Today we continue our Ultimate Escape Plan series. For 29 years we’ve been helping readers find their ideal retirement retreats overseas. This week, we’re sharing some of their stories–and the lessons they’ve learned–to help you follow in their footsteps. Yesterday you met a Seattle couple who are living “The Good Life” as proprietors of a B&B in Mexico’s Yucatan. Today IL’s Publisher talks about how living overseas is rewarding in unexpected ways…

Escape Plan # 3: Find Unexpected Rewards Overseas

Moving abroad has saved me money and improved my quality of life in so many ways. I enjoy comforts and conveniences I never could have back home. And time I once squandered on the rush of everyday life up north I can now enjoy in the relaxed company of family and friends.

I could list for you hundreds of benefits to life overseas. But today I’ll simply tell you about one unexpected pleasure: my Mayan hammock.

A hammock may seem like an unimportant thing. If you have one, you probably spent a few hundred dollars on it and really only think about it when it’s time to disassemble the 300-pound frame and store it for the winter.

My hammock was woven from hand-dyed cotton thread by Maya Indians in a little town a few miles down the road from where I live in Merida, Mexico. It weighs about a pound and a half. It folds up to the size of a loaf of bread. It needs no frame or stand. It cost me about $20.

And it probably saved my marriage.

For months while we were remodeling our home in El Centro here in Merida, I’d see the workers taking their afternoon siestas in hammocks they’d bring to work with them in their backpacks. They’d simply hook them to the “hamaceros” already in the house.

All old houses in Merida and throughout Mexico have metal rings called hamaceros set into the walls about six feet off the ground. Hang hammocks between them, and you instantly turn any room in the house into a guest bedroom. When we bought our house, we found hamaceros in every room except the bathroom. If we hang hammocks between them all, we can handle about 15 overnight guests.

I laugh to think about it now, but at the time I actually felt sorry for our workers…having to sling themselves up in flimsy nets of woven strings. These guys looked like big Parma hams. Poverty is a terrible thing, I thought, counting my blessings that I could afford a real bed.

I’m a tall guy, and back problems run in the family, so of course we bought the best orthopedic mattress we could find when we furnished the house. And after sleeping on it for a couple of months, I was miserable.

I could not get comfortable on it. No matter how I positioned myself, my back was killing me. Not only did I not sleep, I’d be in real pain most of the night and the following morning.

I wasn’t pleasant to be around, and I knew it. So did everyone else, including my wife, Suzan. Things were bad.

Finally a local friend of mine noticed my distress and told me to try spending the night in a Mayan hammock. “The locals have been sleeping in them for thousands of years,” he said, “and believe me, it isn’t because they can’t afford beds. You may be surprised.”

So on his advice I went to a little hammock shop near Merida’s central mercado. As soon as they realized I wasn’t a tourist looking for a souvenir, they treated me like a diplomat at a custom tailor shop.

I was carefully matched with the right sized hammock (they come in all sizes, from singles to those big enough for entire families to sleep in).

I learned how to hang my hammock at the right height from the floor using woven end ropes for length adjustment.

I was shown how to get in my hammock properly. (You start by putting it over your head!)

I was told how to lie in my hammock. (You don’t sleep lengthwise in Mayan hammocks like you would on canvas lawn hammocks up north. You sleep across them, either at right angles to the ends or at a slight diagonal, with the netting spread out to support you from head to toe.)

I learned how to properly fold my hammock for storage so the end strings don’t tangle, and I was taught the best method for washing and drying my hammock.

Only then was I allowed to buy one in the color of my choice.

I won’t lie…it took some getting used to. You can’t do a lot of tossing and turning in a hammock, which is how I usually sleep. But the weave of the hammock and the springiness of the cotton thread made it feel as if I were wrapped in a soft cocoon… every part of my body was gently supported, so I had no need to shift around trying to get comfortable. I was so unaccustomed to being comfortable in one position all night, I had trouble telling if I was really asleep.

But the next morning, I was sold. No back pain. None.

I made the bed by taking down the hammock, folding it up, and putting it in a drawer.

Then I smiled at Suzan… something she hadn’t seen me do in the morning for quite a while.

So there you have it. I live in what would be, in the States, a $650,000 house. Here in Merida, it cost me just one-third of that. I paid more for my microwave than I pay in property taxes each year.

I never, ever shovel snow or turn on a furnace.

I can drop in on a well-trained doctor for $35 (no appointment necessary). My comprehensive health insurance costs half what it did in the States. At the dentist I’ve had four root canals and two crowns done for what a single crown would have cost me up north.

The Gulf Coast beaches are half an hour away, and if I want to go to Cancun or Tulum or Playa del Carmen and play in the Caribbean, I can be there by lunchtime.

But the best part of living here? For me, it’s twenty dollars’ worth of ancient sleep technology that I’d never have known existed if I hadn’t moved here and experienced it myself.

Stay happy and healthy,

Dan Prescher
Publisher, International Living

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