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Yucatan Retirement
One Woman's Story
Have you dreamed of retiring to the Yucatan? Maybe it's the beaches
of the Caribbean that call to you. Or maybe you picture yourself
living in one of those beautiful colonial homes that costs a fraction
of what your home costs in the States? Maybe it's the tropical climate
that beckons you on those cold winter evenings, or the jungles full
of life and mystery that offer an enticing contrast to the cold
steel workaday world?
Where The Sky Is Born is a book by Jeanine Lee Kitchel,
and it also happens to be the English translation of Si'an Kaan
(See-en Kahn), the name of the seaside jungle biosphere south
of Cancun near where Jeanine has made her home.
Tired of the fast-paced city life in San Francisco, Jeanine and
her husband, Paul, took an extended vacation to the Yucatan Peninsula
in 1985. As she tells it, a chance encounter on the road to Isla
Holbox with an English-speaking Mexican contractor led her and
her husband to move to Mexico in 1994 and build a house in Puerto
Morelos.
The driver, Alejandro, was in his late forties with the dark,
good looks of a Castilian. He waved us over as his girlfriend, Karla,
rolled down the window. She looked and dressed like an American,
ten years his junior, with her brunette hair cut stylishly short.
Both were smiling broadly, as if they already knew us.
"Where are you going?" he asked, barely an accent
to his perfect English.
"Up to Isla Holbox, through Chemax," Paul answered.
Chemax was a Mayan village forty miles north, known for its church,
one of the oldest in the Yucatan.
"Well, hop in. We're going to the Coba pyramids for
the day and we can give you a lift to the crossroads."
It didn't take long to organize our things and crowd into
the back seat. What a relief. Number one, we were out of the rain,
soon to be mobile. Number two, the driver spoke our language. As
we progressed in a westerly direction, Alejandro spoke casually
about himself, where he was from, the San Francisco area like ourselves,
and their day trip to the pyramids. He had the
air of a storyteller about him, recounting tales of spider monkeys
and crocodiles that lived at the pyramid site near the lake, explaining
that Coba had been one of the largest Mayan cities in the Yucatan,
with over 200,000 people, although at present, only five percent
of it was excavated.
The man radiated charisma, flashing comfortable smiles at Karla
as he chatted easily, all the while fascinating us with his accounts
of the Quintana Roo jungles. And if these tales weren't enough,
hundreds of iridescent blue Morpho butterflies engulfed the car
in a cloud of turquoise just then, adding a touch of Fellini, or
better yet Gabriel Garcia Marquez. |
He definitely had our attention. Then he told us about the
house he was building in a small fishing village called Puerto Morelos.
We were intrigued.
Before he drops them off at the crossroads, he lends them a yellow
umbrella. It is the quest to return his umbrella that leads them
to the place that they would later call home. Not that their troubles
were over at that point…hardly! The book tells of their encounters
with the Mexican government and a class-five hurricane… just
a few of the hurdles along the way to reaching their dream.
We won't spoil the rest of the story for you, except to tell you
that it can be done. Jeanine and her husband still live in the Yucatan
and you can read all about it in her book. You can order the book
directly through her website: www.yucatantales.com
If you are thinking of retiring to the Yucatan, this book is a great
place to start.
Read more about moving to the Yucatan:
 Real Estate
Real Estate Beach Homes
Real Estate Colonial Homes
Real Estate Buying Property
Moving to the Yucatan
Healthcare
Visit our map:
Map of Merida Historical Downtown
Map of Merida Downtown
Map of Merida City
Map of Yucatan Peninsula
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