THE BACKSTORY
I crash landed here in Puerto Vallarta on November 14th after 133 days of travel.
That is a little over 1/3 of a year. 36% of one to be exact.
I left home July 5th, on Jimdependence Day, and only ended up staying at 1 place over 4 days total from there on. Everything after that last day of normalcy had been non-stop. I'd been keeping up with reservations, visas, not one but TWO flights home for best friends' weddings, and I'd been outrunning my health insurance expiration date. A 'rest' of sorts was needed.
I don't know if anyone reading this has traveled for more than 3 weeks at a time before, but it's absolutely exhausting, I tell you. It's difficult to operate like this for this long, or at least it has been for me.
I've discovered my internal batteries:
-I have a battery that goes by hunger and replenishes with each meal.
- I have a 'daily' battery which recharges with every nights' sleep.
-I've also discovered a long-term battery that hums in the background over the long term.
Sometimes I'm tired of the 'grind' of discovering new things every day and working out places to sleep. Sometimes, after a few days or even weeks of operating non-stop, I don't have the drive to explore new places. Sometimes? I just want to watch TV, read, and sleep.
"On a ride of a lifetime, you just wanna watch TV?" Yes. YOU try operating like this for this long. It feels unsustainable!
From the get-go, I knew that I wanted to stay in Mexico in one spot for a while. I had planned a breather, a place I could relax and gather myself, and a place I could take stock. Maybe get a tattoo I'd been planning for years. Do some routine bike maintenance. More importantly, I could acclimatize myself to Latin American life again.
I could get used to all of the little things, like how bad restaurant service can be without the asinine practice of obligatory tipping. The practice of keeping few coins on you in case you need to use a public restroom. I needed to work on my Spanish Language acquisition, this time Mexican. Getting used to using public laundry and full-service gas stations. Water rationing. There are a ton of learning curves all over the place I need to fumble through and I wanted to do them while I was in a safe place where mistakes wouldn't be as consequential.
MY TIME
I have 6 months on my visa here in Mexico. It's the longest I'll have in any country in this hemisphere. Even in the US for Saga 4, I was inhibited by an expiring health insurance timeline. With all this newfound breathing room I found an apartment in Puerto Vallarta and rested.
I spent 3 weeks reaching out to family and friends and catching up. I worked on my writing and video editing on my phone. I had a friend arriving from Montreal who would experience the town with me when she arrived, so I made it a point to not explore too much. I found myself actually starting to be come a hermit. I would rarely go out. I began to think the city or country I was in 'wasn't for me' because I was feeling so hesitant to explore. I put a wall up.
When Julie-Anne arrived from Canada, she got to work right away. She was someone who travels as people normally do: Everything, everywhere, all at once. The clock is ticking on her vacation calendar and she wants to make these hours count before she returns to regular life. It was that kind of invigorating push to get out there that broke me out of my shell.
We didn't just explore Puerto Vallarta, over the 5 weeks she was here, we went all over Jalisco and even into the neighboring state of Nayarit. We went on Tequila tours, went to Lucha Libre, experienced at least a dozen museums, went on hiking trails, partied with locals and other backpackers, and kept each other company over Christmas and New Years.
The Holidays can be an emotionally taxing time for people living on the road. For westerners, many of us spend our youth being around extended family for the holidays practicing our traditions. Seeing Christmas decorations such as fake pine trees, cartoon snow men, and nativity scenes in the tropics was strange but it was also a reminder that I was far from home. Julie-Anne and I kept each other company through a time that would've been tough alone. I'm very grateful for it.
STRANGE PERSPECTIVE
Somehow, in my mind, Minnesota is still in summer. I keep feeling like I haven't been on the road that long which makes no sense. I feel like the life I left behind is still there, as if the world froze in time behind me. My apartment, which I left bare as I closed my door that last time, still feels like it's there waiting for me. It's like my travels in the Arctic were somehow years ago. So much life has happened since then. I've never had an upheaval of time like this before. My sense of time is completely twisted. There are timelines all over the place, so it probably won't all make sense until long from now when I look back on all this.
Either way, I must press southward. Well, I guess I will eventually. I might be taking a few detours.
WHAT'S NEXT?
I'm sitting here typing this now 2 days after Julie-Anne's departure. I dropped her off at the airport and returned to the apartment alone. I don't know when I'll find a travel partner again. It doesn't happen often in a life like this. It's taken some adjusting, I'm super sad to see her go, so I'm hunkering down in my work to plan what's next in the short- and long-term.
I'm in the process of aligning some last-minute things, such as getting my teeth cleaned (it's been 7 months), a haircut (it's been 1.5 months), getting my last tattoo session (it's been 2 weeks), fixing a small engine issue, and cleaning my clothes just before I head out. I'm backing up videos and pictures. I'm writing out my feeeeeeelingggsss like I am here.
I'm looking at heading to a motorcycle rally in Sinaloa to the north, not 1 month after a massive firefight broke out between the Mexican government and the Sinaloa Cartel there. It scares and excites me, so I think I'm going to take one of the most dangerous motorcycle highways in Mexico, the Espinazo del Diablo (Devil's Backbone) to Mazatlan from Durango to calm my nerves.
Mexico city is also on the horizon. My whole experience of Mexico hinges on what I do before and after I visit that extremely massive metropolis.
I have a loose idea of how I'll drop into Central America to being Saga 6.
So this is it. This is the last of the Vallarta Diary entries. Saga 5 continues as soon as I close this apartment door for the last time.
-JT
1/16/2022