Perception Precedes Reality - Warhol

CORRECTION: At the bottom of this blog post I listed a fake email address and password. I forgot to include which email company the address was for. The address should be Anomads@outlook.com and the password is 2023nomads.

If you check out our Itinerary page for the period of February 14 to the 28th you’ll notice that we were supposed to be spending two weeks in a house in the jungle. We were there last year and while it was relaxing, it may have been too isolated. We decided this year that two weeks in the jungle was too much quiet and so we had two weeks open. Instead, we booked an all-inclusive (to give us a break from our “normal hectic” lives) for one week. That left the one week open (Feb. 14th through the 20th).

After much discussion and research, we looked at places that we could fly to in about two hours that are non-stop from the Cancun airport. We looked at a town west of Mexico City called San Miguel de Allende, which has been called “The Most Beautiful City in the World” by “Travel and Leisure” magazine. We looked at Caribbean islands, we looked all over. Finally, we decided to stay close by, Cancun itself.

We opted to not stay along the tourist strip with all the high-rise hotels and condos and stay in a residential area of Cancun. So, this past Monday we took the ferry from Isla Mujeres to Cancun and then had a driver take us to our condo in south Cancun in an area called Cumbres. Cumbres is described online as “an upscale residential area with privacy, tranquility, security, and green everywhere.” To us it looks like you’ve stepped into one of the nicer parts of Orlando, or the Mainline, or San Francisco, to name a few. Below are a few pictures of our local area and surroundings.

Across the grass barrier is a large shopping center with a Sam’s, Walmart Express grocery store, and the best wine store we’ve seen in Mexico. Within walking distance is Friday’s, Starbucks, PetCo, Domino’s, a Hampton Inn and a 7-Eleven.

Hold On!

We’re going to take a pause from writing in the first-person plural and change to first-person singular…namely me, John

John Here: I’m writing this next section without input from Nancy because I’m not sure if she would agree with the following. So here goes. If you were to ask me what my image of Mexico is, as an American who digests a lot of news and feels pretty up on world affairs, I’d have to say that it’s poor, dirty, and often violent. Now, we’ve been to Mexico for a number of years, but we’ve been to tourist sections, such as Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum.

All these places cater to tourists. The majority of Mexicans we meet are hospitality workers who are always friendly and speak better English than I do Spanish. I never think of these tourist towns as representing the rest of Mexico. In my mind the rest of Mexico is a poor third world country with poor infrastructure and dirt roads.

While I'll admit there are definitely poor villages, this week in Cumbres, plus our research on San Miguel de Allende have opened my eyes to another Mexico, not the tourist one, but one with excellent infrastructure and built for regular Mexicans: one where you can have your dog groomed at PetCo and grab a hotdog at Seven-11 and live in a great neighborhood. Plus the people you meet are all friendly even though they're not in hospitality!

Whoa…Wait One...

Nancy just read over my shoulder and agrees with me so far, so back to first-person plural.

Often, we imagine only one image of a country based on what we read, the social media we subscribe to, or the news stations we listen to. This can lead to a somewhat prejudicial view of that country and its citizens. For example, what’s your first impression if we were to say, “the Ukraine” or “Israel” or “Mexico” even?

We now look at Mexico and see a country with a diverse landscape, areas of poverty and areas of riches, places where the roads are dirt and other places where they are superior. Pretty much any country struggling to remain free.

As we looked at Mexico this week, from a different place, we wonder how many other countries and people we have misjudged?

End of Musing

We realize we haven’t given you much travel blog today, so we’ve provided other interesting things we’ve done and seen. If you go over to our Sights section you'll notice we've changed the format a bit and added two new "Sightings:" first up is a look at the Mayan statue garden in Punta Sur (the South Point of Isla Mujeres) and then a look at the colorful cemeteries we saw on Isla.

One Last Thing

Back to those pesky comments at the bottom of the page. If you're one of those people who doesn't want to sign in to leave a comment try this workaround. We've set up a pretend email address that you can use if it asks for an email address and password. When it asks for an email address, enter Anomad2023@outlook.com (Use a capital A; the rest are lowercase. The password to enter is 2023nomads (all lowercase). Hopefully, we'll hear from more of you---we miss you all.

Until next time,

Adios,

Nancy and John