Kent: Rompecabeza

There is a word in Spanish: rompecabeza (rome-pay-kah-BAY-sah).

It literally means “head breaker.” A good translation is “puzzle.”

Building a life in a new place is a thousand-piece puzzle. A rompecabeza.

I have a friend back in Louisiana, Abbas, who likes to send me puzzles to solve. He thinks I’m clever, but really I’m just willing to insert myself into situations where I don’t already have an answer. I have confidence that most things can be figured out, and I enjoy the process of solving them.

When we decided to build a new life in Mexico, I had no idea how it would all come together—but I was confident it could.

This week gave us several small puzzles to solve. I’ll share a few.

One of my favorite methods for solving a puzzle is to find a person who already knows the answer.

We needed to print a rental contract, but we don’t own a printer. I had the file on a flash drive.

On Tuesday morning we were enjoying fresh croissants at a French bakery near our Airbnb. I asked Blanca, the owner, where we might print something. She immediately put me on the phone with Guy—her gringo husband—who told me about an internet café a few miles away along the bike path.

That simple question turned into a ride with a purpose.

Along the way we met a vendor selling roasted coffee beans from Veracruz out of the back of his truck.

“I am here every day except Sunday,” he told us. We found a bank with a working ATM and stepped inside to convert some U.S. dollars into pesos. We discovered a small shop specializing in plastic goods and bought screw-top containers and a bundle of clothes hangers.

In solving one puzzle, we unintentionally solved several others. And with each one, we met someone new—learning names, practicing Spanish, and becoming just a little more connected to this place.

On Wednesday, we had a signed rental agreement. After paying the move-in fees, we were given the key codes to a lovely house that fits our needs. We were super excited to move in and stop living out of travel bags. The second rompecabeza was moving our bulky and heavy pile of suitcases from our short-term rental to the new house—less than a mile away. To make things more interesting, Judi was on day three of a cold, and I was on day one and feeling pretty wimpy myself.

Along with the belongings we brought from the states, we had started to accumulate more stuff like screw-top containers and bundles of clothes hangers. We needed help moving to a place we could settle in.

The solution came to me quickly. Roger!

Roger is a can-do kind of guy and has become our primary taxi driver. We met him on a visit last November. He handed us a card and has been available ever since. You’ll usually find him parked in the Ajijic plaza with other drivers, waiting his turn for customers. He told me that waiting is the worst part of the job. When I call him, he always replies, “Gracias, Señor,” and says it again at the end of the ride. He is genuinely grateful for the work.

This time, as I began to explain the size and weight of what we needed to move, he stopped me mid-sentence and said “No problema.” He showed up right on time and loaded everything into his medium-sized hatchback taxi.

Judi and I raced Roger to the house on bikes—arriving there only minutes after him. Like a champ, he insisted on doing much of the heavy lifting of unloading. 

With Roger’s “Gracias Señor” another puzzle was solved.

The third rompecabeza barely qualifies as a puzzle—but it’s worth telling.

Part of our plan to live here long-term is to obtain residency visas. We began that process at a Mexican consulate in Las Vegas. Yes, there are closer ones, but our research suggested that Las Vegas was particularly helpful. The process is complicated. Requirements vary from consulate to consulate. And the end result, a resident, gives you the status somewhere between tourist and citizen. That works for us.

When we entered Mexico, we received a special stamp in our passports giving us 30 days to complete the next steps—fees, paperwork, and verification.

One option is to hire a facilitator to help navigate it all. We chose that option.
A local facilitator sent her assistant, Francisco, to our home. He helped us complete forms, sign documents, and he collected the necessary fees in cash.

Judi was more than a little skeptical as Francisco rode away from our appointment on his motorcycle with a significant quantity of our Mexican pesos and the passports! We hope to get the precious passports and results back in a day or two. I suppose the challenge here was trusting the process and the people that are there to help you.

Building a life in a new place isn’t one big decision. It’s a thousand small puzzles. 

Puzzles are great but the best part is not the completion of them. The joy is in each surprise and each person we meet along the way. 

GO TO JUDI’S MARCH 29, 2026 POST