Best Places In The World To Retire

There are no official government campgrounds in the Yucatan. There are some hotels that let you use their parking lots for RV spaces. There are no real public spaces for camping but many families and friends will go back home, to their small villages or to their ranches, and they might have an old hacienda on the grounds but they’ll do their camping there on their own property. 

 

There’s a huge culture of camping in Mexico and there are a...

There are no official government campgrounds in the Yucatan. There are some hotels that let you use their parking lots for RV spaces. There are no real public spaces for camping but many families and friends will go back home, to their small villages or to their ranches, and they might have an old hacienda on the grounds but they’ll do their camping there on their own property. 

 

There’s a huge culture of camping in Mexico and there are a lot of parks, federal and state, throughout Mexico that promote camping. It’s just that the Yucatan Peninsula hasn’t caught up with those public areas for overnight stays, offering the amenities where people can get their tent and do some overnight camping. It’s not that prevalent. Can you stay at one of the beaches here? Sure, you can stay on one of the beaches. People are starting to come down in their RVs, so that’s becoming a little more prevalent, there’s not a public space.

 

There are a lot of private ejidos (communal property owned by the village), and there are several tourist projects going on sponsored by these villages that do allow you to come, and the ejido is usually tied to a cenote (natural sinkhole for which Yucatan is famous). So they’ll allow you to rent one of their cabins or use your tent as an eco-tourism experience where you can spend the night in the tent or in an old Mayan home and during the day go diving in the cenote.

 

There are several caverns known here in Yucatan, and you can hike through these underground cavern systems.   The majority of the Yucatan Peninsula is flat. If you head toward the south you start getting some hilly areas but there’s no real mountain hiking in the peninsula. If you want to do some jungle hiking,  you can go through a jungle, including areas where you would need a machetes.  You can also follow several of the old Mayan highways that they’ve cleared.

 

(Traditional Mayan house, Cozumel, Mexico, pictured.)

In Ambergris Caye, you have locals and you have people who come to work here and become locals. San Pedro (the main town of Ambergris Caye has become not only a tourist spot but also an opportunity for people from the mainland. People from the mainland come here to work to provide for their families. That’s a big thing here in San Pedro that people are coming here to find jobs since tourism is a huge industry here.  

 

In Ambergris Caye, you have locals and you have people who come to work here and become locals. San Pedro (the main town of Ambergris Caye has become not only a tourist spot but also an opportunity for people from the mainland. People from the mainland come here to work to provide for their families. That’s a big thing here in San Pedro that people are coming here to find jobs since tourism is a huge industry here.  

 

About 40% of the people here are what you could consider transients. They are here from the mainland or other parts of Belize to work. Expats here are about 10 to 12% of the population. Ambergris Caye is also now becoming a retirement destination and not just a tourist spot. The rest would be locals who would have been here for generations. Most of them are involved in the tourism and hospitality industry.  

 

We have a town council meeting every two months where locals and people from outside attend. We have accepted the fact that Ambergris Caye are a tourism-based island and we need to invest our time and encourage everything to work out well.  

 

(An expat on the beach at Robles Point, Ambergris Caye, Belize, pictured.)

 

We can mention a few, but most of all, the way you feel about the overall situation, is the most important issue.

 

For example, if you have very close family, especially children and grandchildren that, leaving them behind, would be a tremendous impact on your health, then by all means, never consider this possibility. Once you're established in your new destination, it is difficult to go...

 

We can mention a few, but most of all, the way you feel about the overall situation, is the most important issue.

 

For example, if you have very close family, especially children and grandchildren that, leaving them behind, would be a tremendous impact on your health, then by all means, never consider this possibility. Once you're established in your new destination, it is difficult to go back.

 

Let's take Panamá as an example.

 

With the new modern technology, which Panamá is privileged to have, it is easy to connect with family and friends on a daily basis.  And you can always visit them in your original country.

 

Analyzing some of the reasons why a retiree should consider moving out of their country, what might be in first place is their financial situation.  Some countries are getting so expensive that when a person reaches retirement age it is very difficult to cope with expenses that they are used to having when they worked and had salary income.  Taxes goes up almost every year, and so does health insurance.  These are facts that are important to consider for a retiree, especially if you only have Social Security income.

 

After you consider above mentioned facts, then we can talk about the great benefits Panamá offers as a great destination to retire.

​​(Cultivating corn in Los Santos, Panama, pictured.)

      

    

 

The golf in and around Algarve is a hole in one! It’s not per chance that the Algarve has been voted the best European Golf Destination several times by the World Travel Association. If my memory serves me right, I think the Algarve has been voted The World’s Best Golf Destination on more than one occasion.

 

Algarve has over forty golf courses and the quality of the golf courses is superb. Several of the golf courses in the Algarve are amongst...

The golf in and around Algarve is a hole in one! It’s not per chance that the Algarve has been voted the best European Golf Destination several times by the World Travel Association. If my memory serves me right, I think the Algarve has been voted The World’s Best Golf Destination on more than one occasion.

 

Algarve has over forty golf courses and the quality of the golf courses is superb. Several of the golf courses in the Algarve are amongst the Top 100 in the world. The quality of the greens and the fairways is fantastic.

 

There are different levels of difficulty across the golf courses in Algarve from the westernmost Parque da Floresta golf course, which is probably one of the most difficult golf courses in the Algarve, to the golf courses on the Spanish border like Castro Marim, which is one of the easier golf courses to play. 

 

There are certain golfing destinations in the Algarve that have reputations in their own right such as Vilamoura, which has five golf courses within that region or town alone and six if you consider Vila Sol.

 

The Algarve is a superb golfing destination. Our company, Algarve Senior Living, supports golfing associations, in particular for the senior market and people who sign up for these golfing associations are also able to play golf on a weekly basis at a discounted rate. For people who move here and have golf as a passion, there are many ways to play a huge range of courses and do so reasonably inexpensively. Having played in the US, I can tell that for a similar type of course, with the similar degree of difficulty, and the same quality of course, costs around 1/3 the price in the Algarve compared to the US.

 

( Golf course at Parque da Floresta Golf and Leisure Resort, Algarve, Portugal, pictured.)