Last week, we focused on authenticity as a guiding attribute for your overseas living deliberations . With this week’s emphasis on the state of Quintana Roo (its islands, superstar urban resorts, and micro-communities appealing to folks from around the world) another key attribute for successful living in Mexico is lifestyle intention . Quintana Roo is Mexico’s tourism powerhouse and maybe the most successful vacation development story in the Americas.
Today, half of Mexico’s 40 million “overnight” visitors land in Quintana Roo. And for good reason, but does that necessarily mean you’ll be happy living here? As a state, Quintana Roo was only formed in 1974; it wasn’t even a Mexican “territory” until 1902. It was scantily populated and more a string of coconut palm plantations and isolated fishing villages than a coherent development.
Today, the entire 500 kilometer long Caribbean coast has long been taken over, sliced up, and plotted for some form of actual (or future) tourism or residential development. The only exception to this is the magnificent Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. The southern cruise port town of Mahahual, the Maya Train , and the new international airport in Tulum ensure that the push south will march on until Mexico runs out of land at the Belize border.
Now home to two million residents and a tourism economy so famous it has eclipsed vacationer interest in going anywhere else in the Caribbean, Quintana Roo just might be your new beach liv.