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'".

Comments

[stephanie]

Do you know anything about television set up in Buverias? Cable? Satelite? And what the name of the company is that provides these services?

[Ed]

There is no cable here but there is satellite. Mexico has DirectTV which is mostly Spanish language programming with CNN international, BBC, discovery Channel in English. There is also Sky TV which is similar. We currently have Star Choice which is Canadian. So far it is the best deal. There is a man in town who works with an outfit up in canada and they give you a Canadian address. You have to buy the satellite box which is a couple hundred dollars and then it's about $29 a month. They have all the networks plus movie channels and almost all in English. If you are interested I can get you more specific information. All of the above use the small dish. We are currently using our DirectTV dish for Star Choice.

http://www.starchoice.com/

We also recently got DSL for internet access through Telmex. That runs about $35 a month and is soooo much better than dial-up.

[Ed]

I have heard recently that cable is coming to Bucerias. I have no other information on it. Will keep you posted.

[quinn]

Im DYING to move to Bucerias after visiting but extremly worried about an income. Any advice?