03/07/2022
In September of 2020, with no end seemingly in sight to the craziness that was taking place, I decided to "get away" from it all for a while. So, I took a 3-week trip to Mexico splitting time between Cancun and Playa del Carmen.
It was a nice "vacation" but not really what I was looking for. It seemed that it would need to be a much longer stay in a less touristy place to make a real difference and give me the "break" that I craved.
So, I started making plans as soon as I got back home (December of 2020) to take 6 months off by the end of the next year and live in a remote place, experiencing a different culture, food, and people.
There weren't many options available at the time because almost every country was closed to tourists or had strict qualifications and/or mandated 14-day quarantines in place.
Mexico was one of only 6 countries in the world and only 4 in the western hemisphere that had no entry restrictions due to the current world situation. Since I could also drive there from Texas it became the obvious choice.
The plan was to work hard and save so that I could take those 6 months off, not work, just relax and do whatever I wanted. I also needed to reduce my expenses and lifestyle. The last thing I wanted to worry about was money.
So, I sold all my stuff (furniture, furnishings, etc.), gave away most of my clothes, and gave away or threw away most of the rest of what I had spent a lifetime accumulating. It was sometimes stressful but mostly very liberating. Within 10 days most of my "possessions" were gone.
I had spent 3 months carefully planning the next phase which was to do a major renovation on my house and turn it into an Airbnb so that I could, hopefully, have some cash flow coming in while I was gone. I had already emptied the house of everything and so it was time for me to go as well.
So, I went and stayed at my folk's house just days before the demolition was to start on the project. This turned out to be a good thing and allowed my parents and I to spend more time together than we had since I moved out of the house about 40 years earlier.
A few of my buddies who own auto garages checked out my 11-year-old truck for me and told me that the transmission was going out and it would not be a good idea to drive it through Mexico. I sold the F-150 and bought a Ford Ranger which was a much better choice for this trip than a full-size truck.
I had only allowed 2 months for the renovation which is not much time for a project that size, but I had carefully planned this out and had been renovating houses for nearly 40 years and knew that we could get it done with good project management and staying on top of the sub-contractors.
Except for some details, the house was completed, and I was able to stick to my planned departure date. Two days after Thanksgiving, on November 27, 2021, I drove my new truck, packed with what little I owned, and left Houston for the Mexican border.
Four days later I was in living in the mountains of Central Mexico at over 5,000 feet above sea level. I had no way of knowing at that time what would happen to me next or what life would be like in this small mountain town. (More to come.) Spoiler alert: I’m no longer in Mexico.
