OK... where to next?

We have had a fantastic time during our stay in beautiful Grenada and we actually hate to leave. Both of us agree that Grenada would make a wonderful place for long term retirement living.

Life is good here. This is an image of Grand Anse beach - it is on the top of Cyndi's list for finding that elusive palm tree. We have enjoyed everything about our experiences here and have met many new friends.

But our adventure is all about checking out other potential locations for a new home by exploring and learning about them. Our spreadsheet has one more location that showed up places we needed to visit in our "top four" in North / Central America, and we have taken steps to start the next leg of our adventure.

So, we have decided that we are going to move to Mazatlan Mexico for a year starting in April 2018. It is quite close to being the tropical opposite of living on a small sleepy island but it promises to provide a few of the things we have been missing here in Grenada.

Mazatlan is a very popular tourist destination. The beach area is full of great restaurants and fun things to do. We will get to go shopping again for those things that we couldn't find here in the Caribbean as there is fabulous shopping available in Mazatlan. Mazatlan has a population that's about four times the whole the country of Grenada, and twice that of Puerto Vallarta, where we already stayed for a year. It's going to be a big place to learn to navigate in and enjoy city culture shock again.

We have booked a nice small apartment in a quiet area of the “Golden Zone” of Mazatlan with a 5 minute walk to the beach. It is on the top floor of a new three story building (with no elevator) but we have access to a huge roof deck, up another flight of stairs, with a view of the city.

Our bank is about 1 km away and there are several large shopping centres right about there too. We can walk to everything! There are nice wide sidewalks everywhere too... Maybe we could buy a couple of used bicycles.

The beach promises to be fun as it is almost 10 km long and most of it has a “malecon” boardwalk to enjoy. It also has a few small islands adjacent to the main beach area that we can visit for some excellent snorkeling. We know we will have to brush up on our very limited Spanish again... Hola, dos cervezas por fa vor....

There are also many stores, pubs and restaurants to explore in old town Mazatlan (Centro) with interesting historical buildings and fun places to visit.

And, we really like the idea of being closer to our family and friends in Vancouver as we miss them very much. Maybe they will visit.

But one of the main reasons for choosing Mazatlan is to address some health issues. One of us has experienced lung complications due to the high humidity in the Caribbean and Mazatlan promises to be an improvement in that area. It is dryer (less humid) than the Caribbean and also dryer than other areas that we have visited in Mexico. Hopefully a move there should help to improve asthma and bronchial concerns.

We will miss everything about Grenada, especially all of our new friends, but also look forward to visiting Mazatlan. We wonder where our adventure will take us after this - we suppose that remains to be seen. Maybe a bit of time in Europe or maybe a return to Grenada...?

Salud y felicidad!