Our Mexican Adventure

As many of you know, last autumn, we packed up our car with our two cats (among other essentials) and drove to Playa del Carmen, Mexico for a six month sabbatical from our corporate jobs, hectic urban lifestyle, and blustery Chicago winters. That was over eight months ago. In case we have to hit you over the head with it, we came here for a period of 6 months over 8 months ago! So, what the heck are we still doing here? Surprisingly few of our friends and family have asked that question. Perhaps it’s because, before we even left, many of them predicted we would not return. They were right, at least for now.

Playa captured our hearts the very first time we set foot on her eighteen months ago. We grew wistful that evening on the return ferry to Cozumel after a perfect Playa day trip. Months later, we went misty-eyed in the airport return shuttle after a week of Playa vacation heaven. And we can’t imagine leaving here now. Why does Playa have such a hold on us?

For sure, Playa del Carmen is beautiful. The sand is white and never gets too hot, the Caribbean waters are blue (or clear depending on your vantage point), the coral and fish are abundant and colorful.

Playa is fun. Water sports are plentiful, outdoor activities are enjoyed all year round, the bars are filled with friendly faces, the margaritas are just the right mix of sweet, sour and salt, and the cervezas are cheap.

Playa is tasty. Fresh seafood, homemade Italian pastas, Argentinean steak, French cuisine, Thai-inspired menus, Middle Eastern fare, all manner of Mexican foods, and exotic fruits, vegetables and spices all tempt the taste buds here.

Playa is friendly. We’ve befriended Mexicans, ex-pats, and tourists alike. Mexicans are easy-going, never criticizing us for our country’s politics, never laughing or sneering at our meager attempts at Spanish, and always appreciative of our attempts to speak their language, enjoy their food and not get in their way when they’re driving. The ex-pats have embraced us. And the tourists are jealous as hell of us.

But there’s more to Playa than all that. Playa is also gritty. Sidewalk hazards, scrawny dogs, maniac drivers, exposed wires, peeling paint, catcalling hombres, and construction noise abound. It’s all part of what we’ve come to love about Playa.

This is all well and good. Except that we have been enjoying all this for eight months with nary an income. Our parents taught us to save for a rainy day. We squandered our savings on sunny days. (Sorry, Mom & Dad!) Now rainy season is upon us in Playa, so we’d better start saving again.

In our old lives, we often dreamed of moving to a tropical region to run an open-air bar, start a scuba shop or open an adventure tour company. But plenty of others have already been here, done that. ‘What Playa really needs’, we’d often hear from business owners, ‘is knowledgeable and reliable computer people’. (Libby would like to note that Playa also really needs an Indian restaurant and a Container Store.) Seeing as we are both computer programmers (and quite possibly knowledgeable and reliable), this seemed like an obvious (although not very exotic) choice for us. We were in.

We inaugurated our company on the lucky day of 6/6/06. Since there are so many different needs here and so few technical persons to fill them, we will do a wider variety of work than in the states. Web site development, networking and computer troubleshooting (here that usually means ‘Help, my 8 year old laptop doesn’t work anymore!’) will all be within our realm.

Will be is the key here. In Mexico, it is a very simple matter for a foreigner to start a business. Hiring Mexicans to work for that business, while not necessarily simple, is very achievable. But legally working for your own business … that can be challenging to accomplish. Understandably, Mexico does not want us to take jobs away from Mexicans. This is an especially sensitive matter in Playa del Carmen where there are already so many working foreigners. And it could be argued that the Mexican immigration conflict in the U.S. doesn’t help our cause either.

We feel confident that we will overcome this, as we will not be taking jobs away from Mexicans. Although there certainly are Mexicans capable of doing this work, there simply aren’t enough in the Playa area to meet the growing demand. Local computer consultants have told us that they regularly turn away work. We already have several clients lined up and anxious for us to start working. To top it off, Playa del Carmen has been named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest growing city in the world. We seem to be in the right place at the right time for starting a computer consulting business.

Wish us luck, and keep us in mind for all your outsourcing development needs!

We’re bad … so bad we should be in detention. Oh wait, that’s an Anthrax song. Like Anthrax, “we don’t care for writing hits”. Or perhaps it’s more like we don’t care for writing at all. Yes, it seems that we have not updated our blog in over a month. And our lame excuse is that we’ve been otherwise engaged.

In order to impress upon you just how occupied our time has been, we will now proceed to chronicle the highlights (and lowlights) of our past month. Enjoy.

We bid farewell to our good friend, Antonio, with a muy borracho (very drunken) night at a fun salsa bar, the Mambo Café. Antonio was headed to his home state of Veracruz, and hoped to then move on to Montreal to practice his French. He speaks Spanish, English and is learning French. We speak … English. Our Spanish is probably as good as his French. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us, Montreal didn’t work out and Antonio will be returning to Playa del Carmen soon. Yippee! We’ve been missing him.

We’ve been watching World Cup football. That’s soccer to you Americans. Why Americans use the term football to denote a game which infrequently involves the foot, and soccer for a game that constantly involves the foot, we will never understand. Libby grew up in a football household, but this was pretty new to John, who grew up with baseball. Although we still don’t always recognize an offside when we see one (but then neither do the refs) and we were disappointed to see our teams (U.S., Czech Republic & Mexico) lose early on, we enjoyed rooting for Ghana (the upset team) and rooting against France in the final game with Italy. Way to go, Zidane! To be fair, Materazzi, the recipient of the assault, is no angel and obviously provoked Zidane. Italy won the World Cup in an overtime shootout. Had us biting our nails ‘til the very end. Our friend Paul took a video of the Italians in Playa celebrating the victory. Check it out – available in Windows Media or Quicktime formats.
We celebrated John’s 34^th birthday with three of his favorite things — beach, beef and borracho-ness. The evening was spent partying at DJs, Kitxen and the Posada Freud bar with friends from the U.S., Mexico, Canada, England and Holland.

We attended a Summer Solstice Festival at Pueblo Sacbe, a cool eco-community in the jungle, with our friends, Barb, Paul and Sarah. Entertainment included a cute children’s production of ‘Jungle Book’, some sort of Eastern music (possibly involving a sitar) that we’re too ignorant to recognize, flamenco dancing, a salsa band, and a rock band consisting of two of our favorite Playa musicians, American Brad and French Ivan (at least we think that’s his name; we can’t spell in French!).

We made a quick hop over the border to Belize to buy some cheap booze and expensive gas, contemplate muy expensive electronics, eat decent Chinese, and check out the casinos in the ‘Free Zone’. Libby had an interesting encounter with Belizean border officials. People think Mexico border police are corrupt! Sheesh!

We helped our friend Steve from Seattle celebrate his 40^th B-day. Shameless plug for Steve (and Sara’s) website: PlayaMayaNews.

We rang in U.S. Independence Day with a small group of American friends at our friend Michele’s (and Rob’s) awesome pad with swimming pool in Playacar (fancy-schmancy suburb of Playa). Shameless plug for Michele and Rob’s project: Marina Turquesa. To the Americans wondering how U.S. Independence Day is celebrated in Mexico (yes, the question has been asked), it’s celebrated just as Mexican Independence Day (September 16^th) is celebrated in the U.S. Not at all.

We switched our blogging software (from Movable Type to WordPress) giving us a new format and allowing us to have multiple authors. This means that instead of reading blog entries written from the perspective of John and Libby together, in the future you’ll be able to read about what John is thinking and more importantly what Libby is thinking. Double the fun! We’ve found that now that we are no longer spending every living moment together, we are actually having independent thoughts again. In theory, this change could mean that you can look forward to more numerous posts. On the other hand, well, maybe not.

And now for the teasers:

We moved to a new apartment. Five moves in eight months. And one more on the way.

We met with many lawyers, each of which told us something completely different about the law. We’re thinking they should all get together for a long lunch and get their stories straight or something.

A new apartment and lawyers? What does this all mean? We told you they were teasers. Stayed tuned.