🌴The Other Mexico

Mexico City isn't the sun, beach, and sand Mexico, it's the other Mexico

We returned recently from a week in Puerto Vallarta, a resort town for tourists who want to relax on the beach with a drink in their hands during the day and enjoy its restaurants, bars, and clubs at night. It is, in other words, exactly what most people think of when they think of Mexico. But Puerto Vallarta couldn't be more different from Mexico City, the place we've chosen as our second home and want to share with others. And this trip was a stark reminder of that fact. And of the challenges we've taken on here at Eternal Spring.

Before coming to Mexico City for the first time, we weren't particularly interested in Mexico. And our experiences here had ranged from negative to non-committal. We visited Nogales on the border a few times while living in Arizona in the 1990s, and weren't impressed, only returning because some friends wanted to see it. And then we took a week-long vacation to Cancun with the kids in 2013 when they complained about going to Europe too much. (Yes, really.) That trip was a smashing success from their standpoint, but Stephanie and I weren't impressed with the resort, and we didn't have a good meal until we finally got out of there.

The bigger issue is that we're not really beach people, from a vacation standpoint. And I know that puts us at odds with many. Indeed, several of our friends book beach vacations every year, as couples or families, and often during the winter so they can escape the cold temporarily. I get that, of course. But we spent most of our adult lives running off to Europe as frequently as we could, and usually to cities like Paris, Barcelona, and London. And most of Europe is just as cold and dark as the northeast United States in the winter.

The two of us didn't care. Ahead of one trip to Paris in January, Stephanie asked me what we'd do if it rained the entire time we were there. "Then we'll be in Paris in the rain," I responded. And we were. It was cold, dark, and wet. And it was wonderful. It's Paris, of course it was.

The thing is, every place is a compromise. And everyone is different. And so our opinions vary. Washington D.C. is my favorite city in the United States, but it's also extremely expensive and the weather is terrible: It's freezing cold in the winter and hot and humid in the summer. For these reasons, I can't live there, though we've often discussed maybe trying it for a year just to do it. Paris is my favorite city in the world, but it has the same issues as Washington, albeit it with much less air conditioning. And it has many other issues related to flight times and costs, the language barrier, the bureaucracy that would make buying a home or moving there a nightmare, and more.

The magic of Mexico City--to us--is that it delivers everything we love about these and other cities, along with several notable advantages that put it over the top. This comes up a lot. In Why Mexico?, I explain that Mexico--and Mexico City in particular--is less expensive than Europe. It's more accessible, with 4 hour flights during the day vs. 7 or 8 hours overnight to Europe. The climate is dramatically better, with none of the horrible high temperatures in summer or equally horrible low temperatures in the winter. The people are universally friendly here, and delightful, and you will never hear anyone describe the French that way, not once. (And we have good friends there. They agree.) The language is much easier. And more.

The friends we visited with in Puerto Vallarta basically have a time share at a resort there. In the spirit of everyone being different, that's not for us. But sitting in a cabana on the beach and having food delivered--I can't believe I just wrote that--I can at least say that I get the appeal on some level. People want to get away from it all, relax, and spend endless days reading a book or walking on the beach. Many people. Most people.

But this experience made me think about how we spent our time in Europe over nearly 20 years, and about how we now spend our time in Mexico City. And it occurred to me that what we do is different. We're not tourists, of course. But we're also not really travelers. We're just here, living our lives. We did this during three-week home swaps all over Europe for many years. And now we do that here, though our ownership and the growing time we spend here have turned this place into a home. A second home, yes. But a home. We have friends here. Places we visit regularly. Indeed, coming back from Puerto Vallarta--which is the Mexico most people think of when they think of Mexico--was interesting. This place, Mexico City, is our Mexico. The other Mexico, a comfortable and familiar place that we love.

Anyone who has traveled to Europe or even thought of doing so has heard of Rick Steves and his advice to "live like a temporary local." We took that advice to heart in Europe by spending real time there, by just being there. And we've taken that to the next level here in Mexico City. Being a temporary local is a little more involved than Steves claims. It's not enough to buy a baguette and some cheese and have a picnic at the park. (Indeed, I'm not sure most Parisians have ever done that.) You have to let the place become part of you. And you have to become part of the place.

The beach isn't like that. People who vacation on the beach are literally trying to get away from their normal lives, to pretend for some number of days that they have no responsibilities and can just unwind. But we don't do things that way. I often point out that I hate the act of traveling, but I love being in different places. And that's the divide right there. City vs. beach. Vacation vs. traveling vs. just being in a place. Making your home be the place where you are, regardless of where that is at the moment.

The beach is terrific. I get the beach. I understand why people love it. And I assume that the act of going home after an idyllic week in paradise must be terrible. And that they get over it by planning their next trip to a beach.

But that's not us.

Mexico City is our ideal home. But it's not for everyone. The trick, for us, is convincing people to understand why we made this choice, and why we think they should experience it. There's a lot of pushback. Plenty of misconceptions, some caused by the U.S. government and its histrionic safety warnings, some caused by the depictions of this country and city in popular media. Sometimes it's just basic ignorance. Every time someone asks me, "yes, but is it safe?", I want to scream.

But I don't scream, at least not externally. Instead, we started Eternal Spring. And now we're writing a book. And all we hope to accomplish is to open up some minds to the magic of this place. There's no beach, sorry. But I do read books here all the time. It's not a total loss, even if all you want to do is unwind.