OUR NEXT ADVENTURE

Last summer, our big trip was through eastern Canada and the Maritimes, including Newfoundland, a 10,000 mile sojourn in our Leisure Travel Van.  Previous adventures over the past quarter century took us to Europe several times, through the Panama canal, a two-year stint in London, a cruise to the south Pacific islands, sailing the Croatian islands and the Caribbean, a visit to Costa Rica and numerous trips throughout the United States and to Mexico.  All of this and more bring us to today.

We collected a lot of good memories, made new friends along the way, and had the benefit of extensive travel, even when working full time. I just needed to be relatively near an airport.  Now I work part-time and mostly remotely. Our home base for the past three years has been in southern Arizona, south of Tucson, close to the border with Mexico.

We were drawn back to Mexico again and again, sometimes staying for a couple of months at a time. We love the culture, the values, the people and the lifestyle among the Mexicans and the ex-pats, mostly from the U.S. and Canada.  If you want to see some of the differences, consider the following by Warren Hardy, a long-time teacher of Spanish in San Miguel de Allende.  He got this information from ethnologists who have studied the different countries and their values.

All countries have core values, and these values form the basis of social protocol, shares Hardy.  “Mexicans are different from Canadians and Americans,” Warren says, and it goes way beyond “por favor” and “gracias.”

In Canada the core values are:

• Peace
• Order and good government
• Respect for all individuals in society

In the U.S. the core values are:

• Financial opportunity
• Time and the control of it
• Individual freedom

And, in Mexico, he says, “where this tribal nation holds on to the wounds created by history, the way to understand their core values is to understand their history because it is history that defines us all.”

In Mexico the core values are:

• Respect and personal dignity
• Trust
• Family and friends
• Free time

“Respect is key to the Mexican people and at the centre of their core values,” says Hardy.  He adds that Mexico is a country where you can be happily poor because money and the accumulation of worldly goods is not a core value. “Family and respect,” he says, “are more important than a nice home and things.”

We are planning an extended stay in one of our favorite places, San Miguel de Allende, in the state of Guanajuato.  It is in the central highlands, about 2 ½ hours northwest of Mexico City.  It has been a popular tourist spot since the 1930’s, a colonial city filled with art galleries, shops and a rich history.  Never too hot or too cold.  We will be living about 8 miles north of the city in a small development called Los Labradores.   In previous years we stayed on the coast in Nayarit, north of Puerta Vallarta, as well as in SMA.  We also visited other parts of Mexico including Baja California and took an overnight ferry from Loretto to Mazatlan across the Sea of Cortez with our motorhome and a Jeep.  Other visits included Ajijic, Oaxaca and numerous places of interest. On one visit to Mexico early on, we made the mistake of driving from Durango to Mazatlan over the Sierra Madre, in a motorhome towing a car!  It was a two lane, mountainous road with large trucks and many sharp curves.  Now there is a new highway, The Durango-Mazatlán Highway, one of Mexico’s greatest engineering feats, 115 bridges and 61 tunnels across those mountains, a beautiful drive.  We drove back from Mexico one time via that route and recommend it heartily.

Here’s a link with more information on San Miguel, where there are 10,000 ex-pats in residence.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-guide/san-miguel-de-allende

I hope to send some posts from Mexico once we get settled in.  If you have any questions or plan to visit, let us know.  We are not travel experts or professionals in that arena although we are familiar with various forms of travel and numerous places to visit and enjoy.  Hasta la vista!