Hello from México!
New year, new places, nuevas aventuras
The start of a new year provides a canvas to dream up and plan new adventures for the year ahead. Ten days ago, we filled in our blank canvas by temporarily setting aside our “RV nomads” title and heading to Mexico. As Karla’s place of birth and where she lived for 19 years, we consider this country a special home. In this edition of our budding newsletter, we’re excited to share why we hung our RV hats for a while and what our “aventura” has been like so far. ¡Bienvenidos!
First things first: How do two RV nomads pack up their lives for a few months?
You’d think that living in 84 square feet would have made us naturals at packing light. For Noah, it was no problem. He packed his entire wardrobe in a small duffel bag (the one Lolis is sitting on in the photo above). For Karla, not so easy. Noah likes to remind her of trips they took when they first dated and the giant suitcases she’d drag along.
Not one to turn down a challenge, Karla overcame her overpacking tendencies and narrowed down all necessities for three months into one carry-on (the purple roller above) and one backpack. After all, as Noah reasoned with her, “how are we going to trek through South America someday with nothing but backpacks if we can’t pack light now?”. Challenge accepted!
Why did we trade RV living for ArBnB’in?
We are “RV Nomads” but at our core, we love adventure in all types of transportation (including planes). After nearly three years in a camper, we’ve settled into a lifestyle that is exciting but also feels comfortable. Who would have thought that dumping our tanks could become agreeable, heh? In the summer of 2021, itching for a new kind of adventure, we pondered life abroad for the first time as a couple.
Though many RV nomads drive their homes on wheels across countries, the pandemic and safety concerns narrowed down our options to places where we could reliably fly and navigate a health system, if needed. We knew this stint would be temporary as we couldn’t bear to leave our big dog, Brisket, behind for long (an airplane ride is out of the question for this Nervous Nelly!). So, we began to brainstorm easy-to-reach destinations that felt different enough from the U.S., but sensible in these uncertain times. South America swirled through our minds, but we decided to begin our global adventures in a place that already feels like home: Mexico.
“What’s the point of visiting you in Mexico if you’re not on a beach?”
A friend of ours half-jokingly implied that unless we were on a Mexican beach, there was no point in visiting us during our stay abroad. Mexico is well-known for its beaches (for good reason!), but it is a country as diverse in its geography and ecosystems, as it is in its culture and sights.
To be fair to our friend, the first place we considered for our three-month stay was Puerto Morelos, an idyllic fishing village on the Mayan Riviera, where Karla once lived. Eager to push our own boundaries of familiarity, we decided against this town and opted for a region in Mexico that would be new to us both.
Wistful Instagram sleuthing led Noah to suggest a place that had lived in Karla’s dreams since she was little: Guanajuato. Known for its colorful buildings, leather production, historic silver mining, long-held legends, and its foundational role in Mexico’s independence, the state of Guanajuato had been a central theme in Karla’s Mexican history schooling. Though familiar with its history and folklore, Karla had never been to this state in Central Mexico. It sounded like the perfect place to experience Mexico in its full authenticity!
Guanajuato, our new home sweet home
On January 9th, we woke up at 2 am in our airport hotel in Buffalo, New York, ready to say “¡adiós!” to snow and 20 degrees Fahrenheit. With masks on tight, we boarded towards Dallas, where we then connected to León, Guanajuato. An easy ~two-hour flight from DFW, León is a city that is well-known for leather and shoe-making. Of the 250 million+ pairs of shoes produced in Mexico, 70% are made in this city. In fact, it’s not just international designers that turn to this city for shoe production. During World War II, the U.S. government also looked to León to contract factories for quality workmanship. Here is an interesting article on Mexican shoe-making in Guanajuato.
From the León airport, we drove 30 minutes to the state capital, la “ciudad de Guanajuato”. This is a colorful city that attracts tourists from around the world, but especially Mexican tourists. Some English-speaking tourists wander the streets, but English is uncommon among the locals, making it an ideal place for Noah to sink his teeth into practicing Spanish. Six months of working with a Colombian teacher via italki (our favorite live language learning platform), hundreds of completed lessons via Duolingo, and 12 years living with his Spanish-speaking wife were about to be put to fantastic use!
Guanajuato, the city of frogs and “callejoneadas”
The name of Guanajuato is tricky to pronounce. Now, try saying it in its original Purépecha (an indigenous language) name: Quanaxhuato. Meaning “mountainous place of frogs1”, the Purépecha early settlers named this city after encountering large boulders in the area in the shape of frogs. Holding frogs as sacred, the Purépechas saw these boulders as a sign from the gods that this was the place where they should settle.
History and tradition permeate every nook and cranny of this magical city. One of those traditions is the Spanish-inspired “callejoneada”, named after “callejones”, the narrow, colorful alleyways that snake throughout town. During a callejoneada, local university students or “estudiantinas” guide a group of people through the alleyways at night, playing music, telling stories and mischievous jokes, and singing Spanish and well-known Mexican ballads.
Though we’d booked ours in advance, many visitors join a callejoneada by buying a ticket from one of the many young men or women that emerge in the evenings dressed in regal Golden-age Spanish costumes called “trajes de tuna”.
To fully immerse ourselves in the callejoneada experience we sang along with the estudiantina, danced to old-time Mexican songs in a courtyard, Noah learned to serenade Karla, and some of the members of our group re-enacted a famous legend, the forbidden love tale of the “Callejón del Beso”. It was a lively, magical experience that is quintessential Guanajuato. We danced, sang, and laughed harder on our first night in Mexico than we had in a while!
Here’s a great short video we found on YouTube that nicely captures a callejonada. It’s worth a watch!
Guanajuato is also known as the hometown of Diego Rivera, a famous Mexican artist, and twice-husband to Frida Kahlo2. On our last day, we made a quick visit to Museo Casa Diego Rivera, the home where Diego was born and raised in his early years. Today, this museum houses a myriad of his paintings and drawings, as well as visiting exhibits by artists who learned from the great “maestro”. As we walked through town, we could sense his influence in the many murals we discovered that adorn the alleyways where the locals live.
Guanajuato is pure magic, from the food to art, its history, traditions, and people. We fell head over heels for this city and wondered if perhaps this should have been our three-month destination. Alas, it was not, and after a few amazing days touring this mesmerizing city, we waved goodbye and hit the road.
Where are we now?
An hour and a half east of Guanajuato is a city known as “El Corazón de México”, San Miguel de Allende. Though it is not geographically in the “heart” or exact center of the country (experts argue that this central spot is in the state of Zacatecas3), San Miguel de Allende, our newest abode, is close enough.
Beyond geographical references, the slogan “Heart of Mexico” beautifully captures the love and awe it inspires. In 2002, SMA (for short) was declared one of Mexico’s first “pueblos mágicos”, a designation by the Mexican Secretariat of Tourism that recognizes and protects Mexican towns that are historically significant and “magic” in social and cultural ways.
As San Miguel’s tourism grew since that “pueblo mágico” designation in the early 2000s, so did the need to protect its resources and architecture. In 2009, UNESCO declared San Miguel a World Heritage Site, enabling international protections for this place of “outstanding universal value to humanity4”.
It is easy to see why San Miguel de Allende is not just treasured by locals, but also a haven to thousands of ex-pats. In our first week here, we have wandered through cobblestone streets and alleyways that can spark romance among strangers. We have visited and listened to evening mass in Spanish outside of enchanting, colorful churches. We have enjoyed churros and “esquites” (corn in a cup, Karla’s favorite!) while listening to the mariachi bands that compete for the attention (and tips) of restaurant patrons in the main square. Every little corner and door in this town is interesting and colorful. All one has to do to experience this town’s magic is put on good walking shoes, tuck a few coins into your pocket for treats from street vendors, choose a direction, and walk.
We are here to stay for the next three months and are excited to share our experiences and observations through this newsletter (we invite you to subscribe!). We’ll share our perspectives both as a Mexican (Karla) and as a non-Mexican (Noah). For those who would rather read about our RVing adventures throughout the U.S., fret not. We will be back on American roads come May!
For now, we hope you’ll indulge us as we capture our experience as nomads in Mexico, share tips that may be of use to fellow travelers, and do what ultimately drives us to write: inspire the pursuit of adventure, whatever that may look like for you.
¡Hasta pronto!
-Karla & Noah (and Lolis)
https://www.telediario.mx/tendencias/por-que-guanajuato-es-conocido-como-ciudad-de-ranas
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/fodors/top/features/travel/destinations/mexico/mexicocity/fdrs_feat_101_9.html?n=Top%252FFeatures%252FTravel%252FDestinations%252FMexico%252FMexico+City
https://mxcity.mx/2021/06/el-centro-geografico-de-mexico-un-problema-de-matematica-y-politica/
https://whc.unesco.org/en/faq/19
Wonderful adventures!! thanx for sharing!!