San Felipe Life

An owner's manual for life in San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico, for English-speaking property owners and renters.

To content | To menu | To search

San Felipe - Malecon

About San Felipe, Baja California

San Felipe is a small town on the Sea of Cortez on the eastern side of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. It's near the mouth of the Colorado river, around 120 miles due south of the California USA border. San Felipe is a rare combination of rugged desert, white sand beaches, turquoise sea, great views of high mountains towards the west,...

Continue reading

Free Data with Telcel Amigo Refills

Telcel is now offering limited FREE data when you refill your Telcel Amigo prepaid phone account (larger amounts only). When you add 150 pesos to your account, you will get a 150 MB download limit...

Continue reading

Property Tax Discounts for 2012

The San Felipe property tax (impuesto predial) bills for 2012 are now available online. Like last year, the discount is 20% if paid in January, 10% in February, 5% in March. The actual amounts to pay...

Continue reading

New Data Plans on Telcel Amigo

The plans on Telcel Amigo (prepaid) 3G data, including the SMS activation codes, have been revised. In addition, the data allowances have been doubled, in a temporary promotion that runs until Jan...

Continue reading

Adding money to your Telcel Amigo phone

Telcel Amigo is a prepaid phone account in Mexico. If you don't add money to it for a while, you can lose the balance on it, and eventually your number. To avoid this, you should add some money...

Continue reading

Insuring your Imported Mexican-registered Car

When your car (or other vehicle) is registered in Mexico (for example with Baja California plates) you have to get a domestic insurance policy. You can't use "tourist" type policies intended...

Continue reading

Importing a car to Baja California

If you're a full time resident of San Felipe, you may be able to import your car from the US or Canada, so that it has Baja California plates. In this article, I'll cover whether and how you can do...

Continue reading

AMPI San Felipe Real Estate Association formed

San Felipe now has a professional Real Estate agent's asssociation, a new branch of AMPI. Established in 1956, AMPI is the Asociation Mexicana de Profesionales Inmobiliarios, A.C. and is the largest...

Continue reading

Chips in Mexico and the USA

Many products are available in both Mexico and the USA from the same manufacturer. But there are differences in the ingredients in each market, which can make them taste very different....

Continue reading

Telcel 3G Update

Since November 2009, Telcel 3G internet access has been available at El Dorado Ranch (and other areas) in San Felipe. For the first year, it was the best solution for internet access in areas without...

Continue reading

Using a Kindle in Mexico

Amazon's Kindle is a electronic book reader. It can store thousands of books, and download new books wirelessly. There are some small differences in the way a US-based Kindle operates when in Mexico,...

Continue reading

Telcel 3G "double data" promotion has ended

Telcel's 3G "double data" promotion has ended. Since July 2010, Telcel have been offering twice the "normal" data limit on their 3G plans and on Amigo 3G prepaid. The promotion has...

Continue reading

Renewing your Baja California Vehicle Plates

If you have imported your vehicle, so that it now has Baja California plates, you will need to renew the stickers on the plates (or the plates themselves) each year. Previously there was also tenencia...

Continue reading

Bancomer updating debit cards to "Chip and PIN"

Bancomer have begun the process of changing their VISA debit cards from magentic stripes to "Chip and PIN". They have started notifying customers that they need new debit/ATM cards. When a...

Continue reading

Property Tax Discounts for 2011

The Mexicali government has proposed increased discounts for early payment of predial (property tax) for 2011. These changes are yet to be approved by the Baja California State Senate, but are likely...

Continue reading

Dormant Bank Accounts Will be Seized

Thanks to an alert from Ricky Lopez I've been looking into the rules for dormant bank accounts in Mexico. It is indeed something that anybody with an account that is used "only for the FM-3"...

Continue reading

Credit Cards in Mexico

Most residents of countries like the USA and UK get a lot of credit card offers, and it's common to accept them with just a quick glance at the terms and conditions, which are in a standard format on...

Continue reading

- page 1 of 3