Best Places In The World To Retire

I have experienced earthquakes in Chapala and Ajijic because we are on a fault. I can remember one earthquake that happened in Jocotepec just recently. However, it is not a cause of worry because the earthquakes here are just small earthquakes that cause zero damage.

 

We also have las culebras, which are tornadoes that pull water from the lake and drop it in other places. Usually the water falls in the mountains, which cause mudslides. It happened 10 years...

I have experienced earthquakes in Chapala and Ajijic because we are on a fault. I can remember one earthquake that happened in Jocotepec just recently. However, it is not a cause of worry because the earthquakes here are just small earthquakes that cause zero damage.

 

We also have las culebras, which are tornadoes that pull water from the lake and drop it in other places. Usually the water falls in the mountains, which cause mudslides. It happened 10 years ago in the Racquet Club and it was a disaster. Nobody lost their lives but they lost houses and cars.

 

Brush fires also happen in the mountains when it’s very dry and hot, especially in the month of May. We don’t worry about fires in the residential areas because the construction materials used in houses and buildings here are not the same as in the US. Buildings and houses here are solid and are usually made of cement and bricks. Even if the fire starts from inside your house, for example, because of a faulty wiring, the fire won’t consume your whole house because your house is most likely made out of bricks.

 

We have flooding in the mountains but not in areas where people live. Ajijic means “a place where water spills over.“  We live in La Floresta, just adjacent to Ajijic and our location is on the outskirts of the mountain. If you go to La Floresta from the lake, you will be walking uphill so water doesn’t stay where we are, as all the water drains down to the lake. The worst thing that can happen during a heavy downpour is that you couldn’t cross the street because it could be like a river with all the water streaming down. However, that doesn’t create any damages to the houses and it doesn’t pull people down to the lake.

 

Another reason why the streets of Ajijic are made of cobblestones and not paved because it is more ecological. If we pave the streets the water won’t drain and the aquifers won’t fill up with rainwater because if the streets are paved, the water will wash down the pavement. The only street that has concrete is the main street, but all the others are cobblestone.

 

(Waterspout of Lake Chapala, Mexico, pictured.)

Compared to the US, life in Nicaragua is slow.

 

What type of life you have in Nicaragua depends to a very large extent on your educational / economic situation.  For many native Nicaraguans with what would be, according to North American standards, a low educational and economic status, life is difficult in the cities because there is not enough work.  In the towns in the countryside, even though the people living there are by North American...

Compared to the US, life in Nicaragua is slow.

 

What type of life you have in Nicaragua depends to a very large extent on your educational / economic situation.  For many native Nicaraguans with what would be, according to North American standards, a low educational and economic status, life is difficult in the cities because there is not enough work.  In the towns in the countryside, even though the people living there are by North American standards poor, the native Nicaraguans have happy lives; you always see them smiling.  These people are not concerned about the need to possess material goods.    

 

Sad to say, I have English friends who have been in the Algarve for 22 years who don’t speak a word of Portuguese or hardly a word in Portuguese. So sadly, the answer is yes, you can get by in the Algarve by just speaking English.

 

The Algarve is the most popular tourist region in Portugal. It receives somewhere between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 arrivals a year and the Algarve has the population of only 300,000. So there is a lot of influx of people...

Sad to say, I have English friends who have been in the Algarve for 22 years who don’t speak a word of Portuguese or hardly a word in Portuguese. So sadly, the answer is yes, you can get by in the Algarve by just speaking English.

 

The Algarve is the most popular tourist region in Portugal. It receives somewhere between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 arrivals a year and the Algarve has the population of only 300,000. So there is a lot of influx of people into the area and, of course, what this means is that the most common language of communication is English. English can be used to communicate with Dutch, Norwegians, Americans, Canadians, Australians, English, and even with Germans. And so English is the de facto international language in use in the Algarve in conversations involving foreign people.

 

We have many foreign people who start off learning Portuguese but the Portuguese people go out of their way to speak English and so what the foreigners find is that sometimes it is difficult to practice their Portuguese because the Portuguese people in their anxiety to be helpful start speaking English. And so most people kind of then become embarrassed and they revert to English because the Portuguese speak so much better English than the foreigners speak Portuguese.

 

It would be helpful to speak some Portuguese because it is part of understanding the culture. So it’s always useful to be able to say something more than just “hello” and “goodbye.” But the truth is that there are some people who for cultural and other reasons have not necessarily made the effort or found that they needed to make the effort to learn Portuguese. They can simply get by on English and do everything that they need to do—go to the doctor, go to the supermarket, go to the club, etc., and they can get away perfectly with just speaking English.

 

(Lennart Eriksson [far right], Swedish Olympian visited Algarve Senior Living property in Portugal, pictured.)