✴ Childcare, Car Rentals, More Beauty 🥰
Travels to Mayapan, Izamal, Uxmal + time with family and - of course - more cenotes
The last few weeks have been a real rush of activity. Feels like we’ve been pedal to the metal the whole time 💨. The days are long but the weeks are short, so to speak. We’re trying to be in nature - which is easier as the rainy season commences and the heat dissipates a tad.
And mostly we’re hoping that this experience gets into our bones and stays with us - guiding our emotions and aversions and passions… like all good life events. The thought of being subliminally guided by an accumulation of experience - both hard and otherwise - makes the days worth engaging in and reflecting on. Far from perfection, we’re hoping we’re a few steps further toward where we want to be.
“You're not what you were before, but neither are you what you're going to be.” John Mooalem from Wild Ones
👶🏼 Childcare
Getting quality childcare for a long duration overseas where you don’t know the people or totally trust leaving your kid alone (long sentence) is probably the most stressful part of our preparation. At first, we had no idea where to go to find options, as care.com and other traditional app-based, gig-work providers don’t operate in Mexico (or likely in countries of your choice due to the fragmented nature of global tech regulation (+ great power politics a la Mearsheimer, but you know).
Turned out there’s a sweet app called Babysits that works throughout Mexico. Just post what youre looking for and caregivers will reach out to you. We found an awesome person, talked via WhatsApp a month before our trip, arranged pricing, and crossed our fingers hoping for the best.
Day 1 - the awesome lady we’d arranged came down with something. We appreciated the heads up! She was so gracious and thoughtful to keep su in the loop. But scrambling to find care on the first workday after taking PTO and being in a totally new place isn’t fun. Luckily, we got quick help from the person running our coworking space (we basically messaged her via WhatsApp and told her we had no idea what to do - she sent us a contact for a friend and we bought her an Uber to our place). We also got on Babysits for a next-day backup.
On day three, our original caregiver came over and she was the best part of our whole trip. A teacher in her normal life, visiting Mérida for the summer, each day she was chalk full of fun and activities. She put so much prep into each day, showing up with handcrafted games and educational activities. S loved her + learned how to say lots of Spanish things like colors and numbers up to 10!
To take the edge off of being uncomfortable with leaving our baby home with a stranger in Mexico, each day one of us stayed home each day while the other went to the coworking space. We’d just work upstairs while S played downstairs with her new friend. This was best for separation (Simone knew one of us was home and therefore never felt like she was being left with a stranger) and safety (always near). We did have one instance late in our trip where we both went to the coworking space: Our caregiver texted us that some folks were knocking incessantly on our front door. We sprinted home in worry but it ended up just being pool cleaners. Still frightening. Best to be ultra safe, especially since we aren’t chipping/tracking our kid (honestly not sure how we feel about trackers for kids, but overseas travel makes us wish we had some permanent backup to always know where S is).
🚘 Car Rentals
This was so rough. We never got ripped off or scammed, but car rentals were confusing top to bottom. We needed a vehicle for some off the beaten path daytrips (Merida to X-batun, Bacalar to Valladolid, Izamal to Homun), otherwise we’d have just taken buses. Buses via ADO or other specific-line transiters are incredibly cheap. Like $2 to go 2 hours. And they don’t charge for kids until age 6 usually.
Cars can be cheap but insurance is a morass of confusion. Over the course of our time in Merida, we booked four cars, and used booking.com, economybooking.com, and holidayrentals.com for the initial reservations. It was easy to find cars for $2-$3 US per day, but insurance is 5x per day (as a function of risk mitigation, theyre telling you to be super careful when driving). We bought collision insurance from the sites, but were given two options at the rental shop (we stuck with America Car Rental - the 👹 you know): A low-ish insurance coverage cost + a humongous ($6k US) security deposit, or a slightly higher insurance cost with a way lower ($500) security deposit. It’s best to just pay for the higher insurance - it’s about 6x per day the rental cost, but not having a massive security deposit on your card gives peace of mind. We were super worried we got scammed HARD but turned out all was good. Merida folks are very honest from our experience, but it’s easy to not trust people when you’re dealing with institutions that are different from the ones you trust in your own country.
Cars were so worth it. We got to tour amazing places easily with family and just have an awesome time without worrying about bus schedules and random collectivos and all that. If you can shoulder the logistical pains, its pretty enriching.
🥾 Izamal, Uxmal, Mayapan
We’ve been able to explore some awesome places. Super old, well-preserved, off the main path, very unique compared to experiences in other countries. Ruins and cenotes and lagoons and thatched roof residences and the works.
Izamal is this lovely lil place (UNESCO - a 🔑 indicator!) called the yellow city. Everything is painted/preserved in a yellow stucco. It has the largest outdoor atrium in the Americas (not verified but told repeatedly 😉). We just putzed around in their dual-squares, took a carriage ride, ate at two super-yummy spots (Kinich for lunch, La Casona for dinner) both with perfect local fare, and nice folks, and easy vibes. Stayed at a cute AirBNB a few blocks from el centro. Planning to take some family back to Izamal it was so great.
Uxmal was the primary travel focus for Nick’s mom’s trip to the Yucatán. It’s an hour and a half S of Merida, and easy to get to by bus directly. We went by car and were able to hit some swimming holes there (Cenote Dzonbacal - $100 Mx/person) and back (Cenote Kankiriche - $80 MX/person). Both were super chill and full of wildlife, like this unbelievably pretty bird called parjató tho - magnificent. At Uxmal, we stayed at The Lodge. Pretty pricey, but such a rich experience. It was empty except for us (as mentioned previously we’re here during the no-tourist season so we have alot of places to ourselves). The roofs are made of an awesome grass (which made AC-ing at night tough - fans are better since the cold just goes right out the top), there were multiple pools, and we had a delish, fancy dinner at their onsite restaurant. And best part is that it’s adjacent to the ruins - so next day we woke up, walked 50 ft, and explored.1
Actually the best part was seeing Nick’s mom, who was so kind and just a gracious guest through and through. And having quality grandma time in a unique place with S was one of the peaks of our time here.
One of the final places/areas we visited outside of the city was Mayapan, along with the Cenotes Hacienda Mucuyché. Mayapan is one of the most important sites from the Mayan era - once Uxmal was taken over, they retrograded and regrouped here as their capital. It has centuries of continuous living with thousands of inhabitants. The site itself is really cute - accessible and clean. You can walk on the ruins (both cool but also bad so we don’t feel great about that) and really get a feel for what life was like.
After the ruins, we jetted over to Cenotes Hacienda Mucuyché.2 WOW 💕 this was cool. We started with a mandatory tour through the hacienda, where we learned about the history of haciendas in the Yucatán and how to harvest sisal. We then transitioned to the cenotes, which were indescribably beautiful. The second of the two was in a cavern and the most crystal-clear water we’ve ever seen. It’s hard to explain how magical this felt. No pictures - they wouldn’t have done it justice anyway. Just memories of amazement.
During this time, we were joined by Kathleen’s marvelous brother and his fiancé 🤩 which made the whole trip so fun. They went all over the place with us, embracing the sweatiness. They engaged all the speedbumps with laughter. They even watched S for us the last night of their trip, giving us a night alone (first in a while). What a treat being with them.
➡️ In Closing
We’ve loved our time here but are ready to get home. A month and a half is a long time to be apart from your conveniences and work setups and friends. Unfortunately, the heat will follow us to SC, given the intense heat wave across teh whole South. No rest for the weary.
We’ll be visiting Homun and Telcac beach and a few other spots in our last two weeks. We’re also fully on PTO during that block, so plenty of time to kick back and explore and immerse ourselves in the last wave of experiences.
Until then.
Worth mentioning that Uxmal was pricey altogether. Just the entrance fee was $350 Mx per person, half of which had to be paid in cash. We didn’t have cash left for a guide, which would have made the experience even better.
$350 Mx pesos per person - 100% worth it.