Why Mexico — and Jalisco in Particular — Still Has Our Whole Heart

There’s a lot of noise right now about Mexico. We see it in the news, comments on social media, in the questions people ask us, and sometimes in the worried communication from family and friends back home.

And yet – here we are. Still here. Still choosing this every single day. And feeling more certain about that choice, not less.

So this feels like the right moment to write this post- Why Mexico? Why Jalisco? Why here?

The Welcome Is Real

Before we moved, we wondered how we’d be received. Americans living in Mexico is not a new phenomenon – there are more than a million of us here – and we were aware that in some parts of the country, that presence has created real tension. Gentrification, rising rents, cultural displacement — these are legitimate concerns in places like Mexico City, and we don’t dismiss them.

But here at Lake Chapala, in the Jalisco highlands, our experience has been something different. The welcome has been genuine. There is a warmth in this culture that isn’t performance – it’s just how people are with each other, and they extend it to us too.

That doesn’t mean we take it for granted. We are learning Spanish, shop local, participate in community life, and show up as neighbors rather than visitors. We believe that’s the right way to do this. But the generosity we’ve been shown here has been humbling and real.

Jalisco Is a World Unto Itself

People think of Mexico as a single thing, but it is fifty shades of everything – geography, culture, food, tradition, pace of life. And Jalisco may be the most quietly extraordinary state in the country.

This is the birthplace of tequila and mariachi. It holds one of Mexico’s largest and most beautiful lakes. It contains Guadalajara, a sophisticated, vibrant city of nearly five million people that punches far above its weight culturally – world-class museums, incredible food, and fantastic live music offerings. There are beautiful beaches waiting to be explored.  And it contains our little lakeside community, just an easy bus ride from all of that, where the pace is slow and the sunsets over the water are genuinely something.

The festivals alone could fill a year of posts – and honestly, they’ve been filling ours. Carnaval. The Festival del Café, Chocolate y Vino. The Fiestas de San Sebastián. The Sayacas every Sunday in February. These aren’t tourist productions. They are a community celebrating itself, and they have welcomed us in without hesitation.

The Life Here Is Genuinely Good

The quality of daily life here is exceptional, and not just because of what it costs (though the affordability is real and meaningful). It’s the texture of the days themselves.

We walk along the malecón in the evenings. We know our neighbors.  We have friends here now from both the expat community and the local one. We eat extraordinarily well. We have access to healthcare that is affordable and attentive. We feel safe. We feel connected. We feel genuinely at home.

The climate in the Lake Chapala region is famous for a reason — spring-like temperatures year round, no extremes in either direction, sunshine most days. The natural beauty of the lake and the surrounding mountains is something you can never quite get used to. 

What We’d Say to Anyone Watching the Headlines

If you are someone who has been dreaming about this kind of move or thinking of coming for a visit and the current noise is making you hesitate – here is what we’d honestly tell you: the headlines about US-Mexico relations describe a political reality, and that reality is worth paying attention to. But it is not the whole story of what it means to live here.

The Mexican people we encounter every day are not defined by the political moment any more than we are defined by ours. They are generous, funny, proud of their culture, and – in our experience at Lake Chapala – genuinely happy to share it. The country is complex and layered and endlessly surprising, and living inside it rather than looking at it from the outside changes everything about how you understand it.

We came here not running away from something, but toward something – a slower pace, a richer daily life, a community, an adventure. Eight months in, we’ve found all of that and more.

Mexico is not perfect. No place is. But it is extraordinary. And Jalisco, in particular, has given us a life we are still pinching ourselves over.

We’re not leaving anytime soon.