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By Bobbie Coray“Aren’t you afraid?” That seems to be the question everyone asks when one announces that they’ve just bought a condo on the beach in Mexico. “Of course not!” is my answer. How did I, an intrepid seventy-five-year old widow, end up spending my winters in San Jose del Cabo and my summers overlooking Bear Lake in Garden City, Utah? It began with my husband and I buying three timeshares and spending three weeks every winter for 14 years in Cabo. We kept saying that it would be wonderful to have a place in Cabo, but didn’t buy because we thought we would want to go other places sometime. With timeshares you have the flexibility to trade for other venues. The thing is, we never wanted to go to any place but Cabo.We have lived in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Japan and have travelled all over Europe, but it was to Cabo we wanted to come every year. There is something quite magical about Mexico.We had sold our timeshares five years ago and had made the transition to VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner) so that we could rent for six weeks at the same place and perhaps longer. I booked a condo for February in San Jose within walking distance of the charming colonial plaza downtown. Unexpectedly my husband died in January.I was going to cancel but the sweet owner said to me, “I am a widow too. Don’t cancel because you will never come again if you do.” So, I just did it. And I met my friend and realtor, which we began a great friendship. She took me to every condo in the Baja and I’d buy her lunch. But I didn’t buy until three years later, when I fell in love with a condo that I found to rent on VRBO on the Costa Azul in San Jose del Cabo.It was March, and I had not intended to buy anything…so there were details like getting earnest money wired from a bank (US checks don’t work here) filling out all the paperwork before my five-week stay was coming to an end. I flew home to set up a wire transfer with the bank and finalize my US loan intending to come right back. But then COVID 19 struck. I had given Dana my Power of Attorney to sign documents relating to the condo. Thus began the very unusual but really quite easy (for me) process of doing it all online and by Zoom. It was not until eight months later that I was able to a move into my condo because the world was locked down for the pandemic. To find out about my adventures of decorating and shipping, getting insurance and a car and setting up all the utilities, read the next issue of Destino.
