International Living's Annual Global Retirement Index: Download your issue to find out the winners in 2010

Imagine living among the lushly-coated deep greens of Ecuador’s mountains…digging your toes into the white sand of a Caribbean beach in Mexico… looking out from your city pad at Panama City’s shimmering skyline…settling down to a new beachfront life in Brazil or Uruguay…and all for a fraction of what your life costs at home.

Close your eyes and visualize Tanzania. Maybe you think of Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, with its ice-capped peak floating thousands of feet above the savannah.

Towering mountains sweep down to the sea. High on the steep, green slopes, chalet-style houses keep watch over tea and hazelnut plantations.

When Philadelphia-born Susana Trilling first came to Oaxaca in 1988, she “wasn’t thinking of starting a business,” she says. In fact, she was taking a break from her career as a chef and restaurant owner, which she’d pursued in New York and in Austin, Texas.

Offshore, kayakers paddle among sandy, palm-dotted islets and snorkelers explore the second-largest coral reef in the world.

Spies in suburbia... that's the biggest Russia story we've read in years. But there's another, better one the mainstream press hasn't noticed.

Foremost is the sunset. It caught me by surprise. When that huge orange ball drops slowly into the emerald-green sea, it brings the beach areas to a halt as everyone stops to watch.

In Cuenca, your senses gorge themselves. It’s beautiful... with its blue-domed cathedral, red-tiled roofs and neatly kept parks.

It’s Jazz Festival “free day” in Casco Viejo. Every year, a week of concerts all over the city culminates here, with a free concert to beat all free concerts.