Zapata Street Verandah

Michael Dickson is a former newspaper editor who lives in the cool high mountains of Central Mexico, 7,200 feet above the seas. After retiring in 1999 at the earliest possible opportunity at age 55 in Houston, Texas, he hightailed it south alone with the clothes on his back and two suitcases. Now married (since 2002), he has become a Mexican citizen and lives with the Lovely Marta, a former civil engineer with the Mexican highway department, in a beautiful estate on a mountainside in the hardscrabble pueblo of Tzurumutaro, Michoacan. Think Hearst Castle in the Bowery. It is just four miles from the picturesque tourist town of Patzcuaro, famed for Day of the Dead celebrations.

The Lovely Marta is the third oldest of ten children born to her doctor father, her mother, and her questionable stepmother. She was raised in Los Reyes, Michoacan, in La Tierra Caliente. Before becoming La Señora Dickson, she worked 15 years, mostly in Mexico City, as a civil engineer, traveling to virtually every corner of the country to supervise highway construction. In 1997, she spent six months doing postgraduate study in Madrid. During that time, she roamed much of Europe, seeing Spain, Italy, France, England and even Monaco, turning her into a shameless place-dropper. Alas, she toted no digital camera.

For information on moving to, and living in, Mexico, go to: http://www.michaeldickson.blogspot.com