) to talk to in English, which for most is a huge relief, unless you are completely fluent in Spanish. But, you can also avoid foreigners, because they are a very small part of the total population.

I live just outside of Merida, in what was the "countryside" when we moved here, but is now a suburban pueblo (it's a "comisaria" of the municipio of Merida -- Merida, aside from the city proper, has 47 comisarias, which are villages of varying sizes). By city bus (six pesos) I'm 30-40 minutes from Merida Centro; my nephew, visting from NYC, just biked out here from Centro Merida yesterday -- it took about an hour (FYI -- Merida is not really a biker-friendly city, but many people do bike -- just don't expect anybody to watch out for you, or bike lanes or other amenities).

I like living here a lot, because it is different from what I was used to (and hence never boring), and it is full of real people -- many of whom are, at times, quite friendly and charming and warm and welcoming, and many of whom are, at times, suspicious, superstitious, and difficult to get to "know" at any but a fairly superficial level.

To get a feeling for the "real" Merida (or at least the Mexican point of view, vs. that of the expat forums), I suggest you start reading the Diario de Yucatan --- www.yucatan.com.mx. It's in Spanish, of course, but you can use things like Google translator to get a (sometimes hilarious) translation, or struggle through articles of local interest, which will go a long way towards improving your knowledge of Spanish, as well as a handle on some of the local issues and points of view.

Good luck!

cadelucia5

Jan 20, 2010, 1:42 PM

Post #19 of 19 (6513 views)

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Re: [Lybargerjc] Looking for English speaking friends in Merida

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Hello Dina!! My husband and I are also thinking about re-locating to Merida this Summer. I have done a lot of research and I keep hearing excellent things about Merida and the surrounding towns. It seems like an amazing place. I know it all can't be perfect but what place is?! You have to take the good with the bad. We have 4 children we will be bringing w us as well and I keep hearing its a great place to raise children. Any info I find I will pass on to you. Good luck w your visit and if you move I hope it all goes well:) Maybe one day we will run into one another!!
Christina