The Yucatan Peninsula is divided into three states: Campeche (which is fairly uninhabited); Yucatan (which has the city Merida, with about a million inhabitants, and related beach areas; and Quintana Roo (which has the more famous tourist and expat destinations of Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, which are all part of the Riviera Maya). The state of Yucatan has residents going back for a very long time, and the city of Merida is about 500 years old. In contrast, the people who live in Quintana Roo almost all migrated there recently.
The State of Quintana Roo, in the Yucatan Peninsula
Twenty-five years ago, Cancun was close to nothing. The entire area (which is not actually an island, but it is close to being an island) was man-made. I used to live on the island of Cozumel, which is just off the coast of Cancun. The saying then was “Man made Cancun, but God made Cozumel.”
Cancun has now developed into a world-class tourist destination that’s rated as one of the top five tourist destinations in the world. Cancun is for party people and Spring Breaker; the number one choice is to go to Cancun for Spring Break. They’ve got all of the night clubs. They have Hooters. They have Carlos and Charlie’s. You can party all night, every night and just go from bar to bar to bar. Everything there is geared for the tourist.
About an hour south from Cancun is Playa del Carmen. Once Cancun got rolling and they saw what was happening there, investors started buying property in Playa del Carmen. To give you an example, when I first moved to Playa del Carmen in 2002, I could have bought a pretty decent little lot for less than US $100,000 USD. Today if I went to go buy the same lot, it would be close to US $400,000.
Further south, is Tulum, which as I’m writing this is in the process of turning into a Playa del Carmen. It used to be a lovely place to visit, and I went there many times. I would go to a Mayan ruin and at the end of the ruins, there’s a little beach cove area where you could go swimming. It was just a great place to go for the day but things have changed over the last five or six years. For me, it’s no longer any fun. There are just way too many people, way too many vendors selling stuff and taking you on tours. Just the whole tourist trap thing, in my opinion, has made it less desirable.
Further down the coast, Mahahual is still very quiet and laid back, but the problem is that Mahahual is too far off the beaten path. To go to Mahahual from Playa del Carmen takes about 3 ½ hours. Once you get off of the main road to go to Mahahual, there’s only one road in. It’s a forty-minute drive down the winding road. There are no stores, and no gas stations. So when you’re in Mahahual, you’re very limited on grocery stores or pretty much anything. For major shopping, you would have to drive two hours to the city of Chetumal.
The State of Yucatan, in the Yucatan Peninsula
Merida is by far the largest city in the state of Yucatan. Merida is an amazing, colonial city that goes back to the 1500s. The last that I read, it has about 1.4 million people. The architecture in Merida originated from Europe because back in the day Merida was the richest city in the world. The reason is that Merida became a center for Henequen, which was used to manufacture rope. Henequen is very spiky plant that grows gigantic spiky leaves and the fiber from those leaves is what they process into rope. Business people became millionaires overnight, so when they started building magnificent homes, a lot of the owners would have marble and different stones imported in Europe and brought here for their construction.
Merida is a big city. If you are a city person, it would be an ideal place to live. They’ve got 5-star restaurants, and there are Porsche dealers and Mercedes dealers. There are gigantic malls. Anything that you can imagine is in Merida. But most of the people that I know who are at retirement age, aren’t looking for the city life. They’re looking for the laidback life of the beach. So a lot of people choose to live at the beaches closest to Merida. That way, they can run to Merida, do the opera, whatever, and in 30 minutes be back in their fishing village where everything’s relaxed.
(Cozumel, Mexico, pictured.)
The cost for landline phone service in Portugal is about €10 to €20 (US $10.75 to $21.70 or £7.21 to £14.42), which would give you unlimited calls within Portugal.
If you are already a pensionado,you are allowed one free container to ship, or you may chose to ship your car. That's a great deal 
If you have white skin and you are in the Cayo District, they are going to want you to pay more. The Belizeans here think that if you have white skin, regardless of where you are from, that you are very wealthy.
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Maybe my wife and I lead lives a lot like yours.