17 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Click to enlarge.
You gotta love these people: no one really knows where they came from, no one really knows what happened to them (even though they built what was the largest city in the Americas at the time), their primary deity was a woman, and they built the coolest pyramids around.
14 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
“I was born a bitch,” Frida Kahlo used to say. The folk/surrealist artist has long been revered in Mexico for her art, her brash behavior, her dismal life story, and her legion of lovers. We visited the Casa Azul, where she was born in 1907 and used as home base, in the old and beautiful neighborhood of Coyoacan, now a part of Mexico City.
11 Tuesday Mar 2014
“Today we will visit a bakery.”
That was Vicky, our tour guide. To be fair, I’m as much a lover of chouquettes and panettones as the next guy, but we had committed five of our precious remaining expat days, and paid big money for airline tickets, hotels, and the tour itself — and now Vicky is dragging us to a bakery. This was Mexico City, the largest metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere! What happened to Aztek ruins, Mesoamerican pyramids, Diego Rivera murals?
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05 Wednesday Mar 2014
Julia is small, maybe five feet, and a spry seventy-something — the perfect candidate for a Charlie Chaplin costume. The day she penguin-walked into our living room the applause was loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Continue reading
03 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
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Approaching Las Caletas beach from Banderas Bay. Credit: Vallarta Adventures
Marcia and I were happy to get seats in the front row for the outdoor show. Friends forever, we were catching up during her first trip to Puerto Vallarta, when suddenly she let out a shriek of sheer horror. Inches away from her knee was an iguana, its ruffled scaly crown waggling, its long rubbery tail slashing about. And it was big. As big as a man.
28 Friday Feb 2014
Posted in Travel
Finding apartments to camp in while abroad is the fun job that falls to me. I love it! Who wouldn’t love peeking into people’s homes in a foreign country? But I have learned much and am ready to pass it on to you, one step at a time:
20 Thursday Feb 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
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Our front yard here at Los Tules is a swimming pool. Right now, at 10 a.m., all of its 24 lounge chairs are occupied, as usual.
Five are occupied by people, one by a teddy bear, and eighteen by towels. The towels are meant to reserve the chairs for people who won’t come until later — people who don’t want anyone else to use these chairs until they’re good and ready to do it themselves. It’s not uncommon in resorts and along parade routes world wide, but here in Los Tules it is a very touchy subject.
13 Thursday Feb 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
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Snakes and lizards slithering through the jungle, slitted eyes tracking prey, anticipating nourishment fanged into deadly submission. That’s what my stepson Ted and I signed up for when we parted with our money to take the “Jungle ATV Tour” that was offered by a local agency here in Puerto Vallarta. Continue reading
07 Friday Feb 2014
I’ve never stopped to think about it, but now that I do, I find it surprising that for people who travel as much as we do, we hardly ever talk about money. We didn’t meet each other until we were in our sixties, so we each brought our own finances to the relationship. As time went on we never merged our finances, electing instead to establish a joint bank account to which we contributed whenever it got low. The joint account pays for rent, food, and other common expenses. Other than that, we each have our own checking and investment accounts to do with as we please. The other night, during our customary cocktail at sunset, we just happened to mention our individual savings accounts: They have grown considerably since we began our travels. Continue reading
05 Wednesday Feb 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
Traveling as we do, we meet a lot of people. Conversations ensue. Questions are asked, and among the first is, “Where do you live?” Then the familiar words: vagabond, expat, ne’er-do-well, and homeless.
Homeless.
After we tell the story of our travels — so well-rehearsed we can recite it in our sleep — comes the inevitable question: “What will you do next?”
Our answer has always been, “We don’t know.” But now, with less than sixty days remaining of our planned expat adventure — less than sixty days! — we have decided.
We’re going home.
The Expat Almanac 