Essay – On Travel

I started this Patreon with the idea that I’d be doing a lot of traveling, and I wanted to invite y’all to come with me.

Then the pandemic happened, and I stopped traveling.

I’m going to Mexico this week. I’m actually writing and scheduling this to post while I’m gone.

I know I promised to include y’all in some of the planning I’ve been doing when it came to the travel.

But what happens when there just isn’t that much planning?

So I’ll give you what little I’ve done for planning, along with what we have for an itinerary. Just understand that what we have planned may or may not come to pass. We may get there and decide to do something completely different.

That’s part of the beauty of travel. The entire schedule, apart from arrival and departure, is kind of written in pencil.

We’re taking a red-eye to Mexico City and will arrive at 9 AM. I’ve sent the hotel an email, asking if we could check in early. They sent me back a blank message, so I have no idea if it’s going to be possible, or if we’re going to be walking around with our backpacks all day.

I guess that was one of the first decisions I made—we are traveling light and low to the ground. Both Blaze and I will have a small backpack. That’s it. We’ll do one large load of laundry once while we’ve been there a week, but other than that, we will wash stuff in the hotel sink every night.

We aren’t bringing any computers with us. We will have our phones. That’s it. Plus notebooks and pens, so we can do some writing.

But the purpose of this trip isn’t to write. It’s to travel.

I made it easy on us and booked us a hotel for the first three nights in Mexico City.

Everything after that is up in the air.

The basic itinerary I have planned at this time:

Three nights in Mexico City. Fourth day, take a bus to Oaxaca. Find a hotel when we arrive. Stay there for one night. Take an overnight bus the next day from Oaxaca to San Cristobal de la Casas. Stay there one night, then take a bus the next morning to Palenque (might take an overnight bus instead…) Spend one night in Palenque, spend the day doing the ruins, then overnight bus from Palenque to Mexico City. Spend one more night in Mexico City, then fly out the next day.

I know, it sounds like a lot. We may or may not make it to Palenque. Will depend on how we’re feeling about Oaxaca, or if there’s someplace else we decide to go on the spur of the moment. 

How did I choose these locations?

Mexico City was kind of obvious. I didn’t want to go to the coast or a beach town. I wanted to be in a city. Oaxaca was also kind of obvious, as that has a reputation as an artist’s town, with great markets and food.

San Cristobal, quite frankly, got chosen primarily for its proximity to Palenque, which is one of the largest and best Mayan ruins in Mexico. San Cristobal is supposed to be a pretty town, not a lot to do there, but a good place to break our journey. We can go direct from Oaxaca to Palenque, but that’s a 24-hour bus ride. I think it would be better to stop someplace for a day.

So looking at the schedule, there’s actually a good chance that we only go to Oaxaca and then back to Mexico City. We’ll see how busy we want to be, and how much time we want to spend on buses versus just walking around and absorbing being in Mexico.

We can always go back…