- Hello Tangerines from Queretaro, Mexico.
- As many of you know by now,
we recently moved to this city just two months ago.
And since then we've bumped into a lot of people,
a shocking amount of people that are like,
"Hey, I'm moving here because of you guys."
Or we get comments and emails
saying something along those lines.
So obviously we've said a lot of great things
about this city.
We love it enough to have signed a one-year lease here.
And this is only the second time
that's ever happened in Mexico.
So we thought it's only fitting if we balance it out
a little bit and tell you some of the reasons
why you should not move to Queretaro Mexico.
- One reason you might not want to move to Queretaro
is if you're looking for a really low cost of living city
- So in Mexico, the cost of living
is definitely going to be lower
than the US and Canada as a whole.
But this city in particular is above average.
And that kind of correlates to the wealth of the city,
the wealthier, the city, the more wealth that's here,
the higher the prices are gonna be.
And that is the case throughout the city.
It's still, I think like 50 to 75%
of the cost of where we were living
before coming to Mexico in Phoenix, Arizona.
- Yeah, I'd probably say probably 50%.
- Yeah well, I mean, it just depends on the area
because there are some extremely wealthy areas
with extremely nice restaurants
and very, very high prices.
If you're looking for like the cheapest cities
that we've ever seen, Orizaba, Veracruz is one,
San Cristobal De Las Casas in Chiapas is one,
but here, nope.
You should also not move to Queretaro
if you don't do well at altitude.
To me, it honestly doesn't even seem
like we are that high up,
but it's actually it's 6,000 feet of elevation
and we're surrounded in the mountains and everything.
We're fine with it because we've been working
our way up in elevation throughout Mexico,
because we've been in central Mexico for a little bit now.
Six, seven, eight months prior to this.
But if you get altitude sickness,
then this might not be the place for you.
- Another reason why the city
might not be right for you is if you're looking
for a place with a huge expat population,
like San Miguel de Allende or Ajijic
or Puerto Vallarta, place like that.
- Yeah, I mean, that's not to say
that there aren't expats here,
there are definitely lots of foreigners,
but you really have to make a conscious effort
to meet up with those people.
If you're looking to have the familiarity of somebody
that understands your culture and speaks your language,
whereas in those places like you were talking about
San Miguel de Allende or Ajijic
they're much smaller
and there's a huge concentration of expats.
So you bump into people that are,
from the US, Canada, everywhere.
- Like here we'll go to a big restaurant.
Like we're here in Alamos right now.
We like a place called Almozero.
This place will be packed.
We'll go in there and we will be the only gringos.
So in a place like this, like Maddie was saying,
you really have to reach out to those people
if you want to meet up with them.
- But if you're looking for cats, they're everywhere.
It's a cat.
Oh my God, it's a cat.
(laughs)
They really are everywhere.
The next reason you might not like Queretaro is the traffic.
And while the traffic during rush hour
and heavy traffic times is not as bad
as somewhere like Mexico City,
it still does have rush hour.
And I mean, to me, it's not that bad.
It doesn't take you double or triple the amount of time
to get a place as regular when there's no traffic,
but it still does exist.
I do wish you the best of luck
if you're trying to go somewhere,
that has no traffic though.
Cause that's gonna be really hard to find.
- Yeah, you gonna have to go to a small town,
but you might be like, "You guys are liars.
I see the streets right here and there's no cars on it."
Well, we're back in a quiet neighborhood.
- Yes, this is not a main road by any means.
- One reason why you might not want to move to Queretaro
is the high radiation aquifer.
I have to say something here though,
I was only told this, I haven't researched this at all.
So that might be something you want to look into
if you're considering Queretaro as a place to move or visit.
- What I can say for an almost absolute fact
is that Queretaro also has really, really hard water,
which means it dries out your skin and your hair.
I'm constantly applying lotion to my very, very ashy skin.
And I know this for an almost fact
because I grew up in Phoenix
and that also is a city with really hard water,
really mineralized water.
- Another huge consideration
when moving somewhere is the weather.
- Yeah, that was actually what was the biggest deal breaker
for us that made us leave the Riviera Maya.
One of was just the weather.
But speaking of the Riviera Maya,
that actually is some people's dream (laughs).
- Yeah like moving to a beach destination
with hot weather year round.
Well here, you are not gonna get a beach
and you're not gonna get hot weather year out.
- Yeah, it does get hot in the summer.
And to me, it's perfect.
The amount of heat it gets into maybe like the high 80s
as the absolute highest,
but it cools down into the 50s at night.
So it's totally tolerable.
You can open up your doors and windows
and get the fresh breeze and everything.
But it is pretty dry.
So that can be a deal breaker for some people
that it dries out your skin and your lungs
and everything else.
And in addition to it being so dry,
hardly any humidity at all, which is just how I like it but.
- Yeah so far I've thought the weather was amazing.
But if anything, it's gonna be too cold for me here.
- Could be, we haven't gotten to a winter yet.
So I don't know how those cold temperatures are.
We've been told that for about two or three weeks
out of the year you need a little space heater.
So that to me, it doesn't say that it's too bad,
but it could be, I don't know.
What I was gonna say though, is with it being very dry.
When we got here, the city was very crispy.
It was not as green and beautiful
and lush as it is right now.
And with that came lots of dust
because it was super, super windy.
So that could be an even bigger deal breaker
for some people, especially those with allergies
or asthma or something.
- And you've been dealing with this.
You haven't had allergies in ages.
But you've been sneezing like crazy lately.
- When the wind picks up all that dust and stuff
and the pollen and everything else,
it can aggravate the allergies.
So that's a huge consideration you might want to know about.
Yet another potential big downside about Queretaro
is if you're looking for a sense of community,
this might not be the place for you.
Given that it is a pretty big city.
- Over a million people.
- Yeah, you're not gonna have the like small-town,
community vibe that you would have in small towns.
(laughs)
We actually heard from some people
that this can be kind of a clique-ish city.
Like you might have difficulty
breaking into various social circles and stuff,
but I haven't really felt that at all,
have you? - Yeah.
To be honest, I think our neighbors are super friendly.
I think there is no other place in Mexico
where I've made so many friends so quickly
and felt like I fit in so quickly as I have here.
- And that people just like welcome us with open arms.
Like, "Oh, you're new in the city.
Well here, let me tell you some recommendations.
I can take you here."
Or like, "Hey, do you need a truck for anything
I can offer that up to you."
Everybody has been like that super friendly, super amazing.
Except I don't know what we're doing here right now
with all this that we're telling you,
because I'm pretty sure we're supposed
to be playing devil's advocate right now.
- Oh yeah, that's right.
- And explaining why you shouldn't live in Queretaro.
And we're failing at that horribly
because, well, we really liked it here so.
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- Another reason why you might not want to move to Queretaro
is it can feel exclusive at times.
There's a ton of gated communities here.
There's all kinds of country clubs and things like that.
Special private clubs.
So you might feel like you're out of the loop.
- Or at the very least that there's a lot of parts
of the city that you're not gonna ever get to see,
unless you know someone inside of those complexes.
Places that you can't go unless you have a pass
or that kind of thing.
Another reason Queretaro might not be the city for you
is if you're looking for a very casual place to live.
As in you wanna wear shorts and T-shirts
and flip flops everywhere,
like a beach destination would be
an obvious example of that.
Here I feel like people are much more focused
on dressing nice, dressing classy,
probably because it is a wealthier city.
So generally people are focused on wearing nicer clothes,
often nicer brands too.
So whenever I go out and just like a T-shirt and shorts,
I do feel a little under dressed,
especially depending on the type of restaurants
that we wanna go to.
- Yet another reason Queretaro
might not be the right city for you
is if you're not willing to learn some Spanish.
If you go around the city,
you're gonna see Spanish everywhere.
You're not gonna see English menus in restaurants
and everyone you hear,
or almost everyone is going to be speaking Spanish.
If you want to find English,
there are a lot of English speakers here,
but you really have to ask,
you really have to go looking for it.
So if you would like to learn some Spanish,
our favorite program to do that is called Rocket Languages.
It's an awesome course, super thorough,
and the best value for your money course that we've seen.
If you'd like to check that out,
you can go to TangerineSpanish.com.
That's our affiliate link.
It will take you right to their website
and that's TangerineSpanish.com.
And I almost forgot to mention that this weekend
they're running their independence day sale.
So it's even a better than it normally is.
It's only for the first 1000 courses sold
and it's this weekend only.
So if you want to check it out, TangerineSpanish.com.
- Queretaro also might not be the right city for you
if you're looking for somewhere
that is super, super 100% walkable.
Again, with the big city thing,
it's very hard for a place that's a huge city
to be walkable.
There are some neighborhoods that are more so than others,
but as a whole,
I think you're basically going to either need a bike
or to utilize Uber a lot, public transportation,
or even have a car, it's not very walkable outside
of those pockets that do have a lot in them
like historic center or...
- Yeah, that's a great place
because you not only have nice sidewalks,
but there's a lot of stuff close in proximity
that it is in walking distance.
- Exactly.
- Maddie just mentioned utilizing Uber.
And while we do appreciate that Queretaro actually has Uber,
about half the cities we've been to Mexico, do not.
They take a long time to pick you up here.
They cancel all the time and we really have to like account
for 15 minutes for them just to pick us up
if we wanna use Uber here.
- That's even more of a downside
if you're like, "Oh, I want a place that's 100% walkable"
or, "Oh, I don't have to worry. I'll just take Uber."
You actually might need to get a car here
because it can be super inconvenient.
And you can't really plan your life around that.
If you have to be to work at a certain time,
to meetings at a certain time.
And you're having to leave lots of extra chunks of time
just for the Ubers to show up.
So it could be kind of annoying.
- Another reason you might not want to move to Queretaro
is if you want to live in a city
that has 1000 things to do.
This is a pretty big city.
There's a million people living here.
However, it's not like Guadalajara or Mexico City
in that those places,
there's basically an unlimited number of things to do
things to see, places to visit, things like that.
So if you're looking for someplace like that,
maybe check out one of those cities instead.
- Another pretty big downside about Queretaro
is that it kind of does have the go-go-go rat race vibe
that you often find in big working cities,
because of course it is a big working city.
And right now we're trying to make friends
and I'm constantly hearing back,
"Oh, I'm so busy right now."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm really busy this week.
So let's plan, blah, blah, blah, down the line."
And of course that makes sense.
Everybody's working, everybody's trying to make a living.
Lots of people are going to school here,
going to college here.
So if you're looking for something that's super laid back,
this might not be the place.
- Speaking of not being laid back.
A laid back vibe is exactly what I thought I was looking for
when moving to Mexico.
I thought I was going to end up in Puerto Escondido,
that we were going to have a place near the ocean,
where we would leave the windows open at night
and have the nice ocean breeze coming in.
We'd spend half of our day in a hammock.
And in the morning we would walk to the local market
and get some fresh produce for that day.
Well here, you're not gonna find that.
Probably going to be doing
your grocery shopping at a supermarket.
You're probably gonna be doing other shopping,
at one of the mini big box store type places,
or you might be doing your shopping at malls.
So if you're looking for that slow pace of life,
where you spend half your day at a hammock
and find yourself in a Mercado every day,
well then this might not be the place for you.
- And speaking of vibes,
another thing that Queretaro is not really
is the colorful, vibrant, historic Mexico.
As a whole it's a very modern city.
So you do have the historic center where there's colonial
style architecture and very beautiful traditional,
like traditional Mexico type buildings.
And there are some other places throughout the city
that have that.
But as a whole, like I said, it's very modern.
It's not a Guanajuato.
It's not a Oaxaca type of vibe.
So if that's what you're going for,
Queretaro is not the city for you.
- The next reason why you might not want
to move to Queretaro is if you want a place
that's not like the US or Canada at all.
Queretaro is a very wealthy city.
There are tons of super nice neighborhoods.
There's lots of really nice malls and new hospitals
and nice shopping centers, things like that.
So if you're looking for something different,
maybe try like a smaller town.
- And perhaps the number one Queretaro deal breaker,
according to people in our comments section is the process
of finding a person to stop gonging that bell.
(laughs) - Gong that bell.
- Oh.
- You done?
(laughs)
- And...
(laughs) Wow.
Is the process of finding a rental.
- Yeah, our rental process was way more involved
and much more formal than any...
- Super stressful.
- Than anything else we've experienced in Mexico.
- Not to mention expensive, much more expensive.
So if you want a place that's very informal,
you meet your landlord, you pay your rent and cash and it's,
there's no contracts really,
Queretaro is probably not gonna be the place for you.
If on the other hand,
you do wanna find out what the process was like for us
on the screen here is the video that we made
about everything that it took for us to find our rental.
And as you could probably guess by some of the other things
we've said in this video, we absolutely love it here.
And it was worth it in the end.
Please, don't forget to subscribe to our channel
before you head out and one more thing.
(bell gongs)
Gong that bell so you get notified
the next time we release a new video on Saturday morning.