It is a moving day, always among my favorite days, and it is another part of life on the road. It is the fourth movement of this year, having lived in three neighborhoods, or colonias, in Mexico City since landing here on New Years Day to begin my 16th month of traveling. When I left the US on 1 October 2020, it was, and still is, embroiled in a partisan pandemic, and nearly everything else people can disagree on was a continuing topic, I had no idea where I would be at this point. All I knew was that I would still be traveling, following my lifelong adage: By the compass”Live your life by a compass not a clock”.
I set out with the intention of traveling for at least two years. Since that day, I have lived in about a dozen places visited many more, and today’s flight will be my 35th over that span of months. The brand new passport I left Athens, Georgia, is already on page three. During that time, I have managed to make my way back to the states four times to visit my kids and twice have seen my parents. Each time I go, it is an odd combination of excitement to be going back to total freedom and a melancholy feeling of already missing them.
Today is not like that, though. Instead, today is a typical move; in other words, my fiance and I change location as we often do. The only difference here is that today we are not just changing lodging in the same general area. Instead, we are heading to a location we only visited for a single day last summer.
Pereira, Colombia is just ahead of Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, in the category of most prolonged stays for us. Unlike Playa Del Carmen, which we have only been to once but stayed for about five months last year, since first staying in Pereira in 2020, we returned two more times in 2021 to put that total at about seven months. However, just as we did while living in the few cities in Colombia and Mexico, day trips have been common. While in Playa Del Carmen last summer, one of them was a ferry ride just off the coast to Cozumel.
That is where we are headed today; back to the Caribbean.
In addition to our stay on the Yucatan Peninsula’s Rivera Maya, which includes Cancun, Playa Del Carmen, and Tulum, last year, before that, we have visited the Caribbean in Santa Marta and Cartagena, Colombia, and love being on the beach. For example, in our five-month stay on the Mexican coast last summer, I wore socks just one single day.
Mexico City has been quite the experience. Aside from the abysmal Air BnB we managed to get ourselves into for the final four weeks, the first three weeks were much different. We began in Condesa, which is similar to any hip neighborhood in any big city with a mix of young professionals, bohemians, ex-pats, and a nice mix of people of all ages. Unfortunately, however, we did not know the protocol on how to properly clean fresh veggies. On the third day, both became fluidly ill, if that is an expression, for most of the remainder of the first 10 days of the year.
After that, it was off to Polanco. Imagine the most luxurious downtown part of any city you have been to, and that is what Polanco is like. This is where I saw a Lamborgini for the first time, and there was two side by side. So whatever you pay for lunch in Condesa, double it in Polanco.
Our lodging in Polanco was an absolute steal. We got it through booking.com in a pinch and got a great deal. Arriving at the hotel, which is not our typical choice though we do ensure we have at least a kitchenette in our room, we beheld what looked like a building out of classic Mexico. It was ornate, full of stained glass, paintings on the walls, not framed literally on the walls, of old Mexico, and matching woodwork from railings to the mirrors in the rooms to the couches. They even had a free made-to-order breakfast with all the guests sitting together on a large wooden table.
Of course, as has been the case in most places since beginning travel during a pandemic, there were relatively few guests, so, as was the case in our stay in Zipolite last year where we were the only guests in the hotel, it felt like the whole place was ours. The staff made us feel that way as well.
During our stay in Polanco, we decided to take a dawn balloon ride over the historic ruins of Teotihuacan. Little did my then-girlfriend Juliana Tabares know then, but I had a plan. We had kicked around the idea of getting married before. Last October, during our stay at Iska Ashram in Cali, Colombia, I wrote my book “This is How it Feels to Heal.” After our time there, we returned to Pereira, and, following a ceremony we attended with an Indigenous doctor of sorts, a Taita, I felt I had some things I needed to tend to.
When I returned for the holidays, while I was in one of the two cities I call my hometown, Athens, Georgia, I went by a local shop I have known for years to get an engagement ring. I carried that ring in a side pocket in my backpack until the pre-dawn hours of Juliana’s, or Juli’s, 40th birthday on 19 January.
Thus it was there, a couple of thousand feet above the Sun Temple at Teotihuacan, that Juli turned to me and said, “Make a wish; we are over one of the most powerful places on Earth.”
That was the opening I was looking for. So I said, “Okay, Juli, I wish you would marry me.”
She was stunned. “Are you really doing this?” she said wide-eyed.
“Yes, will you marry me?” I replied.
“Yes!” she replied.
The balloon pilot was stunned. He had already arranged for a group of guys to hold a banner on one of the roads we passed saying “Happy Birthday” to Juli. Still, he had no idea this was going to happen.
So it was, I exchanged a girlfriend for a fiance.
The fact that we have friends in Mexico City, with whom we celebrated the news, has been a bonus to our time here. Juli’s friends from Colomba, Juliana and her husband Diego live here now, and a friend of ours from Playa Del Carmen, who is originally from the U.S., Michael M., also happened to be here for much of the time we have been in the city. So we have spent a lot of time together.
Thus far in our travels, Micheal is the only person we have seen in a second location. However, it appears we will be seeing more of him as we may visit him at his apartment in Costa Rica. Later, we all plan to go to Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, perhaps simultaneously.
Setting aside the lodging in Napoli, the neighborhood where we spent the last four weeks, has been great. But, like the comparison of Condesa to Polanco for lunch, it is about one step lower. That said, the neighborhood itself has plenty of restaurants, nightlife, and of course, The World Trade Center, which is always hustling and bustling with activity.
In the end, our time in Mexico City has been outstanding. We have been to many of the sites to see, so to speak, on the few occasions we have taken a day off of work. The book that I wrote while in Colombia launched in January and quickly rose to number one in new releases in Shamanism, we spent time with great friends, and we are engaged.
Now, off to another climate and island, living for at least a month. Beyond that, who knows?
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