Expat Life Yes, Travel, No Thanks

Valentinos at sunset

I distinctly remember the disappearance. Wet leaves still matted the streets and the dogwoods were just beginning to bud. It was no longer winter and not yet spring. Suddenly, walking down Strawberry Street in Richmond, after finishing a cheeseburger at the iconic Strawberry Street Café, it disappeared.  Out of nowhere, as I walked home, I suddenly became conscious that, still in my 40’s, I'd lost any interest in vacation traveling. 

I was horrified. I’d always considered myself an adventurer. I had backpacked through Europe as a college student. I’d never said no to a ski, scuba or mountain biking trip throughout my adulthood. But the trips my friends talked about these days held no interest.

When I hinted to them this bewildering lack of appetite for travel, they responded as if I had said I’d never taken a taxi. To not like to travel is to be a hayseed to people who can spend an entire cocktail party like this:

“Have you been to Kenya?”” 

“Oh yes, I particularly enjoyed my last trip there.”

 “Did you see [fill in] while you were there?

“Yes, I saw that!” Did you see [another tourist site]

“Oh yes, I saw that. Have you been to...?”

And on they to the next person and begin the same inquiry. What amuses memost about all this one upmanship is that someone invariably goes to a really horrible place, and being unable to admit it was horrible (pictures really can tell a story), they talk it up. As a result, the horrible place ends up on the crowd’s must-see list and together they continue to weave the web for the unsuspecting.

At first, I felt self-conscious about my lack of enthusiasm for vacation trips. I’d pepper my traveling friends with questions, a part of me hoping these recounts would fire up a desire that felt odd in its absence. “So, exactly why did you choose Uzbekistan?”

I began to commiserate with my grandmother. She used to watch television travel shows. Years later she became convinced she had actually been to the places they featured. Like in the movie Total Recall where a construction worker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) receives an implanted memory of a wild adventure on Mars, my grandmother remembered in vivid detail all the places she'd never been. I started thinking perhaps she was on to something. Traveling without the airports, foreseen an unforeseen outlays, sweating and taking pictures of rocks. 

Now that I live in Mexico, a tourist town as well as a fishing capital, I still haven’t been on any of the guided tours and paid experiences that visitors have.

However, in my one little island of Mexican existence, I have spent several hours discussing the transformative quality of loss with a Mexican stranger in her language. I have had numerous and hilarious conversations with expat friends about the pros and cons of having a Mexican boyfriend, The Great Is-It-Mexico-or-is-it-just-Juan Debate, under beach palapas as part of an ongoing exploration of culture versus individual and how to distinguish one from another..

I haggled with Mazatlán cab drivers in the middle of the night until we both broke down laughing. I’ve celebrated Mexican birthdays in el campo, showing off my renowned matador dance and singing along to regional songs El Nino Perdido or 17 Años. Periodically, they’d kidnap me late and night for the simple pleasure of cruising the entire drag between El Centro and La Brujas, passing through party zones, beachfront and ultimately the bridges over the marina.

I've surveyed the ocean not just night after night, but month after month. I’ve studied it in every mood and every quality of light, including pitch black nights when only the starry points of light of fishing boats gave any comfort in the inky void. I’ve studied it in hurricane force winds which felt like an equal privilege.

After a full summer of seeing me waiting on the other side of the little inlet separating Marina El Cid from Sabalo and fetching me to take me across to my gym, the ferry pilot, Felipe, decided to let me steer the boat. We’d move wordlessly in the darkness  listening to the lone sound of fish breaching alongside the boat.

I have spent evenings cooking dinners with close Mexican friends, learning how to make a tortilla (and found I lack the bicep strength) or how cook an arrechera steak, nights spent laughing over both the mundane and surreal. These are the things you do when you've established a relationship with a place, not skipped through a fleeting two-week affair anchored by a hotel suite.

Scuba diving years ago in the Florida Keys, I remember my PADI instructor telling the students not to swim too hard when far below the surface. He told us that if you breathe normally and sit quietly, beautiful fish will get used to you being there and they will swim much closer to you. If you are swimming hard, they will dash away. By being very still in Mexico, meaningful experiences have come to me without the effort, stress and financial investment of a two week trip.

When I travel through a place, rather than live in it for an extended period of time, I know that intimacy with it is beyond my grasp, and like the person who feels a sudden emotional connection with a stranger but only has time to smile and pass by.

Yesterday on a bus, I heard tourists around me figuring out where to get off and the location of certain bars and El Centro, the historic district. I was glad I’d be disembarking to take only a familiar 10 minute walk along the beach strand to get home, pour a glass of wine and gaze from my rooftop at the multi-colored lights strung along the length of the 13 mile malecón, as I’ve done many nights.

Whenever I think that I might be feeling that mobilizing rush, that restlessness to travel to places that I won't ever call home, the desire to roam slips through my fingers like water.

About the Author: Kerry Baker

Ventanas Mexico which provides advice and resources to those considering exploring full or part-time expat-life in Mexico.  

“The Mexico Solution:  Saving your sanity, money and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico ” is a game plan for moving and adapting to life in Mexico.  Most recently I wrote The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico. To eat healthy in Mexico, you have to cook. This cookbook tells you how to cook healthy meals in context of an unfamiliar culture.