Mexico research

After finding we were leaning toward Mexico, I started research on the different parts of Mexico. First, I gave Puerto Escondido a look. Dave's client touted it as the best place to live in Mexico. He loved that it's on the beach, out of the hurricane zone and cheap. As I did my own research, I realized cheap is relative and with 4 kids, we would have to be in a house right on the beach in order for that to be a real benefit to me. Plus although it was out of the hurricane zone, it was also quite secluded. 3 hours from anywhere else, Oaxaca and Acapulco the closest big cities or recognizable places. It was also secluded by a mountain pass to Oaxaca and hundreds of speed bumps to Acapulco. It was important to me to be pretty close to an LDS Temple and the closest was in Oaxaca. The more I thought about it, I didn't feel like this was the right place for us. So I started looking on blogs and forums about other places in Mexico that gringos like us might like to live. Fairly quickly I came up with a list including Monterrey, San Miguel de Allende, Baja California, Lake Chapala, Puerto Vallerta. Lake Chapala and its northern shore towns were praised on many forums. I could find lots of information on it, it was close to Guadalajara (a large city), one hour from an LDS temple, 1/2 hour from an international airport, 3 1/2 hours from Puerto Vallerta, had 3 bilingual private schools, a society for expats, and rent seemed much more reasonable than the beach towns. It seemed pretty perfect for us. But I wanted Dave to visit before we made any decisions.