I haven’t written very many blogs about my travels so far. Travel writing seemed a quaint topic for the apocalypse, but also there was just so much else to write about. This post ended up being much longer than I intended.
When I came to Mexico in December 2019, it was my first trip to Latin America. I had been on an extended trip to India, and travelled to Nairobi, New Zealand ( where I got to write a very cool story on Maori Run Credit Unions - and how they were being used as a model to help Canada’s First Nations), and been through and across Canada, and the northern US states. But I had never been to Mexico.
We were supposed to be on an extended 6-month trip, our first as a family. My partner had taken the semester off from Selkirk College where he taught in the international department, I work online, and we had found a school for my then 7 year old in Huatulco, Oaxaca.
It was an amazing trip: We went into Michoacan to see the Monarch butterflies migrating, stayed for a week in the fantastical city of Guanajuato (the birth place of Diego Rivera), listened to jazz in Zacatecas, and then spent months swimming with sea turtles and eagle rays in the crystal waters of Huatulco’s many private bays.
If you have ever seen the film “Y tu Mama tambien”, the stunning beach they spend their trip trying to get to is in Huatulco.
And then the world went mad. Fast forward two years, and Canada just doesn’t seem like a safe country anymore for people with strong opinions. We are no longer on a vacation, or adventuring…we are really looking for a home where we can raise our daughter likes it’s 1999…
Huatulco
We love Huatulco. When the world shut down, and everyone went home, we were almost the last expats left…and it remained that way for MONTHS. It was like Last Man On Earth. The beaches were closed ( except they weren’t…we still swam every day), there was no alcohol (except there was). This is the beauty of Mexico. There are rules, but all the rules are negotiable. For months, we only saw about eight people, but we had one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world to ourselves. With no boats traffic, or cruise ships the beaches and ocean returned to total paradise. It was a stunning, awesome, scary moment. We had no idea what was coming…but what we were experiencing on the day to day was…incredible wild ocean beauty.
However, Huatulco is made for retired Canadians. And as the “pandemic” progressed we saw that Huatulco was positioning itself for making them feel safe. There were ridiculous measures like foot baths at every doorway, masking of course (which was optional for a long time, and then became mandatory when we left, and now seems back to optional), but also we saw long lines of people - hundreds and hundreds of them - lining up for the vaccines.
We knew from research that we didn’t want our kid in masks, or ourselves, and that there could be some medical fallout from the vaccinated.
We also knew we had to leave the country to get our residency papers for Mexico anyway, and we knew some people in Nicaragua who said it was “totally open, and doing nothing”, and there looked to be an amazing school down there. So I bought a car and we drove down. BTW at that point we had overstayed our Mexican visa by 1.5 years, and we still bought a car legally in our names, and paid no fine.
Remember that point.
The Drive: Should you drive to Nicaragua?
I’ve actually done a You Tube video with the luminous Gabriela Castillo ( from Remax Nicaragua) on driving to Nicaragua. We both agree: don’t do it.
It’s not the length of the journey, it’s getting through all the third world borders that is really difficult. I’m not sure how you do it if you aren’t fluent in Spanish, and a pushy A-type. But also the driving is nutso; you need to be comfortable with zero rules, roads with potholes the size of small peublos, and a collection of ox-carts, illegally large semi-trucks, and families of five perched precariously on bicycles, backs of ancient vehicles, and scooters all careening at high speeds on the same strip of two-lane road with you. For a large chunk of Guatamala the Pan American “highway” is single lane, and proceeds at a crawl. You try to pass the enormous Dune-Spice-sized cane sugar trucks at the topes (speed bumps) while vehicles in the other direction are trying to do the same thing.
My partner doesn’t have a driver’s licence. So that was all me. He earned his way getting us through the borders without losing our car, or things. No small feat. Especially on the return journey. Each border took an average of 2-3 hours of negotiations to get through, and each time was a nerve-wracking hunt to find out what small shack you had to take which tiny piece of paper to get the correct stamp from what guy…and invariably that guy was sitting in a tiny airless shack in front of stacks of paper that extended from floor to ceiling, and that some of which you knew had been there since the 1970’s…And in these countries the people take their jobs very seriously, so there is no real cutting of the line, or getting around it. No one wants an international incident, but they also don’t care if you sit there all day in the hot sun with your kid and your cat.
Except Honduras…pro tip: you can buy your way through the Honduras border and be over it in 20 minutes. That was a huge relief after the FOUR HOURS it took to LEAVE Nicaragua.
So here’s the thing…Nicaragua, was and is still, the worst country we drove through. Getting in was the worst, leaving was even worse than that.
At this point, I’ve driven through five countries in Latin America, with countless police and army checkpoints, and the only place I have been shaken down for money, or harassed by police or army has been Nicaragua. Just on our way out of the country alone we went through 9 checkpoints, and had to give up money twice.
They would not let us leave the country without paying magical fines that added up to $700 CAD.
It was getting so bad while we were living in San Juan that we were getting hit up by police on our way to our daughter’s riding lessons once a week. Sometimes we could talk our way out of paying, sometimes we couldn’t. We weren’t speeding, we had no infractions. We just got stopped. I am aware this happens in Mexico, but so far it hasn’t happened to me, and it is pretty much a given every time you drive in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua
We were so excited to get to a place with no restrictions that we pulled up to the Nica border with glee…and then were confused as we were asked to don masks, and proceeded through our worst border crossing ever. It took hours. They wanted money for everything. They made us unpack our car, and put our luggage through x-rays.
Fifteen minutes into the country we got hit up by our first-ever police shakedown. If you’ve ever been through one of these they all sort of look the same. They took our passports and held them just out of reach while mumbling about “multa” ( the spanish word for fine). We played dumb gringo, made them use their Google translate, and then they finally gave up, and we were driving into Nicaragua.
All together the process had taken four hours, just to get into the country and passed the first police block. It wasn’t a great first view of the place we had come for “refuge” from pandemic restrictions.
San Juan Del Sur
San Juan Del Sur is not representative of the rest of Nicaragua. It is truly an amazing place with the best expat community I have ever encountered. We arrived in San Juan on June 1st 2021, at the same time as a group of Canadians who had pre-emptively left before the vaccine passports. We had a glorious little house in Pelican Eyes, The San Juan Del Sur Day School really is a jewel, and Lilli loved her gang of free, living-like-it’s-the-70’s children who played on beaches and rode horses in the jungle at Big Sky Ranch, and didn’t have to be watched at every turn. We had and close group of friends who were on the same page, and shared information on topics like solar power, crypto, and all the tips and tricks you need to stay in Nicaragua (and you need a lot of them). I loved the howler monkeys in the morning, and the fireflies at night. I loved sleeping with my doors open, the incredible breezes, and monsoon rains. I loved the camaraderie of all these Canadians (and some Americans), who had sold everything they owned, left their thriving businesses, took their children and ran away from their country that had abandoned freedom of choice.
We hadn’t done that. We hadn’t seen Canada become a tyrannical dictatorship close up. It looked bad from far away, but hearing the stories of our friends about what it was actually like to live through 2020-21 in Canada made us very sad, and happy that we hadn’t been there. (Well, it made my partner happy not to have been there…one part of me knows I would have just gone rogue and travelled around Canada doing journalism if I had been there; I did my best from the outside.)
The worst part was hearing the stories of neighbours snitching on neighbours, and the lack of support for those who couldn’t tolerate, or were medically exempt from masks. I could see some of that online in social media from former friends, but we really hadn’t experienced any of it. We never wore masks in Huatulco, and were left alone. We really haven’t ever worn masks for the past two years except in banks.
Other things we loved? It must be said that the local beef, dairy, and fruit is off the charts in Nicaragua. We ate local, fresh-made butter, cheeses, and to-die-for local fruit. Beef is the largest export out of Nicaragua, along with coffee, cigars, chocolate, and seriously the best rum. I gave up a long time love of whiskey for my new fave - 12 year old aged dark Flor De Canne.
Life was very good in many ways, and we came very close to purchasing a sweet chunk of land at Big Sky Ranch.
We definitely left a piece of our hearts in San Juan…so why did we leave?
Well there were a lot of little things we could overlook: like the fact there are few paved roads, and driving anywhere requires patience and calm as you navigate through chickens, starving dogs ( so many starving dogs…it’s appalling), herds of cattle, etc…much like India outside of the cities, but far more cramped in a smaller area if you can imagine.
It’s hard to get things there, you can do it…you can ship with amazon, but it’s expensive and takes up to a month.
The health care system is really backwards, and incredibly expensive when it’s not free. It’s a socialist country, so a lot of things are free, but in a dilapidated state. If you want to go to the more expensive private hospitals? It can be 30 grand US or more to get treatment for more serious things. And the private hospitals are highly recommended for even limb setting. I have heard heartwarming stories of local doctors coming to do quick fixes in people’s homes for cheap, but for more serious things, I wouldn’t want to do them in Nicaragua. I would want to go to Panama or Mexico where it will not only be cheap, it will be world-class.
Finally, it’s not cheap. While some parts of Nicaragua are certainly cheaper, San Juan Del Sur is expensive. It’s about the same cost as living in Canada. Rent is slightly cheaper than Mexico, but everything else was about 1/3 more than what we paid in Huatulco. San Juan is built around the US dollar, so they see that 1/3 drop in prices, but Canadians do not. I found it expensive in comparison to Mexico for what you got.
These are all little things. We loved the community and school there so much we would have stayed anyway. All of this would have been ignorable if it were not for the next parts.
For us, the criteria was that we are looking for our primary residence. We are looking for a place we can settle in for at least the next decade ( if that’s a thing in this uncertain world). We would also like our family to be able to easily come and live/visit if they want to. There has to be a good school, and relative safety. And, it has to be on the right path politically and with no mandates.
So here were the bigger things:
It’s a communist dictatorship.
And that’s not something you can talk about or mention aloud while you live there, or if you want to live there. A lot of the expats that live there speak glowingly of Nicaragua, because you have to. You can’t get caught even speaking ill of Nicaragua on social media or you won’t make it back into the country (see more on this below).
We are not going back to Canada because we consider it to be a country that is heading towards a communist dictatorship; why would we live in Nicaragua to escape that?
While many Canadians in Nica are creating a sort of parallel society on top of the communist dictatorship that is Nicaragua, I personally didn’t feel I would be able to sustain that level of blinkering long term. While I had no beef with the gov’t as a visitor, I knew that if I bought land, and became Nicaraguan that would change.
We were all set up to buy land when we had to do our very first border cross. This btw was another deal breaker for us…
The endless bureaucracy and expense to stay
In Mexico, we overstayed our visa by 1 year, and then paid no fine and bought a car legally.
In Nicaragua you have to either border cross to Costa Rica every three months, or do that every six months, and then drive to a town called Rivas every month to update your visa for three months.
Confused?
If you choose the Rivas route, you have to LEAVE YOUR PASSPORTS there for a week, and drive back to get them. So: two trips to Rivas in a month and no passports. And then you have to repeat that in another two weeks, for three months. Each time it costs time and money to do it. But the border also costs time and money. And in Nicaragua if you let your visa lapse, it costs 3$ per day US per person.
So we didn’t realize this the first time, and overstayed our visa by a month, and then did the border cross to get three months. Two things happened that changed our outlook on living in Nicaragua.
The First Thing:
It cost us $1500 to do that border run by the time we paid for transportation, “PCR tests” (you need them to get into Nica), the “flights” proving we were leaving Costa Rica, the travel insurance you need to go to Costa Rica even to step foot across the border, the money they charge for their various bits of visa papers, and the fines.
$1500, and an entire gruelling day. Now if we wanted to go on a cute Costa trip every three months, maybe that would be different, but it’s expensive, and personally I’m too busy to do that. And they have so many restrictions there too: masks, toying with vaccine passports, and even men and women can’t drive their cars on the same days. Costa Rica has some freer areas, but it’s no vacation spot currently for those looking to be free.
The Second Thing:
Every time we’ve crossed borders if people ask what we do, my partner says he’s a teacher, and then he says I’m a writer. The very first time we tried to cross the border back into Nicaragua, when we said I was a writer, our passports disappeared. For over an hour we watched an enormous line of people go before us while we waited. I watched myself get Googled for over an hour. We contemplated what it meant to be in a country where there was a chance we wouldn’t be allowed in because of my past or present employment…or my political opinions.
They did finally let us in, but I have since heard many stories of even long-standing residents getting sent back on planes from Costa Rica or Nicaragua for not having the right stamp, or having a torn passport page. I’ve heard stories of people having their cars taken at the borders. Normal people. Not drug dealers.
A lot of people get around this in Nicaragua by getting their residency as quickly as possible. But to me that still doesn’t get around point number one: it’s a communist dictatorship.
The cost of the endless bureaucracy in Nicaragua is punitive. I’ve now driven through most of the countries in Central America and NOT ONE OTHER country charged us a penny to leave. Oh, actually Honduras did. It was a 3$ exit tax. Not 700 Cad in “fines”.
Also, I have now driven through countless police roadblocks and still haven’t had a single police shakedown other than in Nicaragua. Add this to the fact that you have to drive everywhere in San Juan Del Sur (the main beach is very dirty with sewage, so really you have to have some kind of vehicle to enjoy the many other gorgeous beaches), and if you hit any one of the many crazy cyclists, scooters etc…you go instantly to jail.
To jail.
When we were there a long time resident hit a bike with no lights on it at night, that pulled in front of her, and spent three days in jail while she waited for her lawyer to get her out. I was told by a Nica that the way around this is to have a “huge drama, scream and cry that you have to go to the hospital, and then call a lawyer from the hospital”…this is another deal breaker for me personally. Spending time in a developing world jail is possibly one of my worst nightmares.
I personally know people who lost property due to political ties.
People love to list the expats that have owned property for years in Nicaragua, as proof that their money will be safe if they purchase there. However I personally met two people who lost property to the government: one Nica and one expat. The Nica was for political reasons, a vague family tie to someone who protested against the govt. The expat simply had land the government wanted. Again, these are not things you are allowed to speak about publicly, or even mention the names of the people this happened to.
Canada is heading in this direction as well….that’s why we are not there either.
Finally Nicaragua does have mandates, and has recently strengthened ties to China
In San Juan Del Sur there are few masks on any faces. Although that number seems to come and go with every new booster campaign, and seasonal flu. I would say the number fluctuates between 30-40% masked, and grew to be more the longer we were there. Outside San Juan, in Managua, it’s about 90%. Nicaraguans generally believe the hype, and while we were there Ortega strengthened his ties with China in order to get millions of doses of vaccine.
In December, that partnership escalated and Ortega kicked out the Taiwanese Embassy, and has a Chinese Embassy now instead. This feels like a major political move and bodes ill for war against Taiwan. As an aside I feel that Russia and China are going to make those moves together, for the same reason - to destabilize the West. But that’s a topic for another post.
In January major universities were closed as a response to perceived slights during the 2018 uprising and political turmoil.
In the same month we found out that the reason all the school children in Nica were wearing masks is because the only mask mandate in Nicaragua is for school children. In a sense, it’s the only one you need to get your whole society to wear masks. And it’s the most harmful one you can have, as Dr Fulford explained in my previous interview with her. For us, the most important thing is to live in a place where our daughter can see mask-free faces, and grow up without that cognitive decline, and social depression that masks cause (her and us;).
The same month, Ortega’s wife Rosario Murillo ( also the vice president of the country) came out with a speech where she outlined that they would be mandating vaccines for those wanting to get surgeries in the hospital etc…
This section was particularly concerning for us:
We continue with active search strategies, house-to-house visits, Health Fairs, Mobile Clinics, Itinerant Brigades; also vaccination of the Workers in all State Institutions and Companies with a considerable number of Workers, such as the Free Zones.Also coordination with our National Police, our Army, Immigration, Penitentiary System, IPSA, Customs, Tourism, Port Companies, Border Posts, among others, to guarantee vaccination and reinforcements.
Vaccination stations at the borders and at the airports, so that the entire population that enters the country completes its schedule according to their age.
My partner is fluent in Spanish, and it was no less concerning in the original language. The same week we confirmed that all the businesses down at the dock had a visit from MINSA informing them that their staff had to be vaccinated.
In other words, mandatory vaccines had come to Nicaragua.
For us it seemed not that Nicaragua had chosen the path of bodily autonomy for their citizens, but only that they hadn’t gotten enough vaccines to mandate it fully yet. In the same time period that Nica was adopting new restrictions, Guatamala went full pandemic-vaccine-passport-tyranny. Guatemala had been our plan B. We realized that central America wasn’t letting its people be free, they just were taking longer to take their freedoms away.
Nicaragua is a beautiful country, with beautiful people, and we loved our time there, but it’s not the “place for freedom” we were told it was. How could it be? How can a place be free if its people are not?
I understand why people would choose Nicaragua. It’s a stunning, wild, undeveloped place. But it’s not for lack of trying. It’s undeveloped BECAUSE of the issues I list above…otherwise it would be Costa Rica.
As Canada becomes a banana republic, I’ve thought a lot about what is the element that is most important for freedom, and honestly I think it’s decentralisation. Decentralisation of power is the single most important factor - along with free speech. And that is why we have chosen to find our home in Mexico.
Mexico is only country in Latin America that has never had a military dictatorship, in part because it is too big, and too diverse to control. The government power is split among its states - like the US. There isn’t one cartel, there are many. Mexican’s have many ultra rich, as well as ultra poor, and it has the most living languages left in the Western Hemisphere.
We have realised that we need to find a place where the people of that country have the same values as us, not live “on top” of the culture in a bubble of our own making. While we loved the expats in Nica, we are searching for a place where we can be residents, and citizens. And join the nationals in creating the parallel society we all want to see.
We are hopeful that we can find our place in Mexico. We are aware that no country is perfect, nor is any country free from the elements we are trying to escape from currently. But we are hopeful…
And I will definitely let you know what we find.
My family and I have been in Huatulco for the past 5 months after checking out a few other spots. I'd love to hear where your family decides to settle as we are still unsure.
Question:
Hello Amanda! Thanks for your article as we are contemplating our possible relocation from Canada to SJDS Nicaragua or Mexico or other. Do you have any suggestions for places to try out in Mexico that are similar vibe to SJDS?
We are looking for the following:
safe
smaller city/community
purchase house/land ie small hobby farm to grown our own veg/maybe have chickens
international accredited elementary school
expat community with families and kids
can adapt to self sustainable off the grid
Have springs or fresh water
More temperate climate may be ideal too for us Canadians
Any suggestions of locations to try in Mexico that meet the above criteria?
Thanks very much,
Nicole