Last time I posted, I was ready to come down from the mountains.
I did, but didn’t stop until I hit the Caribbean.
I disappeared south of the border to stay with a couple of cats I knew, until I could remember what it was all about.
Living indoors, I’m reminded that electricity, refrigeration and hot showers are blessings lost on anyone who takes a stable life for granted. No searching for water every day or a campsite every night. Having a home lifted a stress that had become more obligation than adventure.
So much so that I’d forgotten why I chose to live that way.
It may come as a surprise, but sometimes more hiking isn’t what’s needed. Sometimes it’s donuts, tacos and lazy days at the beach.
I take the R2 bus out to the Hotel Zone and Caracol Beach, on the Bahía de Mujeres, a shallow, sheltered bay, where I lie in the soft white sand, losing all sense of time and self in water so clear and turquoise it doesn’t look real.
Before sunset I walk the five or six miles of bike path along Boulevard Kukulcán back downtown, burning calories ahead of the donuts and tacos I’m about to eat.
Most nights I sit in front of the laptop for far too long, staring at old projects, wondering if I was still the person who started them. Wondering how long it would take to run out of money if I left them unfinished.
Maybe I’d stopped caring.
Or maybe I was just tired.
“No matter what, everything is going to be okay.”
The mantra that got me this far in life. A core belief I’d lost somewhere along the way, and found again somewhere between the beach and the taco stand.
Eleven and a half years of wandering, and I’m still learning what success means.
Lately, I’m wondering if it’s cake by the ocean.
#cakebytheocean #cancun #wandering