Well, I made the move and I am living in Mexico! For now, I am in Puerto Vallarta (PV), a big beach town in the state of Jalisco. It’s a very tourist heavy town, a port town, where a lot of big cruise ships stop at. Lots of gringos, mostly Canadians. Most of the locals speak English because of all the gringo visiting and living here. There is a large expat community living here with most folks living here during the winter time. Scarily, during the summer, people do not come here. When I’ll be here! There is talk of a hot, humid, and rainy weather.
Not so easy or glamorous
Courtesy of https://unsplash.com/
This is the end of my second week being a nomad abroad, and full month total. It has not been as smooth and easy, as I thought it would be. First lets get to the good. Here in PV, I’ve done nothing but eat good food, that’s cheapish compared to American standards. A nice fish dinner with a bottle of water is about 150 pesos ($10 USD). Usually a beer is a buck or so. So pretty much, every time I go to eat at a niceish, sit down place, it’s $10. If you want to be cheap and eat some street meat, (tacos!) you can get away with eating for $3 USD. Needless to say, all I’ve done is eat. The other night I went to a 5 peso taco place. You get 6 tacos for $2 USD.
The first week in PV, I stayed at an awesome hostel. It was one of the best hostels I’ve ever been to. Everyone was really cool and chill. I quickly made friends with a few people. We would go out for drinks, dinner, and lunch. It was a great way to meet people. However, I quickly realized, people on vacation or “holiday” wanted to drink and party, a lot. I am not on a vacation, it’s and Monday – Friday and I have to wake up early, log on, and work! There is a nice Starbucks across the street, so no bigger. But still, getting some sleep, and avoiding drinking every night was very tough. It was a amazing checking into a hotel and sleeping alone.
What can go wrong, will go wrong
The day before I moved away, the transmission on my car went out. One fucking day before I sell my car to my mom, the transmission takes a dump. I had to literately write my mom a blank check, and leave to the airport. It’s an older car but only has 71k miles on it. It’s going to be like 2k in an unexpected bill out of my savings account. Damn.
To top it off, my computer started having massive problems connecting to Wi-Fi and staying connected. Here I am, in another country, trying to work all day, depending on Wi-Fi and it’s not working. It was miserable, I wouldn’t be able to connect for like 45 minutes.
Out of desperation, I re-installed a new version of Ubuntu on my machine. Which of course didn’t go well, and I was left unable to log into my computer! So there I am, with a ton of work to do, sitting in a cafe with no working computer. I frantically did a clean install of my computer. Within a day, my computer and Wi-Fi was working again. I look like such a dick at work now. Luckily, my preparations for being a nomad paid off, and everything was backed up already. See https://www.stevenirby.me/2015/02/15/preparing-to-move-aboard-the-geek-way/
Next few months
I plan to live here for a few months and learn as much Spanish as I possible can. I want to go to Guadalajara next but less people speak English there, so I really need to be able to speak better, before moving on. I hope to begin Spanish lessons next week. It was a Holiday all week, so no school.
I made a friend here already and we’re going to move into an apartment tomorrow. This will be a welcome change to staying in a hot hotel with no AC. I want to get to a regular schedule of *not drinking* and eating out all the time. I joined a local gym, and I can not wait to start working out again. I need to slim back down.
Maybe one day, I’ll stop working and make it to the beach or one of the pretty islands near by. There’s a sweet hidden beach I want to see.