Comitan, Chiapas

Comitan is a medium size town in the Mexican state of Chiapas, near the Guatemala border. It's proximity made it the obvious choice for Bruce and me to try when we decided to leave Guatemala for Mexico. I had read about it in a travel blog; it sounded worth a visit. 

A day's bus ride, cross the border, catch a van on the other side, another hour's ride, and we were in Comitan. The full story of our Guatemala/Comitan expat experience is in my book, We Burned Our Boats.

Suffice it to say that we fell in love with Comitan and found our home the next day. It came about through local networking. In this case, we asked a taxi driver about places for rent. We hired him the next day to take us around, and this apartment was perfect. 

Nice neighborhood near a park. Furnished with good furniture and appliances, spotlesly clean with a wall of windows letting in plenty of natural light. And affordable enough for us although high for locals. The landlady shaved a little off the price with a six-month lease.

We loved this apartment, and we loved this town. We made good friends among the local members of our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has a very strong presence all through LATAM. These were our communities both in Panajachel, Guatemala and in Comitan.

We lived in Comitan for nine months, not as long as we had hoped, but we had business to take care of in the States. Little did we know that two years later, Bruce would be gone. And my next flight to Mexico would be as a widow in grief, seeking solace in the country where we had been so happy.

Bruce with two missionary friends on Christmas Eve. The one on the left was from Honduras, the one on the right from Mexico City.

Banking as an Expat

 I've lived semi-permanently outside my home country off and on for twelve years. In this time, I've never opened a bank account outside the US.

I did try one time during a long stretch of living in Mexico. I forget the reason why, but it seemed important at the time. It took hours of paperwork. You'd think I was applying for a mortgage or car loan, which in the States is way less hassle than opening this deposit account with a few hundred dollars in it. Finally, the ordeal completed, the banker walked me to the front ATM machines to try out my new debit card. It worked, concluding our business.

A few weeks later, I tried withdrawing pesos from an ATM just to make sure the card still worked. It did not. Back to the bank I went, wasting another afternoon for them to finally inform me they had closed the account on a technicality. Nobody was sure what the technicality was. I had a feeling it was because the address listed with Immigration on my temporary residency card did not match the address I used to open the account. That's my best guess. Fair enough, can't blame them, but then why approve me in the first place?

It took another trip back to the bank to get the cash I had deposited. Never again. I do just fine with the system I've used for many years in several different countries. There's money in my bank at home. In three banks, actually, just in case there's a problem with one, I have options. 

I do not want to ever be left without options to get cash in the local currency when I'm in a foreign country. Larger businesses will take a credit card, but in LATAM cash is king. You can bargain with cash. Conclude your transaction smoothly and quickly with cash. And if you count your change, nobody can cheat you by stealing your information. 

All this may sound troublesome and nerve-wracking but to me it is fun. It's like playing Monopoly with Mexican pesos or Chilean pesos or Peruvian soles or Guatemalan quetzales.

And in general, the exchange rate is favorable to the dollar, giving me more for less. One of the positives about expat life. That, and the weather.

Apartment Living, Airbnb Style

 My theme for this year's A to Z Challenge is The Expat Life. My husband and I began our expat journey in February, 2010, when we sold everything and moved to the Lake Atitlan region of Guatemala. There was a break when we moved back to the States six years later. 

Unfortunately, he passed away in 2018. Two years later, I returned off and on to the expat lifestyle. Eight years later, I am all in. On my own now, missing him, but still spending the majority of my time out of the country.

Many Americans and Canadians, impressed by how cheaply they can buy homes in Latin America (LATAM) promptly invest in property. Bruce and I never did that, choosing not to be tied down in that way. We rented some lovely homes, one especially we never wanted to leave. This was our cozy nest of an upstairs apartment in Comitan, Chiapas. 

None of these were found online, mostly by networking with local folks. 

To the right, is a beautiful home I found with networking locally, when I returned to the single, expat life. It had 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, patios and gardens, large kitchen, dining room, living room. Rent was $500 a month in 2021. Near the beach. I didn't figure I'd ever leave. I lasted 4 years.

Now I find my places online, most commonly through Airbnb. I look for affordability, cleanliness, positive reviews, location, weather, and the responsiveness and gentility of the owners. You can tell a lot about a person with back-and-forth messaging and asking the right questions. 

I really don't need a house or anything fancy. I'm fine with a well-proportioned apartment.

Currently, I'm in an upstairs apartment that has everything I need, plus a few things I don't need but really like: A corner desk, a dining room table, air-fryer, full-size fridge, and stove with oven, specifically. It's in a nice area of a nice city and costs me $700 a month. 

I like it well enough that I plan to return next summer. The owner is happy about that and offered me a significant discount on the rent.

In ten weeks, I'm leaving this city and going to another Airbnb in another location. I get restless and don't like to stay in one place too long. Four to six months is my absolute limit, even if I like a place. Even back home close to my family, I barely last 4 months. 

A person never knows how they will react to loss of a spouse, their beloved companion of many years. But usually within a year, one finds out. For me, it was this restlessness, this inability to settle in any one location, regardless of how ideal it may seem at first.

 Fortunately, I was already very familiar with the expat life, and it wasn't difficult to pick up where Bruce and I had left off.