A CHALLENGE OF LIVING IN MEXICO: The FIRST UPS Delivery to Our Home!

But Not by the UPS Man!

My Package From the United States Was Delivered!

     Not everything is easy, living in Mexico. Receiving mail, or not, while living in Mexico causes me to have mixed feelings. The mailman just doesn't come to our house in Sayulita, though I have seen a "Correos" (national mail service) delivery guy sitting on his motorcycle at the corner, shuffling through a stack of Telmex bills. The only reason we received our Telmex internet bill on that unusual day was that we happened to be walking by at the time and asked him for it. We do get our CFE (electric bill) every two months, on schedule, because a CFE employee walks to every house in town to deliver the bills. He wedges our bill in a slot of our gate or between the meter and the wall. Our house number is spray-painted above the meter, but it's hidden behind a tree and no one sees it but the CFE meter-reader.

It's a Wonder Anyone Can Find Our House Number

     Besides those two bills, we don't get ANY snail-mail! I love it that junk mail will never find us again, since we started using our mail forwarding service, travelingmailbox.com. They scan every envelope they receive, after it is forwarded from our U.S. post office box, and then email it to us. If we request to see the contents, they open, scan, and email each page to us. It's great!

     But what do we do if we want to order something from the United States to be shipped to our home? We have seen the UPS truck and the DHL van in Sayulita, so we know they deliver here. But, would they ever find our home, tucked away in the barrio, a Mexican neighborhood? The home addressing system in Mexico is hodge-podge with no logical order, so it's no wonder the mailman can't deliver mail. The numbers progress along our side of the street from our house at 29A to 31, 199, 40, 136, 124, No Number, 31A, 30 and on in this random fashion. I began to think UPS would never find 29A! Some people rent a P.O. Box at a company called "Mail Boxes Etc." in Bucerias, but we just don't receive enough mail to make it worth the trouble or the $30 US or so per month it costs.

     I really wanted to order a "Zumba Fitness" banner through Zumba.com, but would it ever make it through customs and find its way to my home? Vistaprint, the banner service, claimed to ship to Mexico. The banner was only about $30 US plus shipping, bringing the total to about $60 US. I decided it was worth a test run. Now to label our house with an address marker that UPS could find.

Someday We'll Have a Pretty Mexican Tile Address Marker Like This!

     After living in our house in Sayulita for a year-and-a-half, we still had not put up one of those cute little Mexican tile address markers like the one above, with the number "29A". We have looked in every tile shop and souvenir shop in Sayulita and the Bucerias market with no luck. We could find a "2" and a "9" but not a matching "A", or a "2" and an "A" but no "9" in the same pattern. So, I printed up a big "29A" with our names on a sheet of paper and taped it on the wall outside our house. Surely, the UPS driver would see that!

Hoping the UPS Driver Could Find Our House With This Sign

     One day this week there was a loud knock on our gate and someone calling my name. Bella jumped from her nap in the sun, barking furiously to let me know someone was here! I opened the gate, hoping to see the UPS man, but NO! It was a man I didn't know, holding a package, who said he lived two blocks down our street. The UPS man had stopped at his house and asked him to sign for the package--apparently the UPS delivery guy wasn't going to hunt for #29A any longer. This nice man not only signed for my package, he went to the trouble of googling our address to find our house, walked up the street and knocked on our gate to hand-deliver it! He said it was a good thing that I had hung the typed address sign on our wall or he would not have found our house. You know you live in a small town when neighbors take care of each other this way!

Bella Napping in the Sun, Until a Knock at the Gate

     I was excited to open my package and see if my Zumba poster had survived its journey, especially since the end of the box was a little scrunched. It was obvious that it had been opened and checked by Mexican Customs at the border, but it was nicely repackaged and unharmed. I hung it up in our yard for a while to let it uncurl, getting it ready to hang on the wall the next morning at the Sayulita Casa de la Cultura where I teach Zumba Class! Life is exciting living in small town, Mexico!

My Zumba fitness Banner Arrived Unscathed; Uncurling in Our Yard 

     To read more about our life-changing move to Mexico, check out my newest eBook available on Amazon at this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NCMWMJL

Retirement Before the Age of 59: Healthy Living in Mexico #2