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Essentially you want to be able to have almost everything that you have here. Hawaii would be perfect but it's way too expensive...NZ seems too far incase one decides to invite friends, come back to the US once a month or so.
where would you go? Who knows, maybe in 5 years I'll come back here, read this and pack my bags :).
Right now I have to worry about paying for my school...;)
I have a new goal in my life:
To live in a tropical land -
no, not paradise.
But to survive;
to grow my own food, and
barter what I don't consume,
to build a house from
whatever nature provides,
to sail a small boat
far enough to spear fresh fish,
to learn the intense pain and
the immense pleasure of living -
more than the humdrum existence
of boring, predictible, contemporary life.
personally, i cant wait!
I don't think there are many ways into New Zealand now but this is definitely one of them. Unfortunately neither I nor my better half are scientists :o(
do you think Chavez will pull a Castro and confiscate things? Will that fly in Venezuela?
I would expatriate there in an instant.
Ah Belize, "Mother Nature's Best-kept Secret," as one of the tourism board slogans goes.
As I write this, I'm around 5 miles/8 kilometres away & between both the Guatemalan border & San Ignacio, slipping a cool Belikin, the local beer.
I could go on & on, but long story short:
> hiking, cheap, nightlife somewhere near, internet connection, electricity, personal
> and property safety, political stability
Lots!; depends on what you want to buy, just about everything is imported; only if you're in/near a "major" population centre; sometimes good, often spotty, occasionally unavailable for periods of up to a week*; "BEL" doesn't stand for "Belize Electricity, Limited", it stands for "Berry Expensive 'Lectricity"; there's the usual urban crime, and then there's bandits jumping out of the bushes in fatigues with M16s shooting at you & raping your loved ones, or, in one famous incident, holding up every vehicle, including school buses loaded with passengers, that came across the "bandit checkpoint" on the highway - for several hours AND they got away!; stable as a rock so far - never had a civil war.
As for hurricanes, the last several years have been rather rough - Mitch ('98), Keith ('00) & Iris ('01) - with a few mean tropical storms for good measure, but generally Belize fairs better than Florida.
*Mid-November, the ARCOS fibre optic ring around the Caribbean was cut near Cancun by a ship's anchor. No problem - traffic routed itself south, away from the cut. Near the end of the month, the (broken) ring was cut again, again by anchor but near Columbia. Repairs weren't complete on the Cancun break yet, leaving Central America sitting on a now-isolated segment of the ring.
Proving Murphy's Law is real, a THIRD break [new.channel5belize.com] occurred in mid-December. Bye-bye 'net, once again...
To be fair, none of this was the fault of the local carrier, BTL (BTL doesn't stand for "Belize Telecommuncations, Limited", it stands for "Betta Try Later"), but they're still not the greatest. In November '03, "experts" from the States had to be flown in to help fix a anti-spam filter that was working TOO good [new.channel5belize.com], and resulted in BTL being blacklisted by AOL, MSN & Yahoo.
Ah, paradisic life in the Third World...
How long have you been there? Do you stay there year round? Where do you live? Island? Coast? Jungle?
he's probably drunk by now :). Give him an hour or so
I'll retire to Canada, with a house I've built myself on a lake in Ontario. Not much better. But in the winter time, I'll keep searching for that magic place.
Ireland, me homeland, is amazing, in the summer. Quite the opposite in the winter... so that's out.
I'm trying Brazil this winter. I'll report back ... in a long time.
If I could, I'd like to retire in Ireland. I'm not Irish, but there's something about that bit of land rising out of the sea that has always interested me.
As it stands I'll probably end up affording a cardboard box instead.
In consequence, I want my old age to be as it is now: living where I want to be, doing what I want to do, with the people I want to be with.
Now HE on the other hand is EXACTLY where he wanted to be when he retired. *double sigh*
Thinking about where to retire, and all I can think of is that I feel like a retired person. In one month I am off to Argentina for an indefinite amount of time. It's the third time I go there, and life is just spectacular.
They have excellent infrastructure (yes, broadband too), exquisite food, exotic jungles in the north (Iguazu falls) and swiss like mountains in the south (Bariloche).
But the beauty of all is that everything with total lavish living is no more than $1k usd per month.
I can't wait to go back!
Retirement is fine if you got some meaningful endevour that makes a difference for other people, like charity work. So what did I do? I got involved in the net (I'm not a tech guy) and am trying to crack it so that I can retire again...
…if you earn enough money. Nowadays, life is hard here. But Bariloche and the Iguazú Falls do are beautiful places. Anyway, perhaps I will retire in the place I was born (I live in a big city now), on the Atlantic coast, where there are various spectacular resorts. Villa Gesell and Pinamar are my favorite (it’s high season now).
In the spirit of the subject of this thread - "provided you have the resources" - sure, it's available. But...
The cost! I can't afford the arm-and-leg it would cost (based on hearsay I've heard). And I'm not so sure I, personally, would be able to get a satellite hookup. As far as I'm aware, the only folks with satellite are Americans who part-time live in or maintain an address back in the States, and service seems to be exclusively provided by DIRECWAY (formerly DirecPC).
(So what I'm implying here is that only Americans have the ability to get a sat-hookup, based on the fact that they "live" in the same country as the satellite ISP.)
> How long have you been there? Do you stay there year round? Where do you live? Island? Coast? Jungle?
I'm not here year-around, but have been staying here for months at a time for the last seven years. When here, I live about 5 miles/8 klicks from the Guatemalan border, and while the location could hardly be called "jungle," I am nestled in a rich, green blanket of nature.
> he's probably drunk by now :). Give him an hour or so
Hahaha...!
philbish, which caye are you going to?
They have the most annoying accent ever as far as I'm concerned. No way :)
I like having a driveway that's off the beaten path, and long enough that when I see someone driving down it I know they're coming to see me.
the accent is enough to make me turn the TV off. They probably feel the same about ours but I can deal with it.
They have the most annoying accent ever as far as I'm concerned. No way :)
the various north american accents don't really annoy me .. just the southern ones .. and especially the young people (all over) that punctuate every two words in their sentence with the word 'like' .. i find it 'like so annoying'!
I also spent a holiday (OK vacation for the Shermans :o) in Goa, India. That was a great place and there are now lots of westerners settling there.
It's worth noting that Barbados is recognised as probably the most expensive destination for folk from the UK while Goa is the cheapest (and I have both T shirts!)
Good from the spring onwards but would like somewhere warmer for the winter.
sandor, I'm southern north american and I like find those tv generated fake southern accents annoying too. :)
[edited by: lawman at 5:43 am (utc) on Jan. 12, 2005]
p.s. where has WALKMAN disappeared to
