What a wonderful life here in Todos Santos. First, apologies for not updating for a few days but my excuse is that we’ve simply been enjoying the new environment so much that we haven’t taken the time to write. It would have almost been a chore to do so, but now after being here a few days and soaking it all in, it’s time to provide a little color as to our life here in Mexico.
To start, we’re staying in a lovely home (Julie put up a little home tour in the videos section of the website) that belongs to Mike, a college friend of my father’s that we’ve become friends with over the years, and his wife Penny. They retired a couple years ago and moved down to Todos Santos to be full time residents here. They started with the one bedroom house we’re now staying in and have recently moved into a larger home they’ve had built. They have all sorts of fun hobbies (horses, art, surfing, biking, eating, traveling, etc.) all of which we are enjoying getting to be part of.
We arrived in Todos Santos on Tuesday of this past week and it has been so nice. We have seen Mike and Penny each day, but we also have our own space and time to do what we want. We are about a mile away from them and three miles from the center of town. We buy our own groceries and have been cooking quite a bit. I’ve been using almost all local ingredients and have had fun figuring out how to make my own refried beans from scratch, rice, veggies, and guacamole, all to go with the fantastic fresh corn and flour tortillas we buy at the market. We have been running at least once each day, walking quite a bit, and doing core workouts. We have been reading a lot (we got a new Kindle) as well as doing some logistics work to set up some of our next travel plans (Guatemala anyone?).
We have been to the beach for boogie boarding one day and we went out for surfing yesterday. Mike is an avid surfer and is a great teacher. Julie wasn’t into getting on the board but she had fun videotaping me getting pummeled by the waves. I loved it and after a few times of getting pounded by the waves, was able to feebly get my uncoordinated body into a standing position to ride some of the waves in. It was lots of fun and the water of the Pacific Ocean is finally a good temperature so we’re not freezing and can actually enjoy being in the water (the Pacific is really cold all the way from Washington down to San Diego).
As we do with all our friends and family, we’ve been enjoying good food and good conversations. Mike and Penny are very fun and interesting people. They’re also some of the only people we know that have retired abroad, something which we admire and are very interested in ourselves. We have also had fun talking with locals and practicing our Spanish. Julie is actually very good and is getting over her fear of failure by speaking more and more with the locals. She is also having fun being the expert with me and teaching me since my Spanish is pretty messy (though it is pretty effective).
All in all, it’s been a great first few days in Mexico. We’re not planning much and basically taking it day by day. We have some short trip ideas in the works but no major commitments. We should be back in the States by the end of the month before embarking on a cross country drive back to Ohio and back to the East Coast for a few months. As always, we’re trying to enjoy life and experience it as fully as we can.