Best Places In The World To Retire

Yes, there are some English-speaking doctors in Los Cabos, and there are directories of them.
 
Most services here, even if the people providing the services are not fluent in English, are very willing to help ,even to the point that they have to use hand signals and basic pointing. So you could pretty much get by even if there is nobody there to translate for you.
 
We have several hospitals in the Los Cabos area between Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo, and La...

Yes, there are some English-speaking doctors in Los Cabos, and there are directories of them.
 
Most services here, even if the people providing the services are not fluent in English, are very willing to help ,even to the point that they have to use hand signals and basic pointing. So you could pretty much get by even if there is nobody there to translate for you.
 
We have several hospitals in the Los Cabos area between Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo, and La Paz that are all very good hospitals. We have emergency service, walk-in service, we also have EMTs through the fire department who are very well-trained. Our fire department here in Cabo San Lucas has sister fire departments in the US that helped train them for US-style firefighting and emergency services. For example, two years ago, they had a big convention and all these sister fire departments from the US came down to have a big think tank.
 

Here, the emergency services volunteers start to volunteer as teenagers.  So if somebody had a heat stroke on the beach, the responder would be the fire department. They are very well trained.  They recently gave a demonstration of how they are trained to move people safely and had all the emergency staff there. They had about 50 volunteers for responders it was pretty impressive.
 
My husband doesn’t speak any Spanish but he went to the dentist by himself and didn’t have a problem. I believe the dentist was a bit more fluent in English but my husband didn’t have any problem at all. My husband knows some “survival level Spanish”, so he could say in Spanish, “Where’s the bathroom?” and “Mas cervasa, por favor.” We have those little tricks to make it easier for him to learn Spanish but he also carries a Spanish to English dictionary. He has gone to all kinds of places like the local hardware store. He would go in there because the local prices are always cheaper versus places like Home Depot since the local hardware store is geared towards the local income. My husband would go in there with his little dictionary. If nothing else, he will look up the word, point to it and the people at the hardware store will say, “Ohh.. Si!”
 
In general, if you could try to learn Spanish and use it as much as possible, the Mexican people greatly appreciate it. The same way that if you were in the US and somebody didn’t speak English as a first language but they try, you would at least appreciate that fact that they made the effort to do it. However, the language barrier is not that big when you are in Los Cabos because it is very English-friendly. If you are going outside San Jose del Cabo, it is still a tourist area so they aspire to speak English, too.  But when you get to areas like La Paz, the locals figure you’re in Mexico so you need to speak Spanish. However, there are international hand signs that you can use and pointing to things work, too. It is not scary at all.

 

(Pictured: Amerimed Hospital, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.)

Personally, I think the most compelling reason to retire overseas is that life here is so much more interesting.  Everything is different, so the mundane is actually a source of novelty.

 

Personally, I think the most compelling reason to retire overseas is that life here is so much more interesting.  Everything is different, so the mundane is actually a source of novelty.

 

Portugal is divided into three regions—north, center, and south. The southern part of Portugal is more rural and is where we tend to get a lot of European expats from Germany, England, and France. The center of Portugal, where Lisbon is included, we tend to get other nationalities, such as Brazilians, we’re starting to get some Americans, Canadians, and even from Asia; Japanese. And then in the north of Portugal, we get a lot of expats from the the wine producing countries,...

Portugal is divided into three regions—north, center, and south. The southern part of Portugal is more rural and is where we tend to get a lot of European expats from Germany, England, and France. The center of Portugal, where Lisbon is included, we tend to get other nationalities, such as Brazilians, we’re starting to get some Americans, Canadians, and even from Asia; Japanese. And then in the north of Portugal, we get a lot of expats from the the wine producing countries, people from New Zealand, Chile, and South Africa because this region is very famous because of the Port Wine.  There are a lot of wine vineyards up north in Portugal and these people come to retire because of the weather, because of the lifestye, and many other factors. They tend to come straight to the north of Portugal.  There are also a lot of old beautiful palaces and villas for which the purchase price in Portugal is very affordable for people coming from these countries. So it tends to be divided. Europeans go more to the south of Portugal, the wine-producing countries go to the north of Portugal, and in Lisbon it’s a mixture of many cultures.
 
In order to make any generalizations about the expats in Portugal depends a lot on the age factor.  Several weeks ago the Portuguese Tourism Board released a brilliant video just with foreigners, expats talking about our country. In this video are shown people from all ages, from all sectors talking about our country. From a scientist to doctors, to architects—every single field is represented and there’s someone telling their story about Portugal.
 
The view of these people of Portugal is that it’s great living here.  When, as a country, we struggled economically a few years ago, we immediately understood that we’re dependent on every single penny that entered our country. So for a long time, 500 years ago when we started discovering the world, we’re all in contact with many cultures and we had to have a lot of public relations in our blood to achieve what we did. We negotiated with India, Asia, Brazil, and that made us a very easygoing culture. We’ve adapted through all these years and when we had the economic struggle a few years ago, we knew immediately that we had to treat foreigners very well coming here so they would remain and they would spend their money here and they would help us economically. So therefore, we got used to that way to exchange information with foreigners and the process had been like this for the last 20 or 30 years.
 
In Portugal we like foreigners because the foreigners have done a lot of good for us that helped develop our country. So we are very grateful for the foreigners; very, very grateful. And we all have open smiles, we open our houses to foreigners, we invite them with food because we’re so eager for them to get to know our culture that we receive them very well. Our opinion about foreigners is wonderful; it’s great, absolutely great. 
 
Recently, there have been a few issues because the European Union now is wide open, and because of all these problems with the Middle East and we have become a bit suspicious of some of the people from Middle Eastern countries, but with the rest of the world we are completely open-hearted.  

 

(Visitors at Blue Hostel and Suites, Cascais,  Portugal, pictured.)

San Francisco is a central part of Panama City, Panama, so there is no ecotourism within San Francisco, proper.  The closest ecotourism to San Francisco is in the countryside or in Gamboa.

San Francisco is a central part of Panama City, Panama, so there is no ecotourism within San Francisco, proper.  The closest ecotourism to San Francisco is in the countryside or in Gamboa.