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I get asked “Why do you live in Mexico?” by friends and acquaintances, especially when traveling to the US or overseas. If I want to boil down the Mexico living rationale, I often resort to a refrain that sums up this country’s most salient advantage when comparing Mexico with other overseas living options: “foreign and familiar”–an alchemy of cultural, culinary, linguistic, historical, and societal expressions co-existing with Mexico’s acceptance and embrace of many things “American”–peanut butter on your morning toast, pyramids in the afternoon; colonial cities and Costco; el Beis (baseball) and birria. I could go on and on.
The Mexico-US border might be an off-limits option in today’s binational immigration and security environment. There are six Mexican states across this line in the sand and there’s not much good news coming from either side of “la frontera.” Yet one state (Baja California, the northern half of the Baja Peninsula) should draw your attention for a lifestyle, where straddling US and Mexico living might be your perfect combination of foreign and familiar.
It’s a region of Mexico with a high degree of familiarity for West Coasters (a Tijuana daytrip being a sort of right of passage for those growing up in So Cal), albeit a mystery to many
others exploring coastal living options in Mexico. It’s a place that has sourced many, many stereotypical portrayals of Mexican identity (unfairly), while also carving out a bicultural hybrid identity that might someday call into question whether a walled border even matters. The urban complex, San Diego-Tijuana, is already one of the hemisphere’s most energetic landscapes of cooperation and entwined destinies. Being a part of this future might just be your Mexico living sweet spot.
We have rated four locations, three hugging the state’s Pacific coast and another that sits far to the east on Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. Uniting the three Pacific locations (urban and chaotic Tijuana, beachy Rosarito, and cruise port Ensenada) is Mexico’s most agreeable year-round climate for coastal living. Hands down, it’s the only place to live on the coast enjoying a “Mediterranean” climate of warm (but rarely humid) dry summers and winters with seasonal rains and a very stable mean daily temperature. Like San Diego, there will be overcast mornings, and don’t expect tropical greenspaces or forested hills.
Connectivity and Care also earn high marks, as Baja living gifts its inhabitants with the best of Mexico and the US when it comes to getting back home (using San Diego and Tijuana airports for domestic and international flights) and the best of border medicine with Medicare. Sure, you’ll need to get past layers of highway obstacles and a relatively slow international border crossing reality, but San Diego is pretty much within your grasp (less so if you opt for Ensenada, 144 kms away).
I would never discount or degrade the culture of Baja California, coopted by US commercial and popular cultural incursions–not a doubt. But BC has also earned its own independence and identity when it comes to lifestyles, artistic expressions, familial, and societal relations in defiance of California’s tidal wave of influences. No, you won’t find iconic Mexican relics of archaeology, Spanish colonial architecture, or jaw-dropping landscape diversity (it’s mostly desert, more so heading inland away from the Pacific). You’ll need to take a flight (three hours to CDMX) to get your fix of “real” Mexico.
That said, you’ll find plenty of reasons to explore your local surrounding: Tijuana’s sophisticated dining and multicultural performing arts scene, Mexico’s premiere wine country (just over the hill from Ensenada), beaches and more beaches, and two magnificent bodies of water (the Pacific and Sea of Cortez).
Starting with Tijuana for living, there are probably more US passport-holders living full and part-time than in any on the state. English is widely spoken. And with 2.1 million metro-area residents, universities, museums, performing arts (Teatro Las Tablas, Centro Cultural Tijuana, Casa de la Cultura), and some of Mexico’s most innovative seafood-centered cuisine, Tijuana defies the stereotypes of its past.
Tijuana is a manufacturing powerhouse; it has non-stop flights to China. One report highlights how “transfroterizos” include 45,000 K-12 students crossing the border every day; some 45,000 others cross daily into California for work. A post Covid-19 sea of remote workers takes advantage of lower cost of living (rents are going up; so what’s new…), income-tax savings (heard of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion?), and cultural “chispa” (spark) that’s just not found in the States.
But there are security issues–crime, cartel violence, car-jackings, and the ever-menacing border tension realities. More US citizens are homicide victims in Baja California State than in any other state in Mexico. LINK TO MY ARTICLE. A commute to the States for work is brutal by most accounts (50 million annual border crossings happen here). Remote workers experience less stress. As one social media post highlights, “If you want to make the sacrifice, have an end game; don’t be another hamster on the wheel or you’ll go crazy.”
Rosarito (pop. 127,000); what can you say about it? What started as a humble beach town with a wooden pier and lifeguard stations (another nod to the So Cal beach experience) has grown into a bedroom community for Tijuana and high-rise condo towers for thousands of foreigners. Highway One and One D form arteries that run smack dab through the center of town. In some ways, living here is more about convenience than culture or even “resort” amenities. It’s a surfer haven for some, breakfast club or happy hour social scene for others.
Gated residential communities line the coast north and south of the city center. More a “mistake” of development than anything very cohesive, the city never rates in the top ten for Mexican beach resort “wow.” There are some high-rise beachfront hotels, but few visitors come for long vacation stays, meaning the weekend “invasion” is more the cycle.
But it is Mexico’s lobster capital (Puerto Nuevo, in particular), has Baja-Med cuisine (dining here is expensive by Mexico standards), micro-breweries and Mexico’s biggest annual beach party (Baja Beach Fest, in August). There is a muted multicultural art scene (painting and sculpture) and two English-language theatre companies. You’ve got convenience (16 miles to the international border), a daily mean temperature of 70 degrees, and sandy Pacific beaches. Oh, and Rosarito was the source of rocks for the 1970’s Pet Rock craze.
An hours’ drive to the south is Ensenada, described by one travel guide as “hedonistic Tijuana’s cosmopolitan sister.” It’s big enough (population 444,000) to stand on its own when it comes to services and amenities; it’s far enough from the border (104 kms) to require some effort to get here; it’s a haven from the border calamity up north. And Ensenada’s Mexican and expat societies enjoy shared coastal living experiences that can be harder to find in Mexico’s “fly-in,” more trafficked beach locations.
Those who make the effort to get here (and live year-round) are rewarded with a seaport personality (3-4 ship arrivals per week), Mexico’s best seafood dining, Mexico’s premier wine country (just over the hill in Valle de Guadalupe), surprising micro-climates (if the cool overcast weather grows tiresome), and affordability. There are universities and research institutes, some offering courses in English in marine science, wine making and other interests. Museo de la Historia, Plaza de la Patria and Ventana al Mar Park are some of the casual hang-outs for expats.
You’ll also find a diversity of residential neighborhoods in central Ensenada and many more toward the south of the city. You’ll want a car if you live here, and some reports say beach swimming in central Ensenada is not recommended, due to sewage spills—more prevalent in winter than summer. Sound familiar, So Cal?
Baja California living straddles the US and Mexico, drawing the best conditions for a “foreign and familiar” lifestyle. It’s So Cal with an accent, a tribute to the challenges and rewards of a binational landscape.
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Greg Custer was raised in Orange County, CA and now lives in Central Mexico. He helps folks discover Mexico for living at www.mexicoforliving.com
