Anticipating the Annual Border Run
One aspect of life for those of us who live in Mexico, and I can imagine for expats everywhere, is the annual migration to the homeland, the border run. Expats in other countries go home for foods they miss. Americans go home for electronics (and in my case, a larger choice of Nike gear).
While product availability and secure online delivery of goods from Amazon.com.mx improves every year, Mexico’s Amazon is still nothing like the cornucopia I coo over on the US Amazon site. I de-cry American consumerism right up until a few weeks before the annual trip when I’m able to roll around in it online and gleefully order stuff in advance of my arrival. Such a hypocrite I am.
The migration is run by us all, but phones and laptops usually top the list. Buying electronics is very expensive in Mexico. Laptops sold there (surprise!) have Spanish keyboards. This trip I will pick up both an iphone and laptop.
People have argued with me on how many are necessary in Mexico. After 12 years in Mazatlan, I stand firm on my belief in multiple backups. Two laptops, two phones minimum. I’ve had many, many situations where doing so has paid off in a big way. My needs are simple and I buy from a generous selection of refurbished phones and laptops I’d never find in Mexico.
If you simply don’t like the thought of two phones, the simplest, cheapest system for an expat (not a vacationer) is to have an iphone (12 and up) with a dual sim card, one e-sim card for an American carrier and another for your Mexican carrier. WhatsApp is enormously popular in Mexico. To use that app you will need to toggle back and forth between sim cards if you use one phone. I understand Telcel in Mexico has a very good plan for those who only want to keep one dual-sim card phone for all their communications.
In spite of that perhaps easier option, a large number of expats, like me, still elect to have two phones. Having only one phone in Mexico tempts fate. Leave your phone in an Uber or break it, or in the case of a laptop, spill a soda or otherwise damage a keyboard, and you are truly screwed. If a laptop’s being repaired, it might take longer to find the right technician and get it repaired in Mexico.
The internet can behave differently on a Mac than a laptop with a Windows operating system. I can’t tell you how many times one has connected fine, the other not at all. Over the years, having two laptops has saved me over and over again.
I chose to use both phones day to day rather than keep the second in abeyance. One phone houses a US number with a $15 a month plan on Mint Mobile. A US number is crucial to receive security codes, especially with Amazon.com, which uses exclusively your US phone number to identify you. Without one, within a few purchases you will quickly be denied access and your account frozen for suspicious activity.
My second phone houses all things Mexican, including a number and data plan through AT&T Mexico. I pay anywhere from $5 dollars (100 pesos) to $15 dollars (300 pesos) a month for the Mexican plan, each month I pay the carga at the OXXO convience store and can pay as little or as much for data as I estimate I’ll use. Together, my entire phone expense with data runs $30 a month.
Other items on trips lists are high quality clothing (no one can explain to me why it’s to hard to find cotton shirts in Mexico, Land of Polyester), certain vitamins like high dosage vitamin C, supplements, skin products, and contact lenses and any other similiar items covered by US health insurance. Each expat’s safari is a little different.
The annual trips might include annual check ups. It can take some time to patch together a system that fits your individual needs for emergency and routine healthcare as an expat. Snowbirds who stay six months or less buy travel insurance. (Shop around. The cost varies wildly). Those who live here most the year have an almost overwhelming number of options between going back and forth or finding Mexican doctors.
I’ve chosen to have Mexican healthcare system that runs parallel to my US one, keeping both a Mexican doctor (disconcertingly built like Arnold Schwarzenegger), and a US doctor (who is not built anything like Arnold Schwarzenegger). I have annual health checkups with each of them, being really interested in seeing how they might approach issues differently, a second opinion luxury I’d never have if I weren’t an expat.
This year I made several long stays in Canada, cutting down on the time I usually spend in the US. to a single week, a despairingly short time to catch up with friends back home and get it all done. However, I am weirdly excited about the prospect of carrying only a carry-on for the first time since my dual life between two countries began 12 years ago.
Those without patient family members book an AirBnB and get busy, an in-and-out. My AirBnB host this year mentioned she has several guests who live in other countries and stay with her during the pilgrimage, itemizing to her delivery dates for packages soon to be arriving on her doorstep, which she generously keeps in separate piles, as if under a Christmas tree, ready for each happy expat.
About the Author: Kerry Baker
Ventanas Mexico which provides advice and resources to those considering exploring full or part-time expat-life in Mexico.
“The Mexico Solution: Saving your sanity, money and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico ” is a game plan for moving and adapting to life in Mexico. Most recently I wrote The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico. To eat healthy in Mexico, you have to cook. This cookbook tells you how to cook healthy meals in context of an unfamiliar culture.