Three years ago before their adventure to Puerto Vallarta Mexico began, Jessica Corley and Rhonda Manthei owned a small business in the Old Town section of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Serial entrepreneurs, they had owned a hospice company and did well enough to retire for about seven years. But retirement was not for them. Adventure was calling.
Jessica, 51, grew up in Massachusetts and 61-year-old Rhonda in Chicago. The two met playing softball in Albuquerque and immediately hit it off (pun intended). Two children followed. Adam is now 25 and daughter Emily 15.
Their adventure to Puerto Vallarta Mexico started with Emily’s two-year junior high school exchange program in Mexico City. “After her wonderful experience, Emily told us that she would like to have her high school education also in Mexico,” Ms. Corley explained. “We said fine, but we were not going to live in Mexico City for sure, way too big for us. So we began researching international schools in Mexico and discovered that the American school in Puerto Vallarta was among the best schools in Mexico for American kids. We contacted many Americans who had children attending the school and had lengthy telephone conversations with them about the school and in general about living in Mexico. Our whole motivation was driven by the school’s ratings. We told Emily, if she was accepted, we would move to Puerto Vallarta, even though we had never been there.”
The family flew to Puerto Vallarta in September 2010 for Emily’s school interview and testing. She was accepted for the following year. “Once our daughter was accepted, Rhonda and I started our planning,” Ms. Corley said. “The first thing we did was to search online to find a real estate agent that could help us. The second thing we did was to sell mostly everything we owned: our house, cars and most of our furniture. We took only those things that were most important to us, like our bedroom set.”
