Playa del Turismo: Navigating First Impressions of Playa del Carmen | Day 293 of my 2023 Journal

Playa del Turismo. What are we doing here?!

In my opinion, the saying: First impressions last is not true. I enjoy my first impressions of new places, and I enjoy looking back at them, clearly understanding the learning journey I have been on, and seeing what I saw when I first arrived in the light of what I know later on. It is part of the fun of moving around a lot.

Our first impressions of Playa listed.

1. OMG, the amount of Turismo! We live very close to 5th Avenue, where everyone goes. It is overwhelming.
2. I am not sure I can complete the task of making this list.
3. The plant milk options suck; we are thankful there is a blender in the Airbnb so that we can make our own.
4. It is fun to look at the other tourists, guessing the country of origin (mostly Americans), amount of days since arrival, experience with traveling, and length of the planned stay.
5. Beachwear is a crazy category of clothes, especially worn outside of beaches.
6. We NEED to find a real market; the supermarket might drive us crazy…
7. It is all good and fine to be in a highly touristed place, to begin with, as the jetlag is no joke.
8. A lot of police.
9. New trees, new birds
10. Chili, lime, and cilantro are the holy trinity.
    

More importantly, we all had emotional reactions, and from that arose interesting existential conversations.

What am I doing here?

Was the igniting question rising from exhaustion, lack of preparation (on purpose) for the trip, and chaotic mix of dreams and expectations smudging our internal sunglasses.

What am I doing here is a core question. For everyone.

And to get to the root of it and clear it all up, we need to dive into the WHY.

The WHY am I here?

That is the real question.

WHY am I doing what I am doing?

Feeling what I am feeling.

Changing what I am changing.

It is the most powerful question to ask and the most efficient path of reflection to clear the mind.

The Mr. Clean of your emotional life, of your existential settings, of your power to move on, of your likelihood of success.

So, we talked about that. A lot.

Here are some of the answers.

We are in Mexico because Mexico was calling. Had been calling for a while. We are okay with not knowing why Mexico has been calling; we are now responding to the call and ready for the conversation with Mexico. It is a response to something we do not understand and are okay with not understanding.

We are at Playa del Carmen because the tickets to Cancun were the cheapest, and Playa seemed the closest place to start the project.

We have rented a place here for an entire month, not because Playa is interesting, but because it is NOT interesting (relatively) as we have other things to do.

As full-time travelers, we can find it hard to take time to work, study, and take care of our health. Staying an entire month will leave space to create good habits, make project plans for all the projects on our board, get the kids started with the study projects they are interested in, and have some home life.

Plus, by the way, plan the rest of our stay in Mexico and our further travels. They don’t always plan themselves.

Whenever we don’t do that, we are in a new and relatively interesting place where the sun is shining.

So, we ate some cilantro with lime and chili and went for several walks, overwhelmed by the tourist craziness and at the same time enjoying ourselves.

The water was wonderfully lukewarm, the people observation is always interesting, the colors intense, the number of recruiters substantial, the tequila obsession too much, the day fully lived.

We are ready. For our inner journey, For the projects lined up, and for Mexico.

With love

Cecilie Conrad

Thank you for reading
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