11/16/24

On November 11, I marked one year to the day that we crossed the border in Laredo, Texas to begin our new life in Mexico. Some fun facts about that trip:

• I had been essentially homeless since I sold my house in February. “I have a home,” I reasoned, “but it’s still being built.” For about 7 months, the dogs and I stayed with my friends Winter and Micah in Fort Worth while I sent WhatsApp messages to our builder and supervised construction from 2000 miles away.
• Around September, I had to regretfully leave the Fort Worth house because our dogs were not getting along. So the dogs and I moved in with Lurko in his tiny apartment in Austin.
• The exit date decision was made for us when we got evicted at the end of October. The new house wasn’t finished, but we were going to Mexico anyway. My sister was going to let us stay in her guest house until our own house was ready to move into.
• We made the 1,670 mile trip in three days, with two dogs in our Xterra, pulling a tiny trailer full of camping gear.
• It rained almost the entire way, something that now seems miraculous given the drought that most of Mexico seems to be in.
• On Day One we drove from Austin to Laredo and spent the night at the border. We woke up at 4am the next morning, and after spending two hours at the border getting our papers sorted, we were finally across.
• Lurko had never driven in Mexico before, but he learned quickly by watching a lot of truck drivers and following what the locals did.
• On Day Two we drove all day, in rain and thick soupy fog, and spent the night at a dog-friendly La Quinta in Aguascalientes. That night was rough because we arrived after dark, driving in the rain, and after driving around the outskirts of the city Lurko had to pee so badly he pulled over and went behind the trailer, under cover of rain and pitch-black darkness.
• On Day Three we drove through Guadalajara, and I made Lurko park super illegally so that we could get Tacos Minerva for lunch. Ah high school memories…but the tacos were just as good as I remembered.
• By sunset we had parked the tiny trailer in front of Mom and Dad’s house, dragged our suitcases to my sister’s guest house, and settled ourselves and the dogs inside. We would live there until New Year’s Eve, when we finally moved into our new house.

And it has been quite a year. Difficult, for sure. Adjusting to living in isolation. Not enough power to run a refrigerator. Fighting to get temporary residency and a bank account. A terrible trip back to the States to get our big trailer. A scare, unfounded, that I might have breast cancer. Being unemployed for three months. Dealing with the oppressive summer heat. The continued battle for solar power. Trying to keep the bugs outside and the jungle from swallowing our house. Not being sure our relationship was going to survive all of this.

But it did, and we did.

It hasn’t been all bad. I still love Mexico, and I think it’s begun to grow on Lurko too. I wake up every day to a beautiful jungle sunrise, and walk the dogs on the trails that surround Monkey Mountain. We have seen 9 states: Taumalipas, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, and Durango. We experienced the solar eclipse from the longest beach in Mexico. We camped on that beach. We saw a huge parade in Guadalajara featuring hundreds of danzantes. We visited a round pyramid in Jalisco. We participated in Day of the Dead celebrations. I learned to cook keto and Mexican. We managed to lose 150 pounds. We have taken steps towards living sustainably, and making our house into a home.

What do we think the next year will hold? We hope to continue making our house functional (still need shelves in the kitchen and bedrooms, still need to install the sink and stove in the kitchen), and the dogs need a fenced yard. We also want to continue our work towards sustainability: expanding our rainwater catchment system, growing more of our own food. We hope we can get things stable enough at home so we can focus on getting out more and making friends. We need to keep looking at alternate ways of making money, so that every time I make a mistake at work I don’t worry about losing my job. I need to find more time to write. Lurko needs to be able to work legally. There’s still a lot to do, but hopefully the foundation is laid and the harder stuff has been done. Now the dogs are starting to stir, so it’s time to get up and enjoy another beautiful jungle sunrise.