I've tried twice to write up a succinct description of my Mexico trip, and there is no way to sum it up without turning it into a wall of text that I just don't think is that interesting to read, but I don't have enough perspective on it to be able to pull out the important or salient points. Suffice it to say that we couldn't find the rental house the first night, and after looking for it for over an hour in the dark, we gave up and got an emergency hotel room, and that was only one of at least three things going wrong at the time. It was pretty stressful and non-vacationy feeling.

We did eventually find the house the next day, and we got a discount on two nights' stay, because the owner hadn't given us instructions on how to find it. And the day after that, my suitcase arrived and I finally had swimsuits and tropical-friendly clothing, which really improved my mood a lot.

The middle of the trip was killer. We visited several cenotes, which were as magical as I've imagined (cave snorkeling!!!) and some ruins, and a super chill beach restaurant serving (among other things) whole fried fish and micheladas.

The house was just gorgeous, and private and magical, with a deck just above treetop height, so we had a long view across the top of the mangrove swamp to the sunset each night.

I hated the Tulum beach stretch. On the scale of 0="this place is for locals" and 10="this place is for tourists", my vacation sweet spot is probably about a 4-5. I occasionally like a 1-2, but not for a chilling vacation, which is what this was. I'm happy to be able to venture out and find a cocktail or some good coffee, but I don't want all the local flavor to have been steamrolled by the capitalistic race to the most tourist-oriented comforts of "home". This is the first and only time I've been to a tropical beach and found not a single store selling colorful sundresses. Almost all the clothes for sale were earth toned upscale hippy clothing in linen for $300-600 an item for people half my size. I know so many people who love Tulum, and now that I've been there, I can comfortably say: huh???

But we were toured around by a super earnest and friendly young taxi driver, who put together a great introduction to the area for us, and was a great tour guide and general company, and so we really did have a great time during the week.

Also, I spoke more Spanish than I have in YEARS, and I got a bunch of really surprised reactions to my accent, which is evidently better than I realized: more than once, someone handed me the Spanish version of the menu thinking that Spanish was my first language on the basis of my accent. Gratifying!

Which is good, because getting home was another shitshow, with my flight getting delayed by 6 hours after a flight attendant had to be evacuated by ambulance to the hospital and we waiting for a new flight attendant to arrive from NY. Then we took off only to turn around 5 minutes later when the captain said there was "a problem with the ventilation system" and we landed back in Cancun ... where we then had to go BACK through customs, because there was no other plane for us, so we spent another night in Cancun, only it was actually an hour away from Cancun, because where else will you find enough rooms for a plane full of people on short notice on a Saturday night in Spring Break Season in Cancun?

It does make a pretty good story over drinks, and I actually do feel like I had a vacation, but as one of my travel companions said once we were all home: "I am glad [that trip] happened but goddamn if it didn't feel like a test I didn't know I was taking in a subject I haven't studied."

I'm really glad to be home.

Monday was a travel day. I departed Puerto Morelos in the morning, catching a bus to the main terminal in Cancun, where had a couple hour wait for the bus to Chiquilá, the final mainland town before hopping a boat to Isla Hotbox, which is a peninsula, not an island, but there's nothing in the connecty bit, so it might as well be an island.

I adore traveling by bus in Central America; it's incredibly inexpensive, and it's more experiential than any other form of travel I've found. In particular, I love how, once you're out of a city, the bus will stop to pick up and drop off food vendors, who bring their wares onto the bus for people to purchase en route, which is especially nice when one doesn't plan ahead for a long ride.

That said, I also find it super stressful an anxiety-producing to be going by bus route that I'm not familiar with through bus stations I don't know. I always worry I'm going to miss my bus or get on the wrong one or miss my stop or get off at the wrong one and accidentally wind up somewhere horrible with no hotels or food or anything. This has never happened, mind you, but it doesn't stop me feeling nervous that it might happen any time I let my guard down!

So, it's scary and hard. But it's also super satisfying!

And, as has been the case in the past, nothing bad happened. I bought a bag of oranges from one of the bus vendors, and when we got to Chiquilá, I get on a small boat that left right away, rather than wait for the ferry, which would have meant waiting about 30 minutes. This in turn meant that I was able to jump in the ocean before getting a drink at my hotel's delightful little beach bar and then venturing out for dinner.

This is the garden between me and the beach:


This is what happened at sunset that first evening:


This place is basically the epitome of what I envisioned when I set out to have a tropical paradise vacation. It's got the sleepy, low-key vibe of island culture, and while there are activities to do, there's a lot of simply lounging around and enjoying what's right in front of you. The water is this amazing milky green color, unlike anything I've seen before. We're on the Gulf of Mexico here, so it's not the clear turquoise of the Caribbean, which I guess some people this is a drawback, but I'm delighted. And the beach is just littered with shells, mostly tiny ones, but there are occasionally beautiful larger ones also. I'm not a huge shell collector, but I expect to be bringing some of my favorites home with me.

I might depart here someday, but I'm glad that day isn't today.

I arrived in Cancun mid afternoon yesterday, and with one brief, heartstopping moment of panic when the first ATM I tried didn't accept my non-chip card, it was a pretty smooth transfer to my lodging in Puerto Morelos, about 30 minutes south of the airport. Two hours after landing, I was in the ocean, which I think is a personal record, so that was pretty awesome.

The place I'm staying is very sweet, with a variety of rooms in small, two story structures scattered about, with some greenery between. Last night, I had a spacious room with three beds and beautiful fanciful murals and a gorgeous tub tiled with shells.





This morning, the proprietor offered me a room closer to the ocean and with a better view, and I jumped on it, so tonight I get to sleep in a bed suspended from the ceiling by ropes!



There are hammocks everywhere -- two on every private porch/patio, and a large palapa on the beach with four. It's great. And the beach is right here!

The one down side is that the ocean right in front here is a sort of messy/rocky entrance, which makes it more of a chore to get in and out, though once in past waist deep, it's delightful. Still, I was really picturing vast sandy stretches, and in my travel-weary state last night, this set off a whole cascade of doubt about this whole endeavor. "What if I've made a horrible mistake and this is going to be three weeks of not-as-awesome that I just have to endure?? Maybe I should go back to Boston?"

I tried to talk my brain out of the tree with logic ("You're tired and worn out and you just got here; things will probably seem better in the morning!" and "Every big adventure has this moment; it will pass!"), which didn't stop me feeling that way, but it did prevent me from losing my shit about it. Instead, I went into town and had fish tacos on a patio while listening to a local musician, and then I came back and had a beer and went to bed.

And, indeed, this morning, I felt better. I also decided to move my travel plans around a little bit to spend 2 fewer days here and 2 more days at my next destination, which I suspect will have beaches more in line with what I'm envisioning, but there are a couple of things around here that I'm hoping to see that won't be at either of my other destinations: a spectacular coral reef that's swimmable from shore (though I will have to bike or get a taxi to that spot, which is north of where I am), and cenotes, which are these giant, water-filled limestone sinkholes that you can swim in and explore.

Tomorrow is a local market, and more very important reading and swimming to do. So, you know, so far, so good.

I just arrived home from a week+ in Costa Rica with my family and contessagrrl, which was super nice. It was amazing to be away in the warmth and sunshine for a week in the middle of winter (and a week containing two major storms -- it's surreal arriving into the current state of things). The second storm led to my original return flight yesterday being canceled, and Copa (who I can't recommend flying with, if you can avoid it) said the soonest flight back to Boston would be FRIDAY, which, no. So I wound up flying to JFK last night instead, and then made the final hop to Logan this morning. It's incredibly restful to be home after three days of active travel.

This was my first time in Costa Rica, and I really liked it. It's visibly better funded than Guatemala (the Central American country I have the most experience with), and it took me a little while to get used to potable water coming from the taps. San Jose didn't strike my fancy, though I didn't really set out to explore it much, but the countryside is fantastically lush and beautiful.

The day we drove to Dominical, taking the mountain route, we wound up on a crazy little detour off the highway that started out paved but quickly turned into an incredibly steep and twisty dirt road that left us all wondering if we'd taken a wrong turn. A quick consultation with another driver confirmed we were in the right place, and I think we spent about 30 minutes of the most difficult driving I've ever done. I was glad to have both a manual transmission and four wheel drive.

The rest of the drive was winding and gorgeous, to an elevation of over 11,000' before dropping down to sea level at a rate that made the changes in the air noticeable moment to moment.

Dominical wasn't much to write home about as a town, but I liked the house we rented, and it was walking distance to the beach, down an unpaved street. The beach was grey sand and had a pretty foamy break that was popular with surfers (which is why we chose it -- my brother's big into surfing recently), and although it wasn't my favorite ocean swimming conditions, the water was bathtub warm and wonderful to be in.

Other highlights include the next door restaurant that had super delicious batidos (smoothies), the intense and restorative massages (two of them!), and the beauty of Manuel Antonio park. I also got a surprising amount of my Spanish back, to the point that I transacted a pretty complicated exchange at the airport in Spanish on my return -- to my great satisfaction! And I think I might have drunk my weight in fresh coconut water, drunk right from the coconut. Oh! And I finally got to try a cashew fruit! It was horrible.

This is the first big vacation that my family and I have taken since we were all together in Guatemala for Christmas in 2003, and it was such a pleasure to be traveling together, so of course that, in concert with the novel and tropical setting, my companions were the biggest overall highlight. I hope we manage to do something like this again before another 11 years have passed!

And now, I'm enjoying the fullness of the pleasure of being home, even if it does require several layers of wool. It also includes a purring cat for my lap. Is there any sweeter satisfaction to travel than the first night in your own bed, no matter how good the vacation was?

Fall is busy. This month, I have:

3 days in Maine, starting tomorrow. One final weekend of wedding prep for friends' upcoming nuptials, then possibly a 2-day trip to CA, then a 2-day meeting I'm leading, but the second day of which I will hand off to my team so I can do wedding stuff. Then the wedding, then the following weekend the Food for Free fundraiser and sleep. The next Monday, I go to Maine again for 3 days, then spend a night at home before heading to CA, and from there, to Austin for the first week in November. What is even happening?

I actually feel really oversubscribed, both in my calendar and in my head. I'm also in the middle of about 50 gazillion conversations about what my job might be next year and trying to be clear in my head and heart about what's right and best for me in that. This will invariably mean letting down between 3 and 400 people.

Having put this all down on paper over the weekend, I realized that I will do better to start proactively doing a little scheduling bonsai, so I'm trying to move one CA trip and block some big chunks of time for self-care and introvert time.

Here goes!

Hello, California! I will be in you from late in the evening February 16 - the morning of February 26.

Commence awesomeness!

Although you can't see it, now that I'm back from California (and Southern California specifically), my feet have sandal tan lines. I love sandal tan lines.

I've been in California for about a month now, and I've hardly posted about it. In some ways, I feel like I've hardly had time to do it, and in other ways, I've had so much time that it hasn't seemed necessary to put anything down in words.

Being here is a delight. Of course it mainly comes down to the people, as it always does. contessagrrl, sol3 and elvendoll have so completely welcomed me into their home as a temporary roommate that I've been calling the House of Trouble "home" basically since day 1. It has been such a treat to see them and other people out here in a more day-to-day way than I ever have before. Even so, there are plenty of people who I've only seen once or twice; there are a lot of fantastic people around here.

It has also driven home how completely I have a foot on the ground here, and one in Boston. I've been trying to "solve" that problem for years -- always toying with the idea of moving here, and somewhere in the back of my head aware that as soon as I move here, I'll switch from missing my SF people all the time to missing my Boston people all the time. This is true, and it's going to keep being true, and there's no fixing it.

Over the weekend, I had an important realization that not only is there no solution, but that perhaps this isn't actually a problem as such. I think I really like and value having a foot in both places, not just in terms of where I live, but in all sorts of ways in my life. I have occasionally thought -- sometimes with a certain amount of self-flagellation for not being a "good" career woman -- that I'm just not a person who has a clear career path. But it's true in a lot of ways that I'm a generalist. I really like variety, and I think this kind of split and balance is actually really important to my happiness and sense of self. That doesn't stop it also being frustrating and sometimes unsatisfying, but it doesn't make it wrong or bad, and so it might be a big favor to myself if I can stop feeling like I need to figure it out.

I still do need to figure out what I'm going to do for work, of course, but that feels like a more manageable project, suddenly. Know anyone who wants to hire me?

I arrived in San Francisco Monday night, and although I haven't actually been busy every moment since then, it certainly has felt that way.

I'm vastly enjoying the luxury of having a long visit here stretching in front of me. I know in four weeks, I'm going to look back on that statement and wonder what I was thinking, because the time will fly, but certainly compared to a week-long or 10 day visit, being here for five weeks is delightfully plentiful.

Yesterday, I met with a couple of temp agencies in hopes of getting a short assignment while I'm here. Half of me hopes I get one, and half of me hopes I don't, so I guess either way, I win.