Eat. Travel. Do cool stuff.
Ever have the joy of going on an adventure that beats all of your expectations? That’s exactly what Centro de Trenes did for us.
I’m a big fan of going someplace from a vague recommendation that sounds like a fun adventure. There’s a restaurant at the end of a dirt road which itself is at the end of a long road that goes nowhere? Count me in!
Continue reading “Best Day Trip from La Paz, Mexico”
One of the most common questions we get from friends and family abroad is about how Baja is handling the COVID situation.
Continue reading “COVID in the Baja”
We’ve done a lot of coffee and juice in La Paz. Our requirements have been prioritized by my injury—we look for a nice place to hang out, potentially a nice view, and where I can elevate my foot. Not too many opportunities to do juice from a small stall-vendor in a mercado on this trip. Here’s some of our favorite hangout spots:
Continue reading “Coffee & Juice in La Paz”
This post is a “guest” posting by Mr. Snacks, at the request of Mrs. Snacks.
Telecommunications while abroad has always been a bit of a pain point for us. Travelling abroad usually meant putting our phones on airplane mode when we got on the plane and leaving cellular service turned off for the duration of the trip. Yes, we could have paid the roaming charges, but they can get ridiculous when you travel as much as we do (or did) and it was usually only a minor inconvenience and a nice way to not be tempted to respond to work emails while on vacation. On the occasions where it rose to the level of being a major inconvenience, we’d turn on cellular on one of our phones, pay the ridiculous US carrier daily roaming fees, and then turn it off as soon as humanly possible.
On longer trips and assuming your phone is unlocked (which ours are), we could buy a local SIM card, but by swapping the SIM in your phone, you lose access to your US phone number over Wi-Fi Calling. That’s fine for a week or two trip, but when you are travelling for months it means either constantly swapping SIM cards in the device to see if you have messages from home, or risk missing voicemails like “Hey, I noticed water coming out the front door of your house – maybe you should have someone look into that?” or “Hi, this is Elon Musk, I’ve heard you are really great and would like to offer you a ton of money to work a hour a week, but I need to hear from you today”. I’ll decline to comment on which of those calls is more likely.
Continue reading “A new way to Cell Phone in Mexico”
I never expected to be eating hospital food in Mexico. But, since I have, let’s talk about how it was!
Let’s start by saying I’ve never stayed in a hospital before, so my patient hospital food experience is nil. My impressions on US hospital food are largely based on bad stories and the scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Emily seems to be served nothing but a boring dinner that mostly consists of a roll and a pre-packaged pudding cup. My impression is that its healthy, carb heavy, and not too delicious.
Continue reading “Hospital Food”
We arrived in La Ventana excited, but a little nervous, for our kiteboarding lessons.
The program is well set up to get you kiting (ish) in 3 days. First day, you learn about rigging and safety systems, fly a trainer kite on the beach, fly a slightly larger kite on the beach, then do a tandem body drag (where you fly the kite which drags you and the instructor through the water). Second day is a little like controlled drowning, the instructor follows you on a standup paddleboard talking to you through a radio in your helmet, while you do more body dragging, kite control work, and learn how to manage the board and try to put all the skills together to get yourself stood onto the board. On the third day you put it all together and make progress on standing and hopefully have a few longer rides…or so I’m told.
Continue reading “Kite-tastrophe”
Crossing the border was surprisingly easy. Even the part we heard the most horror stories about (not getting your FMM form stamped, and then getting beyond vehicle inspection and having issues getting back to the correct building to get it stamped) was quite simple since we were prepared. We arrived at the border at about 6:30am and were through all the pieces in 15 minutes. All of the officers were incredibly courteous and friendly.
Continue reading “Drivin’ and Kitin’”
It’s unbelievable to me to realize that I’ve been working on this crazy plan for almost 5 years: leave our jobs, and slow-travel extensively for a few years.
There’s been 100 steps in the process along the way including a lot of spreadsheets, travel research, having my Italian citizenship recognized, more spreadsheets, selling the house and even more spreadsheets. All of them have been part of the journey of getting us to this point, but a few steps feel more symbolic than others.
This week has felt like a biggie. This week both Mr Snacks and I are leaving our jobs.
The feelings are complicated. We’ve both been fortunate to have careers that have brought us a lot of fulfilment, and we are voluntarily walking away to take a lengthy break. But, we are leaving to travel! To do the mutual interest that brought us together! Travelling is literally at the heart of our “how did you meet” story. Still, we are leaving a lot of responsibility, accomplishment and work-friends behind with this decision. It makes it all bitter-sweet.
I have no doubt that our new lifestyle will give us a great perspective on different cultures, more time in nature (instead of stapled to a laptop), and time to explore new opportunities. On balance, I’m certain the move is the right one—just today it feels a tiny bit of sadness mixed with a scary amount of excitement.
So, now what?
We’ve got about a month before we start driving to Baja and a surprisingly lot to do. Finalize our Mexico vehicle insurance, de-winterize the van, mark out the cities to get gas in (this is only important in the Baja), stalk the weather for an appropriate window to leave, celebrate the holidays, pack for 3 months… Oh, and I’m sure Mr Snacks will want to leverage his new free time and our mountain location to ski every day possible!
Busy times ahead! But, it finally feels like this long-planned journey is about to start.
After a long stint of having the van parked outside the house due to COVID restrictions, we’ve finally gotten to take our first long-ish trip. We parlayed a vacation with family in California into a 2 week trip including some van adventures, and I feel like we did pretty well for newbies.
Continue reading “Movin’ Right Along”