[Jencats]

Hey my name is Jen and I am pretty new to these forums so here's my attempt at it lol. My family and I live in Alberta, Canada and have grown up here, it is a beautiful place to live ... minus the horribly cold -30 to -50 winters .... that are 8 months out of the year lol and well we're tired of it! So we are looking to move south. We are looking in the Yucatan, Mexico area and I am just interested in talking to some people who have done the move themselves at one point or live there now and what their experiences were or what places are great to look in. Any ways thank's for any advice someone can get and I look forward to meeting you.

 

[RVGRINGO]

Have you visited the Yucatan, or any other region of Mexico? It is a large country with many climates and cultural differences from one area to another. You seem to be wanting to jump directly from the freezer into the sauna; from one extreme to another. I suggest some personal exploration in the summer months if you cannot make several trips to explore various areas in different seasons. The vast majority of expats choose the central highlands for some very good reasons, reserving coastal areas for winter beach vacations, where summers can be brutal and lonesome.

 

[Longford]

When someone says "Yucatan" they don't always describe the same area as other people do. There's Yucatan state, and the Yucatan Peninsula. There's more to the region than just the city of Merida. As one example, there's a big difference between the climate in Merida and, say, Playa del Carmen. My suggestion to the OP is to search this forum to read what's been said about the region previously, and to also search on the internet for the wealth of information found there, about the Yucatan (whichever destination is being considered).

Map of the "Yucatan"

 

[citlali]

The climate on the Yucatan peninsula is hot and humid, it is more comfortable on the water as you get more of a breeze but unless you like heat and humidity it is an awful climate to me. I look at it as bearable in December and Janiary to unbearable in July.
Actually we just cut short a trip there because it was just too hot to enjoy what we were doing.

The mornings can be very nice but I want to live in a climate I can enjoy for more than a few hours a day.

I am not a beach person so I am not interesed in living there where the climate is more bearable and the inland was just too hot after 11 in the morning..I know take a siesta in the afternoon and come back out when it is cooler but frankly I am not about to move to a place where I have to stay put part of the day, not at my age .

Visit in December and visit in July and decide for yourself before taking a decision.

 

[terrybahena]

You know how they say "location location location"....well I say climate climate climate! I moved to the beach in Guerrero below Acapulco, "happy" tp be somewhere that it's warm/hot all the time. Ouch what a mistake. Found out I cannot handle the humidity of the tropics, and after that moved up to the Sonoran desert and found out I didn't like that either and we have now landed in an area with not too hot hots & not too cold colds...hmmm like just right (call me Goldilocks) So my 2 cents is try some places- at their highs & lows....

Mexico is an amazing beautiful exciting crazy frustrating insane country...Enjoy!!

 

[Hound Dog]

[QUOTE=Jencats;3392457]Hey my name is Jen and I am pretty new to these forums so here's my attempt at it lol. My family and I live in Alberta, Canada and have grown up here, it is a beautiful place to live ... minus the horribly cold -30 to -50 winters .... that are 8 months out of the year lol and well we're tired of it! So we are looking to move south. We are looking in the Yucatan, Mexico area and I am just interested in talking to some people who have done the move themselves at one point or live there now and what their experiences were or what places are great to look in. Any ways thank's for any advice someone can get and I look forward to meeting you.[/QUOTE]

Good luck to you, Jencats, with that radical change in climate you contemplate as a possibiity between Alberta and the Yucatán Peninsula. You are proposing a move that we contemplated in the past as well when, in 2005, we set out for The Yucatán and explored a number of places all around the peninsula as possible home sites. While we explored the península in some depth and had spent quite a bit of time there before then dating as far back as the 1980s, we considered more seriously such places as Mérida, the Gulf Coast between Progreso and Dzilam de Bravo, the área around Izamal, Akumal, Tulum, Xcalak, Majahual and Lake Bacalar finally rejecting them all for various reasons and settling on San Cristóbal de Las Casas at 2000 meters in the Chiapas Highlands.

Despite the fact that we chose to establish our residence in the highlands versus the flat, mostly scrubby coastal flats characterized by most of the península, that doesn´t mean we don´t still visit the península on occasion and, in fact, we just returned from a drive through some of the more important Maya Puuc Ruins where we finally decided to cut short our trip when the mid-morning temperatures started reaching the vicinity of 36C plus with 80% humidity during the first week in March. Everyone is not suited to such stiffling heat and humidity but perhaps you and your family are and the heat could be mitigated somewhat by sea breezes right on the coast if that is where you plan to consider moving.

Anyway, keeping in mind the extraordinary heat and humidity and anuaul hurricane activity - often devastating - along the coasts of both the Gulf and Caribbean, it would be wise , in my opinión, for you and your family to extensively visit many places in The Yucatán , especially during the hottest months there and, perhaps, during hurricane season, , before commmitting to purchase any real estate anywhere in that región. Keep in mind, as well, that the region´s coastal communities attract real estate sales hustlers to try to sell overpriced beach properties to newbies just arrived from the Tundra.

If you are cautious and like the climate on the peninsula, there are dome nice properties there and Mérida in an interesting city. Good luck to you in your search.