‘Why go back to the U.S.?’ This divorced retiree left L.A. for Mexico — where he found love and halved his cost of living

Fred Uriarte found love twice in Mexico.

First with the country itself, then with a Mexican woman he met at a party.

It’s a far cry from his life in Los Angeles right before he left for Mexico in 2015. The 66-year-old former aerospace management professional had recently gotten a divorce and sold his home and was temporarily living at his sister’s house while he figured things out. “It was kind of depressing. Here I am 60 years old, living in my sister’s spare bedroom with my belongings in an 8-by-10 storage unit.”

Then a friend invited him to visit her in Akumal, Mexico — a little town about 25 miles from Playa del Carmen, a popular tourist spot on the Caribbean. “She was living in this condo on the beach. You walk in and there are sliding glass doors that look at the water. Her backyard was the Caribbean,” recalls Uriarte, who’d always dreamed of a house on the beach. It was on that day he decided the next chapter of his life would be in Mexico, where he’d spent two years of his childhood

More