15 Things to Think About When Choosing Your Snowbird Destination

It’s time for our return to Canada, after nearly six months away. Time to reflect on what this first full “retirement winter” has been like and think about how we want to handle it next winter. DH and I both have cold-triggered asthma, so we had decided long ago that when we retired we would spend the worst of winter in a warm place (or places). For those of you who aren’t familiar with Edmonton, Canada, winter lasts longer than six months, which is the minimum amount of time you must stay in Canada to keep your residency status (and health care benefits). So we can’t totally avoid cold weather or snow no matter what we do. By leaving in October and returning in April, though, we should at least avoid the –20° to –40°C temperatures (in Fahrenheit, that’s -4 to -40°).

We’ve been testing various locations over the past few years, and our ideal would be to have two bases: 6+ months in our Canadian home and just under 6 months in a warmer place. The advantage to that approach is that you have time to develop and maintain friendships in both locations. It was the approach my parents took for nearly 20 years, and even we made some “winter friends” we saw on the years we visited my folks over the Christmas holidays.

Unfortunately, most of the warmer places that interest us don’t allow stays longer than 90 days in any 180-day period. So that means considering at least three locations each year. I’ve written before about some aspects of choosing where to stay (see Holidays versus Life: A Novice Retiree’s Perspective). Having now spent two and a half months in a suburban community on the edge of a small beach town in Guadeloupe, our views are getting refined further.

Trade-offs in Choosing a Winter Locale

One of the biggest things we’ve learned is that nowhere is a perfect mix of everything we want. That’s especially true because what DH wants and what I want are not 100% aligned.

He, for example, must have good opportunities for cycling, running and hiking. That means weather that is not too hot or humid, and no unleashed dogs chasing after him. I, on the other hand, want to be able to go out to hear live music and attend dance performances. (DH enjoys those too, but they are less essential to him than the physical opportunities.) I’d love to have other writers to chat with. He’ll chat with anybody. In Guadeloupe I’m really enjoying being somewhere that is hot enough I can feel comfortable wearing very little while working on my laptop in the shade. My laptop-based reading and writing are like his running and cycling. But warm in the shade often means too hot for his purposes. (Though he does also like spending some time lounging in the sun.)

So how do you find the perfect balance?

We’ve had many discussions about ideas for next winter and haven’t yet resolved them. We know we’d like to spend some of it in Malaga again, but what about the other portion? And should we return to Edmonton for a while in between the two chunks?

This year we’ve concluded that being away for nearly six months at a stretch was too long. I don’t know how much that’s because we don’t have a social circle here in Guadeloupe and it wasn’t till the end that anyone could come visit, or if it really is too long to be away from our Edmonton friends and family. Certainly, part of it is that that’s simply too long to be away from my 90-year-old mother.

For the non-Malaga, non-blast-of-winter-back-in-Edmonton time, we’ve batted around ideas as far flung as Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, and even Hawaii. Asia is, sadly, a non-starter because of my allergies. You try finding safe food to eat in Asia when you can’t even breathe fish fumes, and are deadly allergic to all fish and seafood, all nuts, sesame, and more. (One thing I’ll say for Guadeloupe: all the servers and cooks have been amazingly kind and careful about my allergies. Or at least nice about it when they felt it was too risky to feed me.)

15 Key Considerations in Choosing Your Snowbird Location(s)

Here are the variables we’ve been considering in making this decision. I’ve put together a spreadsheet, which you can access here (opens in new tab), to help you decide. We don’t do it that formally, but if you are having trouble making a decision you could try rank-ordering each of these criteria in terms of priority (for each of you, if you are travelling with others), then assigning a score to each possible destination on each criterion.

1. Weather

Remember that hot isn’t necessarily what you want for weeks or months on end. If it is too hot, you’ll have to adapt to a siesta and late-night lifestyle, limiting your activities during the heat of the day. Think about rain as well. One place we are considering is Cuenca, in Ecuador. The weather is spring-like, with highs in the low 20s (70s in Fahrenheit) at the time of year we are considering, but I gather you never leave home without an umbrella, because it will rain at some point every day. Also, think about sunnier, but cooler, weather vs cloudy and grey but warm. What trade-off would you prefer if you had to make one?

2. Other people to speak to/do things with

Long before we go I start checking out expat groups (on Facebook, Meetups, Internations and other sources). I love the idea of integrating and making local friends wherever we go, but, realistically, your initial friends are likely to be other expats, especially if you aren’t fluent in the local language. Look to see how active the groups are, and whether they organize the types of activities that appeal to you. I fell in love with the idea of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico because they have a fantastic writers’ festival, and a writing community that continues year-round. But it is in the mountains, extremely hilly and with cobblestone streets and pueblo dogs, so not great for DH to go running or cycling.

3. Cultural activities

This depends on what sort of culture you are looking for. I adored the live music in Cabo Verde (see Musical Mindelo, Cape Verde) but if you were staying for several months would you still want to go out to the same small handful of clubs over and over? Likewise, I love me a bit of good Mariachi music, but I wouldn’t want a steady diet of it. Theatre is another activity we enjoy, but our Spanish isn’t good enough for it yet. Which brings me to…

4. Language

This is a funny one: choosing a location with a language you are not fluent in is a negative for some people but a positive for others. When we were discussing the possibility of spending a few months in Australia, New Zealand or the U.S., we realized that we didn’t like the idea of not having a linguistic challenge. Admittedly, figuring out the accents in those places could be a bit of a barrier, but not the same as the struggles and delights of learning a new language or improving your 2^nd or 3^rd one.

5. Sports/Physical Activities

What types of physical activities do you enjoy and are they readily available in the places you are considering. As noted earlier, running or cycling in a place that has lots of aggressive dogs on the loose isn’t ideal. Pickleball people want a place where that’s available. I like swimming. Beaches are nice, but for exercise I also like to have a pool where I can swim laps. I’ve loved our private pool here, although I’m thinking that it might be nice to have access to a shared pool instead. When we lived in Jurançon at Clos Mirabel we met so many interesting people around the pool.

6. Accessibility from your home base

Sadly, almost nowhere is easy to get to from Edmonton. But some places are more difficult than others. Since so many warm destinations end up being 15 – 20+ hour journeys, we’ve started looking at routes where we could stop over and enjoy a night or a few in another place on our way. On our way home from Guadeloupe, for instance, there are direct flights to Montreal, so our plan is to visit with family there before continuing on to Edmonton. (Update – Montreal is having another Covid wave, so we’ve had to scrap that plan. Dommage!)

7. Food

We are foodies, so having access to good local produce is something we value highly. Spain and Peru were both wonderful from that perspective. Oddly, Costa Rica was a culinary disappointment: they export their best produce, and don’t seem to have a local foodie culture. We even had trouble finding a good cup of coffee! At a beach bar with mango trees growing overhead, my mango smoothie used store-bought, artificially sweetened puree instead of leveraging the local trees. Crazy!

8. Cost of living

We’ve all got budgets. As I discovered in Guadeloupe, island life can be incredibly expensive. Obviously, housing is a huge chunk of the cost (see next point), but so are groceries, restaurants, activities, car or bike rentals, etc.

9. Accommodation available at your price point

Remember that furnished rental accommodation is more expensive than unfurnished, but if you are only there for a few months, you don’t have much choice.

Are you going to want to cook? We discovered that in some cities, such as Malaga, many nice rentals do not include an oven! (Or they’ll give you a toaster-oven and claim that’s the oven. Not good enough for us.)

In choosing housing, there are still more trade-offs to consider. How important is it to you to have private outdoor space? (Balcony? Yard?) How private must it be? (Are you OK with others overlooking you, or do you want to sunbathe nude? I suppose I could say and/or, depending on your personality). How much of a premium will you pay for a view? How much sun will you get streaming in through your windows, and at what times of day? Will that be too hot? Too cold? In places with more spring-like climates, you’ll want a heater for the mornings. In truly hot places you may need air conditioning. Don’t just assume the unit has it. Think about the type of neighbourhood you want to be in, and the noise levels. (I loved our apartment in Lima, but the constant horn-honking was crazy-loud.)  

10. Ease of day-to-day life

We want to be able to do almost all of our daily activities on foot. To our surprise, Saint-Francois in Guadeloupe, although it is a small town, is not very walkable. The whole island is set up for cars. Both walking and cycling can be dangerous, as there is often no sidewalk, those sidewalks that do exist are in poor condition and often blocked by parked cars. Night falls suddenly and a huge number of the streetlights are dead. So even though it could be very walkable, it isn’t.

11. Safety/security

Beyond walkability issues, in some locations you have to think carefully about safety. We’ve been having great fun with the Numbeo website, which lets you compare different aspects of crime across cities. The results will often surprise you.

12. Emergency health care access

You will clearly need out of country medical insurance, which is a topic on its own, but you also want to be sure there are decent facilities which you can access if needed. If you are someone who needs a lot of health care at home, you probably don’t want to choose a spot in the middle-of-nowhere.

13. Reliable internet

This is probably the biggest frustration we encounter in our travels. Even places that theoretically have good high-speed internet often don’t, or it is intermittent. If dependable internet is crucial for you, then you probably want to stick to big cities.

14. Length of stay allowed

As Canadians, we can stay in most places for 90 days with a standard tourist visa. Unfortunately, the Schengen rules, which cover almost all of Europe, limit us to 90 days in any 180-day period, and you can no longer just pop across a border and restart the clock. It is silly, really, because folks like us just add value to their economy. All we do is spend, and we have to pay for all our own social and medical services there, so we cost them nothing. But, sadly, they haven’t clued in to that yet. (Or they have other, mysterious, reasons for why they limit it in this way.)

15. Day trip or short trip potential

If you are staying in one place for several weeks or months, there’s a good chance you’ll want to explore some other nearby communities or tourist spots while you are there. Andalucía, for example, has many lovely mountain and beach towns to visit. Cordoba, Granada and Seville are just a short train or bus ride away from Malaga. In Guadeloupe, we decided to base ourselves out of Saint Francois because there are ferries that leave from here to visit several other nearby islands.

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Now that you’ve read all this, you are probably so exhausted you need a get-away! Good luck (and let me know if I’ve missed anything). Now it is time for me to pack for our trip back to Canada.