Well, I’m just going to go ahead and say it. Boatlife was a wonderful idea – but for one small detail… we don’t know how to sail!
Yes, I know we could have taken schools, but honestly, I think reality set in and we realized we were a little old to learn how to sail. Let me rephrase, we were a little old to learn how to sail our house! We weren’t just talking a weekend boat, we were discussing our entire house – on the water – in our control (or lack of control) – across an ocean – on our next to nothing knowledge on what to do with it. I mean, if my toilet breaks in my house, I know how to fix it. If my toilet breaks on a boat??? No clue!
And even that isn’t an entirely true reason why we abandoned (ouch, that’s the first time I phrased it that way!) our dream of boatlife. Actually the catalyst was the increasing number of trips – and the increasing number of weeks spent at a time – in Mexico.
Let me back up even farther though to give this entire story perspective and the beauty of the full circle.
When I was very young, I visited an island. This island was beautiful. The people were kind and compassionate. The water was gorgeous. The pace was relaxed and stressfree. I never wanted to leave. I even went as far as having a job interview with a real estate company and was offered a job! I was going to go home to the states and pack up and go back to the island.
The island was Isla Cozumel, Mexico.
Long story short, I came back to the states and to my one year old daughter and realized that I couldn’t pack up my very small child to move to an island where I had no idea what kind of care would be available for her. So Cozumel stayed in my heart, and I stayed in the states.
Fast forward 18 years.
My husband and myself begin visiting the Riviera Maya area in Mexico. It began like most couples begin, inside an awesome all inclusive, actually, we consider our all inclusive – Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya – our second home. But as we begin to visit more often, we crept outside those gated walls of the resort and fell in love with the land, the people, the area, the atmosphere, the vulnerability, the history, the culture… we fell in love with who we were when we were there. We fell in love with who our family was when we were there. We fell in love with everything about it.
So we begin discussing the boatlife vs. beachlife debate. “You know, I don’t know how to live on a boat, but I do know how to live in a condo” became my reasoning. Maybe my excuse. But somewhere deep inside of me, that calling that I felt when I was first in love with Mexico in Cozumel, came back to me and I knew that I was home.
This cycle now that started 20 years ago is almost complete. We found a condo in Akumal, Mexico that we are very soon going to call HOME.
BarefootBikiniBeachlife 