IL Postcard

The Venice of Latin America

Date: 07/14/2008 Author: Glynna Prentice

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Read more about Mexico in International Living Postcards —your daily escape

Dear International Living Reader,

I’m sitting at the Gran Café del Portal, a traditional café near the main square in Veracruz, the great port city on Mexico’s Gulf Coast. It’s Sunday evening, and Veracruz is gearing up for another night of food, music, and good times. Already this evening I’ve watched Veracruz’s oldsters dance to a band in a nearby square, while I sat at a table sipping a cold beer and nibbling mussels cooked in a rich, tomato-laden sauce.

I’m an unabashed foodie, eager to taste local specialties wherever I go—but even if I weren’t, it would be easy to wax eloquent over food, drink, and music in Veracruz. Here, good food and good music go hand in hand with good times, and Veracruz offers plenty of all three. Some foreigners liken this city to New Orleans. Like the Big Easy, Veracruz is famous for its Carnival celebrations, the biggest and most colorful in Mexico. Others compare it to Havana for its café culture, its infectious, music-laden atmosphere, and its easy-going vibe.

Those comparisons may hold for the historic center, but as I tour the city and surrounding area, other, gaudier comparisons spring to mind…Miami? Las Vegas? For around Veracruz’s historic core is a booming modern city…

If you’re looking for big-city life with a sea view, Veracruz may just fit the bill. Thanks perhaps to its long tradition as Mexico’s largest port, Veracruz is very international, and it has all the amenities you’d expect in a big city: high-end malls with trendy clothing shops, bookstores, and cineplexes with the latest Hollywood and European films. There are also U.S. department stores and retailers like Sears, Sam’s Club, Costco, and Office Depot, as well as European retailers and trend-setters like Spain’s Zara.

Veracruz—both the city and the state—gets extremely short shrift in most English-language guidebooks I’ve seen. Foreigners, as a result, tend to think of Veracruz only as an industrial port. But Mexicans know otherwise. They’ve long viewed Veracruz as a choice tourism destination. Fronting the sea, Veracruz offers miles of black-sand beach, and plenty of hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, and shops for whiling away the hours. For the last six or seven years, Mexicans have also poured into the city as investors, primarily in beachfront properties. They’ve helped fuel a construction boom and, with it, rising real estate prices in both Veracruz and in Boca del Río, the township immediately south that is now the chic end of Veracruz waterfront.

At first glance, the relatively high prices that beachfront commands here, and Veracruz’s big-city pace, may put off some potential expats attracted by the area’s many other amenities. Fortunately, there are other options that provide good value for money and a more relaxed lifestyle.

If you don’t need a sea view, within Veracruz itself there are middle-class neighborhoods of three- and four-bedroom single-family homes that offer much lower prices. Driving through one neighborhood less than 10 minutes from the beach, I saw street corners with shops and grocery stores, where it’s possible to live the ultimate urban lifestyle, shopping from home on foot (two dogs, miniature schnauzers, were tied outside one small supermarket as their owner did the day’s shopping inside).

A two-story house available in one such neighborhood offers 1,776 square feet of space on a 1,615-square-foot lot. That leaves limited green space, but the house has three bedrooms, two baths, a service patio...and a sales price of $136,000.

Drive 10 to 30 minutes from Veracruz—still within easy hailing distance of the city’s bright lights—and you can find true suburban and country living. Here, you can get even more bang for your buck. Much of it, moreover, is laidback, waterfront living.

Some of the most charming properties I saw were along inland waterways and lagoons. One of the oldest gated riverfront communities in Boca del Río is Fraccionamiento El Estero, which abuts central Boca del Río. Like a mini-Venice, this development is riddled with canals that all lead to the river, which empties into the Gulf just a short distance (less than half a mile) away. Streets within El Estero arch steeply where they pass over the canals, because boats do motor through these canals on their way to moorings alongside their owners’ homes.

Residences here are prosperously middle-class, three- to four-bedroom houses. Homes are relatively close together. In addition, lawn space is limited to perhaps 600 square feet or less in many of the homes; but then, the emphasis here is on access to water. Overall, El Estero feels intimate and neighborly, rather like an old-fashioned, small-city suburb (which it possibly was when it was first built).

I visited El Estero a couple of times, by car to view the houses and by boat to view the river access. I saw no houses for sale here during my stay, but realtors in the area tell me that when they do go on the market, homes in El Estero run from $300,000 to $500,000, depending on the size of the property and its amenities.

The same concept of properties backing onto water, with private boat docks, is beginning to be pursued all along rivers in this area, as well as on Mandinga Lagoon, a large lagoon with sea access that lies a few miles inland from Boca del Río.

Off the water in Boca del Río—though as little as a mile from the coast road—are several small gated housing developments that offer competitively priced modern housing. One such development, called Las Lomas, has two-story, three-bedroom houses with attached garage in the $180,000 to $200,000 range. There’s not a lot of variety in the architectural style, and the development is new, so many houses are not yet occupied. But the streets are wide and well-laid out, the area is clean, and landscaping is underway. It’s less than a 10-minute drive to central Boca del Río and only a bit farther to Veracruz.

Glynna Prentice
Your Mexico Insider, International Living

P.S. Subscribers to Mexico Insidercan access the July issue now, where I will go into more detail about Veracruz, along with contact details of the realtors selling these bargain properties.

Editor’s note: Glynna, our Mexico Insider editor, is always on the hunt for the best bargains and dreamy locations. If you love Mexico, and would like to learn more about the best places to live, buy, or vacation, Mexico Insider the single best resource to keep you updated with the latest happenings in the country. Learn more here

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