on the edge

Car Crisis

Not to let things get too idylic, the following e-mail arrived today. By way of background, people who live here and buy property here typically file with the Mexican government for an FM-3. This is a migratory document that allows you to live here full time if you have sufficient income but you are not allowed to work here. It is mainly aimed at retirees. Two of the perks of having an FM-3 are (or should I say were) that if you buy property here and spend more than 6 months here you can sell your property and not pay any capital gains taxes. In addition, each holder of an FM-3 is allowed to bring one car or truck from outside the country and assuming you properly register it with the Mexican government at the border, you are allowed to keep it here as long as you are a resident.

A Visit to the Car Wash

One of the side effects of living in Bucerias during the dry season is that there is a lot of dust from the many dirt roads. If you wash your car, it lasts about 2-3 days, after that your car looks like a roaming dirt machine. If you are lucky, a young guy will come by your house and offer to wash it for you for 30 pesos or so (about $3). Failing that, there's the local car wash. It was started by a local young guy and his wife who have a cute little boy.


Starting from a trashed property with one half falling down roofless structure, in two years they have built it up to a car wash with a roof and a totally new building which houses a small restaurant serving mostly tortas (Mexican toasted sandwiches on a roll) and liquados (milk shakes). So the clientelle can drive in have their car washed for 55 pesos ($5.50) (inside and out) and have lunch in their pleasant little restaurant. The entrepreneurial spirt still lives here.

Welcome to Bucerias

4 years ago this July, my wife Mary and I finished building a house in Bucerias. Our intention was to have a place to go near the sea shore with good beaches. As time progressed we found that life events were pushing us and we weren't exactly resisting, to spend more of our time here for reasons of health and sanity. As of November of the past year we now have no other place to live and this is home. We are not so sure this was a good idea, but sometimes, external events conspire to push you in directions you secretly want to go but which your collected wisdom and programmed fears of the strange and unknown are saying: "wait, let's think about this, shouldn't we do a study, maybe a consumer survey, isn't there a statistical report on happiness in Mexico?". We don't need no flarkin surveys! We are the survey.


Bucerias is a small town north of Puerto Vallarta on the Bay of Banderas which is on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It is about 6 hours south of Mazatlan and enjoys rain free and temperate winters with hot and wet summers. This year was unusual, or usual if you talk to the old Mexicans, in that it rained in January for almost 3 weeks. For the past 10 years or so winters have been totally rain free from November through June. Depending on who you talk to, Bucerias was named from the Spanish verb buscar which means to search, but also is used to describe the process of diving to retrieve shellfish from the ocean. In a less populated time Bucerias had large oyster beds and this is what people were diving for. There are still oysters here, but with inadequate sewage treatment and a larger population, eating them is a bit risky.

Our population is around 10,000, or so I've heard. Not very big, but big enough. The best beaches are farther north in the Bay where there are no towns and the beaches are pristine. We have a small population of "snow birds" who live here in the winter but fly north in April. The northerners are mostly Canadians and United Statesers (Never call yourself an American here, in reply you'll get, "We are all Americans"). Since it's hard to socialize with people whose language which you only have a pre-school comprehension of, the English speakers stick with the other English speakers and the Spanish speakers stick with the Spanish speakers. There are also French speakers from Canada and they stick together too. This makes the non-Spanish speaking communities very small and life here has that very small town feeling. In a real sense, everybody knows everybody else here and news travels fast. It also makes for a good social scene unlike most places we've lived in the US. It is the only place I've lived where the people you meet and socialize with cut across all social, political, sexual preference and economic styles. As one wag put it: "Everybody here has a screw loose or they would still be up 'there'".