New Mexico is a beautiful place to live and safer than a lot of other states I have heard tell of. Of course you have to check out certain areas as you would anywhere else. We have mountains and deserts. Our weather is good. The heat here is dry heat. We have some very small towns, then Albuquerque and Santa fe. Santa Fe is an expensive place to live and in a high elevation so it gets more snow than a lot of other places and it is becoming Little Hollywood. We have townx like Taos which is mostly artists. We have small towns that the people living there craft the same things that was made 150 years ago and we have towns for high tech design and technology. We have everything and more. Crime is not that bad. We still park and walk. We have some lakes but water is not that big here. We are not part of Mexico and most illegal try to get eslewhere. Don't let crime be that big a factor.