Sabado! - Stephane

It is not Saturday, it's actually Tuesday, I think... who cares...

We have been here in Puerto Vallarta since Sunday, at one of my favorite little resorts. It's not really a resort, more like a small condo complex. We have been here several times before - it's got a homey feel and is not pretentious or fancy, but it's pretty, clean, well run, and is in a nice part of PV with great views and it's a quick bus ride to downtown. Though it's a bitch of a walk home from the bus stop back up the hill in the heat of the day ( I won't digress into writing about my sweating issue).

Yesterday, while walking around town looking for a kitchen articles store (I miss my coffee machine) we walked by a bar called “The Salty Caesar.” We figured it was owned by Canadians, so we stopped for a chat.

There we met the John and Karen from Alberta. They weren't open yet for the season but they took time to chat with us and offered us each a drink on the house. Nice folks. They will have karaoke nights and they may do open mic nights too so we will definitely go back and check it out. John said they have been coming to PV for 30 years so they are good people to get to know.

I thought it interesting that they have been coming here for so long, they own a business here, yet they have never bought a home here. They still rent. John said, " you can buy anything you want here in PV if you have the money, you just can't sell it! "

Corrie and I have often talked about buying here, (or anywhere we spend time in the warm sunny South), so we will probably get out one day soon with a realtor and check out some real estate - you never know when a great opportunity might arise. I am open to anything. Since we have experience running a bed and breakfast back home in Oliver, we could do that here too if the right property came up. It would be kind of nice to pack up a car and have a place to drive to every year – and especially nice to have our own stuff here….like a milk frother and a decent vegetable peeler - and not have to travel by plane with 200 lbs of luggage like we did this time. Normally we travel very light, with just a carry-on bag. In fact, I have often scoffed at people with 6 suitcases on a buggy at the airline check in counter….but since we are here 6 months, Corrie insisted on bringing along 1 small carry-on of clothes and 2 HUGE suitcases of cooking gear! And since we plan on making music while we are here – I insisted on bring my guitar.

I guess I will be more understanding from now on. And NO, United did NOT break my guitar!

Smelly Fruit and Sweat - I am in Paradise!

If you know me, you know I enjoy food, and by association – markets. I have visited markets in Nepal, India, Thailand, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, France, Hondurous, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Italy, Morocco, Kenya, Ghana, and of course Mexico. I love the colour, the aromas and the mayhem. I especially love to try things I have never eaten before. YOU CAN FIND SOME PRETTY COOL THINGS IN MARKETS.

Yesterday we bought our groceries at the market in the Zapata area of Puerta Vallarta. There, in one open air stall you can find every sort of fruit and vegetable imaginable. Some pretty funky looking ones too: take the custard apple – or sugar apple – officially known as the Annona squamosal. It looks like a cross between a brain and a pear…no, maybe a cauliflower and a pear…better yet, they look like a cross between an artichoke and an apple!

This amazing little fruit is not only deliciously sweet and, well, custardy; it is both poisonous and incredibly good for you (depending on which website you choose to visit). It’s texture (like custard of course) may not appeal to all people, but no one can resist the lure of spitting out it’s huge, soft, oblong seeds. It should be an official sport! I don’t recommend eating the seeds, but the oil from them is effective at killing head lice…just don’t get it in your eyes as it can blind you.


Another weird one is Durian – famous for its raw sewage smell. This fruit smells so bad that some hotels in Southeast Asia ban the fruit as its odour can linger for days. I cannot imagine WHY people decided to eat this particular fruit. Did someone really wander through the jungle one day and see this spiky ball laying on the ground, take a whiff and say, “WOW, this smells horrible! I wonder what this tastes like?" Well whoever was brave enough to get past the odour (I cannot) they were rewarded with a flesh that tastes like a rich almond custard.

Anyway, markets are an encyclopedia of food. I could go every day and not get bored. Stephane, on the other hand, thinks the whole market experience is like, well, work. Not the kind of work he used to get paid to do, the kind of work where he has to carry bags and bags of heavy fruits and vegetables in 32 degree Celsius heat with 100% humidity. Sweat running down his face, dripping off his nose while I am giddily running from stall to stall practicing my Spanish by asking for un pollo entero sin los patas (a whole chicken without the feet).

I have often read that people who retire to Mexico (or other tropical places) often lose weight and get healthy. The reasons are obvious. Yesterday it took us an hour to walk to the market, and another hour walking in search of a milk frother (not to be found), all the while sweating buckets. For breakfast we eat fresh papaya and desert is pineapple so sweet you'd think you were eating candy. For lunch we shared a gigantic aguacate (avocado) that was so ripe it was nutty and buttery...squeeze on a little lime....

Fresh sea air, lots of exercise, fresh fruits and vegetables, and of course lots of fish. Who wouldn't lose weight and become healthier?

Tomorrow we are off to the fish market in search of atun. I am thinking rare, seared on the BBQ, served with rice and a fresh papaya and roasted pepper salsa.

Come to think of it, fish smells icky yet I eat it and love the taste...maybe I will try Durian.

Am I Sweating Too Much to Call This Retirement? - Stephane

12 days into retirement and I have spent most of my time cleaning out the house we sold, moving our stuff to storage, and getting the basement suite in the house ready for this winter’s tenant.

Certainly I have been working harder physically than when I was working at my job. When we were loading the moving truck my friend shouted “Hey! I have never seen Steph sweat before!”

I will miss some parts of my job, mostly the interactions with the people, work colleagues, and customers that I have gotten to appreciate through the years, but I definitely won’t miss the business travel, conventions, and events with crowds, and I especially won’t miss EXCEL spread sheets!

I have gone from 22 years working a job that I was pretty good at, and where I was well appreciated and successful, to doing very minor renos and household jobs that, frankly, I suck at… so I feel a little inadequate and incompetent. This has been tough.
One of the perks of my job that I will miss is the travel to Montreal on the company dime so I could see my kids and family while I was there for business. I might not see them in person as much from now on. That will be tough too.

We still have a couple of things to do before we leave for Mexico on Saturday… and that’s when real retirement starts; the long vacation in the sun part...the part where I lay by the pool. I am REAL GOOD at that so I am looking forward to that part of retirement for the next 6 months. When we come back from Mexico we will continue renovating the rest of the house and the one thing I am really looking forward to is the DEMOLITON !! woo hoo! I am good at that too!

Over the next 6 months there are several things I want to do, like scouting around visiting Mexico with Corrie, outdoor activities, play a lot more music, and learning songs, reading, and improving my swimming. I also want to be serious about learning Spanish because I have always wanted to learn another language. Maybe I will even discover other interests that I have never thought of.
I worked hard this week, yet I know I am “retired” because on Tuesday I got up and picked up the newspaper to read…

Conchas Chinas Here We Come

The definition of retirement is "the action or fact of leaving one's job and ceasing to work."

I guess if that is true, then Steph's retirement was very short lived as I have kept him very busy "working". 3 days after his last day at work we took possession of a house we bought. Originally we were going to sell our house and invest the money, and go travel with no specific return date, but we decided that since the real estate market here is doing very well, we would be better off buying a house in original condition that we could rent up and down while we go travel, then when we return, renovate it and sell it for profit. I have successfully done this 10 times in the past, and while it is a heck of a lot of work for a few months, it is generally lucrative - providing enough money to live on, a nice place to live for a year or two, and lots of time after the work is done to travel and have fun.

The house we bought is a diamond in the rough. By that I mean it is the ugliest house on the block, in a great location. It has a beautiful lake view - but that is about all it has going for it. The challenges will be many - to turn this house into something great - but I will have fun doing it.

Since taking possession of the house 8 days ago we have turned a really ugly basement into a nice little suite that we have rented out furnished to someone coming to Oliver for the winter. We have worked hard painting, replacing sinks, toilets, and taps, and scrubbing years of grime off baseboards, but the work is now done, the place looks great, and we are eagerly anticipating our flight on Saturday morning.

In 36 hours we will be be heading to Conchas Chinas - one of our favorite places to hang out in Mexico. It is a district of Mexican villas built on the hillside overlooking Puerto Vallarta and the Bay of Banderas. It is called the "Beverly Hills" of Puerto Vallarta due to its many multi million dollar villas owned by celebrities and politicians. We have 4 weeks booked there in a lovely Mexican style vacation club. We love the big wooden shudders you can throw open in the morning and we love watching the sunsets from the balcony.

Just down the hill there is a special beach where very few tourists go, where the water is a lovely dark turquoise and the sand is soft. We often have the beach to ourselves.

Conchas Chinas is romantic. There is just something about the dramatic hillside, the stunning views, the cackle of birds in the surrounding jungle, the sunsets that take your breath away. These four weeks are for us. To do nothing but relax. To sleep, eat, and make love. To lay by the small pool, and read books. To sit in the hot tub and watch the stars come out and to walk to the beach hand in hand. Every body needs 4 weeks in Conchas Chinas.

Conchas Chinas is a quiet, tranquil respite from the hustle, bustle go go life style we all tend to lead in Canada. Conchas Chinas is where we will learn to slow down, let go of the stuff that bogs us down. Conchas Chinas is where we will remember how to wake up slowly, walk slowly, eat slowly. Conchas Chinas is where we will remember how to take time to smell the flowers and see the stars.

Conchas Chinas is the perfect place to stop working, and start retirement.

Day 2 - Stephane

Unlike my wife Corrie, who has retired many times, today was the first day of my first retirement. Surprisingly, it was quite an agonizing process to get to the place where I could finally DECIDE to retire.

You would think it would be easy to make that decision. You would think that you would just look at your savings, (your net worth) think about what kind of retirement you can afford, and then just quit your job, get on a plane and hit the beach! Well it certainly was not like that for me. It took months and months of agonizing back and forth discussions, analysis, weighing out the pros and the cons, and all kinds of exhausting thoughts that mostly brought me to paralysis by analysis. I could go on and on about this, but, I will tell you what finally tipped the scale for me to finally be able to make my decision.

Although thinking and talking did help, and was important, I just could not take the plunge. I have to give credit to the guys who wrote the Freakanomics books. I read their books and they also have a podcast that I listen to once in a while. In one of them they discussed the process of quitting. It was fascinating. Without going in to all the details, what helped me was the result of a study they did about the process of deciding to quit. Quit your job; quit a relationship; any important thing. Basically, the result of the extensive study (you can look it up) was that the people who flipped a coin to make that decision were as happy or happier than the people who went through a thorough process to come to their decision. Basically it was a 50-50 split! So why agonize? Another conclusion of the study was that quitting is fun!

So, Day 1, as Corrie said, was just like any other Saturday, but the difference is, if I want, every day from now on can be like Saturday!

Day One of Retirement

Day one of retirement looked pretty much like any other Saturday: Sleep in, drink two lattes while curled up on the couch solving the world's problems in our housecoats, and reading by the fire, the National Post, The Globe and Mail, and my personal favorite, The Oliver Chronicle.


The Chronicle is a breath of fresh air. The unexpected delight of moving to a small town. The Chronicle makes me feel like I live in "the good ole days." The Chronicle makes me feel good. Unlike the national newspapers, which, well, make me feel scared. Take today's Post for example: a two page spread on what we are all most likely to die of: nuclear war, an asteroid, a pandemic, or annihilation by artificial intelligence. Contrast that to the Chronicle where the most negative thing is found in the Fruit and Vine section where someone writes that they want to give a "truck load of sour grapes" to someone for speeding down main street. Gosh I love small towns.


After reading the Chronicle in its entirety, I flip past the national doom and gloom to the Financial Post section. Now that's a real blast! Truly - it makes me giggle! Each week they profile an anonymous couple hoping to retire. They evaluate the couples income, assets, liabilities, and retirement goals, and give stars (out of five) for their retirement readiness. Every week, people with millions of dollars get 2, 3 and 4 stars - and every week Steph says, "Oh man, we are so screwed!"


The thing is, what all these financial analysts fail to take into consideration, is that one does not necessarily need to leave their entire net worth to their children when they die. They could, in fact, spend the money they saved for retirement - on - say - THEIR RETIREMENT!!


In fact, if you plan on spending your savings, rather than giving it all away to your children, you need less than you think, or at least that is what the handy dandy retirement spread sheet I designed tells me. I suspect there is a 25% probability that I programmed the spreadsheet wrong, and we really ARE going to run out of money, but as my good friend Leann says, "I choose to believe" we have enough money to not only retire, but to live an exciting life full of luxury, travel, adventure, and altruism - all on less than a million dollars.

Sorry kids, there will be no big inheritance, and according to my spreadsheet, if I live a day longer than 91 I am screwed!