"Swimming in a Postcard" (travel)
Swimming in a postcard
As a family, we have been fortunate enough to land a one-month house / pet-sitting
job in a beautiful southern Mexico town on the Mexico / Belize border. This place
is little known internationally, but the Mexicans and Belize locals are very familiar
with this "real Mexico" place that rivals any South Pacific destination, and it has
been utterly amazing!
You see, upon learning that as Americans we could travel full-time much more
affordably than staying in the US, I as a newly single mom made the executive
decision to take my two boys on the adventure of a lifetime. We had hit a time in our
lives where all three of us felt like our lives were meaningless, stuck and that we
were all in a rut. That needed to change! All I needed to figure out was the logistics
and make it happen. So, I took action and just over a week ago we headed to the
closest foreign neighbor south of the border: Mexico.
Yesterday one of my sons wanted to stay home and just watch a movie, so with my
other son by my side, we decided we'd head to the lagoon to take a swim. Having
been here over a week now, we've gotten into a regular routine of waking up, feeding
the five dogs we're in charge of and then going to get our morning breakfast at a
local restaurant just one block away. My younger son attends his online school and
then we spend the afternoon exploring Laguna Bacalar (Bacalar Lagoon) or Cenote
Azul.
It turns out that we unknowingly came during the hottest time of the year, which a
local taxi driver informed us of upon inquiring if the weather was always this
sweltering. Thus, our daily swim keeps us from melting away in the hot temperatures
of the Yucatan Peninsula that are very different from our native state of Utah in the
United States.
We walked the long plank that had been covered in blue carpet, in preparation for
this weekend's triathlon. It felt no different than a red carpet and we felt like VIPs as
we counted, "Five, four, three, two, one, jump!" Immersed in the Lagoon of Seven
Colors, I looked around and saw that everywhere I looked was a piece of paradise. I
contemplated my blessings of being able to travel the world with my two sons.
And then I declared the following: "Look how beautiful this place is. We're literally
swimming inside a postcard!"
It's amazing to me that on a such a low budget, we are able to be blessed to travel
around the world and have the life we've never imagined we would. It's a dream
come true...
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