Hard to believe it, but it has been 20 years since we first moved to Puerto Morelos. Having purchased Alma Libre Bookstore in March of 2002, we went back home to Calgary, AB Canada and told our family and friends that we were quitting our media jobs, selling our house and most of our stuff and moving to Mexico! Our friends told us it was a great idea, but we’re sure they thought we were a little crazy. (Click any photo for a full screen view)
Our first year owning Alma Libre Bookstore.
But we can tell you, after 20 years of being here, it was the best decision we have ever made.
Researching “how to move to Mexico” was a lot harder 20 years ago. There was little information online. We read everything book we could find and searched online. We tracked down anyone we could find that had moved to Mexico, and had a business. Can it be done? How did you do it?
We quickly realized that the only way to transport us, our stuff, and a good supply of books to restock the bookstore was to drive to Puerto Morelos. It’s no easy feat. It’s a minimum 6200 km (almost 4000 miles) journey. We used MapQuest and paper maps from CAA/AAA to make a general route and tweaked it with treasured advice we received from people who had done the drive before.
There was no way we were going to fit all that stuff in a car, and that many days on the road seemed quite daunting, so we bought a truck and a travel trailer to make the trip. We had never pulled a trailer before, so we spent a few hours practicing driving (and more importantly, backing up) in a parking lot near our house.
Eventually, it came time to load up. And load up again. And load up yet again. We clearly had too much stuff for even a truck and trailer.
Just to give you an idea of what a different time it was 20 years ago, here are a few things that were our highest priority to pack:
-2 Pentium III Desktop Computers
-A Flatbed Scanner
-3 big boxes of VHS tapes & VCR
-Telephones (not mobile. The kind that plugged into the wall)
-Answering machine
…and the list goes on. Now all those things basically fit in your pocket.
The drive down was most interesting. The object was to drive all 6200 kms without backing up. We did okay for a while. Crossing the Mexican border was easier than expected.
Unfortunately, we ran into the tail end of a hurricane in the Yucatan Peninsula. Isidore was her name, and she flooded out several roads and villages. We spent a lot of time and gas trying to find a route around the floods. We drove through one village where the residents had lovingly restored the road with sandbags and guided us over them, one at a time, to get us to our new home. It was a humbling and moving experience.
We also got hopelessly stuck in the sand once. We would still be stuck there I think if it were not for an actual dump-truck load of guys who stopped, and with incredible manual pushing power, shoved us out of the sand and back onto the road. (They drove off before we could even thank them.)
When we finally arrived in Puerto Morelos, we had doubts that the bookstore we had purchased would still be there. We also couldn’t get in touch with the woman we had rented a duplex from, so we weren’t sure we had a place to live… But all worked out just had we had planned. Whew.
Final mileage was 6875 kms (4272 miles).
Puerto Morelos has grown and changed a lot since we arrived. At that time there were only a few restaurants, some of which are still here. (Trivia question: Which restaurants are still in the same place with the same owners 20 years later? I can only think of 3)
How small was Puerto Morelos when we arrived? When you asked someone for their phone number they would just tell you 3 digits because everyone in town had the same first 4 numbers. We were 713, which means we had the 713th phone line in town. Our landlord at the bookstore was 002. That is how small the town was and how few phone lines there were. Cell phones hadn’t caught on yet and there was only dial-up internet. Puerto Morelos did have its own “cable tv” company, which used to be housed in a palapa on Ninos Heroes.
Some of the streets were dirt. Some were not as good as that. There was no bank, no real grocery store and the post office was the living room of a resident’s house.
The Colonia at that time was just a few blocks of houses around the main town square, the Pemex station and of course, Shanghai Pizza. It wasn’t until about 2007 when Villas Morelos Uno was built that the town really started to grow.
We purchased Casa de los Viajeros in the spring of 2003. It was a 3 bedroom/3 bath house which we converted into a duplex, and later into a 4-plex in 2009.
After 15 years of owning and operating Alma Libre Bookstore, we decided to sell it in 2017. You can read more about that here. We ended up doing the big round-trip drive to and from Puerto Morelos 13 more times. By varying our route each year, we saw an incredible amount of the US and Mexico. There is a lot more to Mexico than beautiful beaches!
Today we drive a lot less and focus on our vacation rentals and we travel as much as possible, now mostly using airplanes. (Driving to Europe would be tough.) We are happy to have so many great memories of our last 20 years in Puerto Morelos and we look forward to many more.
