Is it worth it?

motherofburros wrote:

coffeeguy wrote:

Canada_Mike wrote:I suggest Victoria, BC.

According to the expatistan site only about a 40% price premium for Victoria vs. Lakeside but the good news is with grey and drizzle 9 months out of the year you'll likely off yourself before incurring too many years of debt.

Victoria BC receives 27.8 inches of annual rain.

Less than the average annual at Chapala?

Yes. And it also has less rainfall than any other place in Canada.
Burnaby, which is an area of Vancouver, or Coquitlam or North Vancouver have a LOT of rain. That is because they are all at the bottom of mountains. Cloud hits top of mountain and DUMPS. Victoria does not have that problem.
I would also say that houses in Victoria are a damn sight more expensive than just a 40% hike over Chapala's.

Rainfall inches don't count so much. Gray is Grey. (14 years in Seattle before moving here.)

Done with that.

Seattle climate is not Victoria even though they're reasonably close. The Olympic peninsula affects Seattle's weather.

What is important is how the rain fall. Mobile receives more rain than Portland but in Portland you get that drizzly wet weather and in Mobile you get downpours and it is over.. Give me the downpours any day..

Absolutely, because after the downpours the sun comes out and the sky is blue again.

Drizzle may not amount to much in terms of inches but the constant gray (and drizzle) is hell. Four years in southern OR were enough for me! Done with that too!

It isn't entirely about the inches of rainfall. As Coffeeguy said "9 months of gray and drizzle". That would be a NO, for me.

And coffeeguy is wrong.

ferret wrote:And coffeeguy is wrong.

And, what is coffeeguy wrong about?

"9 months of gray and drizzle". It's more like four and coincides with "winter" which hardly ever happens there. And that's a good thing since neither Vancouver nor Victoria own snowplows. So, November to February... although I have walked in sunshine under cherry blossoms there (in Victoria and Vancouver)in February.

Have taken a grand total of one trip to Vancouver. Great town. We went in September. The told us they hadn't seen the sun in months before that day, but then, the next day it was hotter'n hell and the only coolth we experienced was on the boat going to the Buchart gardens.
So........I withhold judgment about the weather, but considering the uptick in prices there, it's a non-issue for me.

Non-issue for me also. Even four months of grey and drizzle is too much for me.

Me too. At the time, I thought it was great to not have to shovel snow though, so it all depends on your perspective and experience. Lived in Vancouver for '84 and '85.

Southern Vancouver Island has a unique geo climate. Much milder than anywhere else in Canada. Much of the area and the islands are below the 49th parallel. Salt Spring Island is nice, but it may be getting crowded. Not a good thing on an island!

My stepson Eric and his wife live on Saltspring Island.

Lived in Seattle for many years, have spent lots of time in Vancouver and on Victoria Island, lived in the so-called "banana belt" area of Port Angeles/Sequim and spend chunks of each summer in Anacortes (also supposedly in that belt) every summer and...the weather sucks in all of them unless you value overall mildness so much that constant cloud cover, fog until noon in the height of summer in island areas, biting wind and grey drizzle for at least 9 months a year don't phase you.

As for cost of living, Seattle is right up there with Northern California now but add at least 30% for Vancouver or the nicer parts of Victoria Island. A beautiful part of the world from 4th of July until Labor Day to be sure, but if you can afford to live there you can afford to live almost anywhere - including many places where "party sunny' doesn't mean catching a glimpse of sunlight for a couple of hours.

FYI it is Vancouver island not Victoria island.

Getting back on topic (i.e. from weather to crime) in ~2 days this new Lake Chapala crime watch group has grown to 659 members and counting. If you've been here any length of time you'll know a lot of the people posting. Of particular interest to me is a thread started by my doctor, who has had her house in La Floresta broken into two times by criminals whose ranks include local police. I don't know how much good this group will do in combatting crime but it certainly seems worth checking in on for those who live here as well as prospective visitors.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChapalaCrimeWatch/

It will take more than reading facebook to have any results, meanwhile you can scare yourself reading the rumors.

brigitte wrote:It will take more than reading facebook to have any results, meanwhile you can scare yourself reading the rumors.

While it's anyone's guess how much good this new Facebook group will do, it is already doing more to inform people here about crime than the very few other resources out there ( this board's crime section and our fearless moderator and host's willingness to have it being perhaps first and foremost).

Already on that group one sees local officials interacting with some of the posters - a tacit acknowledgment that social media is just too much of a force to be ignored even if sweeping everything under the rug remains the standard M.O. for local police and government officials. Getting the info out there surely helps chip away at the impunity that local criminals and officials otherwise take for granted.

I looked at that site on FB this morning and looks like el gordo and the liaison woman have joined the site as well. That will bump up the entertainment factor while the security factor remains the same.

Interestingly, Spencer and Maincoons are members and very vocal and aggressive speaking in truths regarding our fine law enforcement and legal system.

The local English speaking cop that joined and has posted the usual dribble that we've seen from them over so many years - we must all work together to insure our safety in the community bla bla bla. I believe they have a printout on that because it sounds word for word what was spoken at the rally in the Ajijic plaza by the then Chief who was given cell phones by the real estate lady and we were given stickers for our fridges with all their phone numbers - that didn't work.

On the up side, it's interesting to see the photos of perps and hear people relate their sad stories of being robbed, almost being robbed, break ins, suspicions people, confrontations, and so on.

I have advocated this before. In Brigitte's Chiapas neighbourhood she has posted that they ring bells if any trouble is spotted, and the neighbours all turn out to help. I say, find a wholesale source for a case of those emergency air powered boat horns. Sell them at cost to your neighbours. At 120 decibels they actually hurt your ears, can be heard a mile away. They are good for hiking too. The universal code is one toot, for "where are you", two toots for "I am here", and three toots for a distress call. Criminals don't like bright lights, angry crowds, or noise.
My ex gardener, now amigo and sometime gardener was trying to talk me into buying a shotgun and he gave me instructions on how to fill the shells with rock salt. Loud, painful, but not deadly. I think he uses this because people keep stealing his vacas.

Funny enough in our house, I give one toot, and Ms. Chillin runs away, holding her nose.

At least the crime section on this board permits a poster to post.. The new crime board has to 'approve' submissions.. like for 8 hours or maybe not at all, re: suggesting people go to LCS this Wed when Ministero Publico is there, en masse, to demonstrate concern about the current crime wave. Hmmmm...so the FB page is REALLY about Admin micro-managing her agenda. Sure - edit crazy bongo posters - after the fact. Oh yeah -  'filtering posts to only include rumor, suspect, how to carry your purse & other run amuck machinations. But PLEASE don't suggest people come together to empower each other, confront the MP or have face-to-face support for victims, neighbors or relieve tensions thru sharing..  Most assuredly, this could be made an EVENT on Gringos, outside the sphere of this FB page board..

Opportunity to bring together a % of 700 concerned residents, but nah, political correctness more important .. FTS