How we’re building a life of half-the-year travel in the pre- and post-retirement years — slow, cultural, and a world away from a packaged bus tour.
Retirement travel doesn’t have to mean a fly-and-flop resort or a rushed coach tour. Our plan — and the way we write about it — is different: slower, deeper, and built around the culture of a place. Here’s how we’re approaching the snowbird years, and how you can too.
Our long game isn’t permanent nomad life — it’s a rhythm. Chase warmth and culture abroad through the Canadian winter, then come home to the lake for the summers and the people we love. A home base you can lock up and leave, plus long trips of weeks (not days), is the sweet spot for most couples: roots and range at the same time.
The luxury of the retirement years is time — so use it. Stay a few weeks in one place, shop the same market twice, learn a few words, find your café. You’ll spend less, stress less, and actually remember it. One town known well beats five half-seen.
Warm, walkable, good value, and within reach of decent healthcare — these are the regions we keep coming back to, each one already mapped out on the blog:
Warm, easy and great value — Los Cabos on the Baja and Cancún on the Caribbean.
See the route →Walkable cities, rainforest and coast, and the US dollar in Panama.
See the route →Europe’s mild-winter darling — the Algarve coast and the Azores & Madeira islands.
See the route →Unbeatable value and rich culture across Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.
See the route →Budget for weeks, not days. Long stays and monthly apartment rates change the maths in your favour — the daily cost of a month somewhere is a fraction of a week. Sort your health cover first. As a nurse-and-partner team we don’t leave without it: know exactly what your travel and out-of-country medical insurance covers, carry your prescriptions and a simple medical summary, and pick bases within reach of a good hospital. Set up a home base you can leave — someone on the lake house, mail and bills on autopilot. And stay close to family: an eSIM, a standing weekly video call, and a couple of visits home built into the year keep five kids (and everyone else) close while you roam.
The point of the snowbird years isn’t just to be warm — it’s to be somewhere. Chasing the real version of a place, its food and its people, is what makes this chapter richer, not just longer. That’s the whole idea behind Lake to Latitude, and it’s exactly what we plan for.
Start with the trips that double as snowbird routes, or get the next route and planner in your inbox. We’ll share exactly how we pull it off.
