Overview

This year, we are spending thirty-eight days in México.  To be exact, the Yucatán peninsula, México.  

My new calling (minister) provides me with ample vacation time, which I totally mismanaged, leaving nearly half of it untaken.  My contract year ends on July 31, so nothing like waiting till the last minute.  I also have two weeks per year which I am to dedicate to learning and becoming a better minister.  Then, I have one week of General Assembly/Ministers’ Meetings.  Normally, General Assembly means travel to a convention hall somewhere, but this being Corona Year Deux, General Assembly is virtual again, meaning as long as I have internet, I’m there!  

Yucatan Trip Itinerary

So, we took off the Tuesday before GA, which is the second of three days of Ministers meetings, which like General Assembly is also virtual.  There is a gap of a few days which I’ll get some work done as well.  Add it all up, and you’ve got thirty-nine days.  

Francine’s job is not place-dependent.  As long as she has a phone and a good internet connection, she’s in business.  

The purpose of the trip is two fold.  First, it is just to get out of the US for a little while and just be someplace else.  The US these days wears on me.  It wears on Francine a little less.  I don’t know how long I’m going to be doing this ministry thing, so I pushed to hit it whilst the hittin was good - and here we are.  Second, related to the US wearing on me, its also very expensive.  We have been pretty diligent about our saving, but even with that, there is no way in hell we’ll be able to afford a city living lifestyle on our savings in the United States.  The world is full of wonderful places to live that cost a fraction of the United States.  In our pre-retirement travels, we’re auditioning a few places.

Three years ago, we went for two weeks to Paris and Brussels.  Two years ago, we went to Guayaquíl, Ecuador on our way to Cuenca, Ecuador.  I mention these trips for two reasons.  First, I regret not making a recording of our days in either Paris/Brussels or Ecuador.  At the time, I was pretty sure I’d never forget the details.  I was wrong.  So, this time, I’m jotting down a few notes.  Second, I’m probably going to make some comparisons and they would have seemed out of the blue had I not mentioned those trips.

We chose the Yucatán mostly because we had frequent flier points that got us here for next to nothing and México is welcoming visitors without much in the way of restrictions.  Plus, it’s affordable, so although the Yucatán probably isn’t super high on our list of possible retirement locations due to the heat, México itself is very high on the list.  Total trip cost for the flight, rooms and all the inter-city busses is $2,632.88.

We broke the trip up to see different places.  A week or so in the Historic Center of Mérida followed by a week or so at the beach in Progreso, followed by a week or so back in Mérida, but in the “newer” part of town that is said to have been designed with Paris in mind followed by a week or so in Valladolid, which was recommended to us by my friend and mentor, Terre Balof and then back to Cancún for a minute to fly back to Tampa.

When we originally booked the trip, the state of Quintana Roo was Orange on the Red-Orange- Yellow-Green Corona stoplight system and Yucatán state was Yellow.  Between the time we booked it and the time we left, Yucatán slipped to Orange as well, making both states worse than Florida, which had gone from Yellow to Green (although just barely) in the same time frame.