Dialing In Our Year 2 Travel Plan – The Devil is in the Details
We’ve been back in the USA for nearly two months now, and things have been going well. It has been fun reconnecting with family and friends, and we still have more to do!
All in all, it has been a successful homecoming.
Our parental units are doing fine, factoring in normal age-related senescence.
Our friends and extended families are living their lives, and are each moving forward in their own way.
We’ve made some significant equipment resupplies and technology upgrades. [Look for details in the next budget post!]
And we have made major progress locking in the next stage of our international slow-travel lives.
So aside from the 15 pounds we have put on since we returned to the USA, everything has been going great!
Amazing what eating calorically dense processed food will do to you, and how quickly it happens. And we’ve even been keeping up our exercise and resistance workout regimen.
The previous year of international travel took about 20 pounds off of my frame and 40 pounds off of Rhonda’s, so we had a bit of a buffer. But it is probably a good thing we are getting ready to leave for new, faraway places so we can right-size our body fat composition.
Speaking of Faraway Places…
We have the next 9 months of international travel pretty much locked in.
Here is the remainder of our Year 2 travel plan, starting early November 2023:
November + December 2023 – Mérida, Mexico
We fly into Cancun, Mexico in early November, on a direct flight from Boston on JetBlue Airlines. JetBlue has really good credit card point deals to some Mexico destinations, and we were able to snag 2 one-way tickets for a total of 27,600 TrueBlue points + $88.46 USD in fees.
Sweet.
We accomplished this by transferring Chase Unlimited Rewards points to our JetBlue account, the basic process we describe in our credit card travel hack post.
We then spend 1 free night in Cancun at a nice luxury hotel (another credit card freebie), and then we will hop on an ADO Bus westward to Merida the following day.
We will be spending TWO months in Merida. This is to provide ample time to explore the city, as well as the many Mayan archaeological sites and cenotes in the Yucatan peninsula region. But we will also use Merida as a base to give us plenty of time to get quality-of-life medical issues resolved (mostly eye-related things), should recovery time be needed.
We’ll be sure to blog about that when the time comes!
January 2024 – San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico
At the end of our time in Merida, we’ll hop on another ADO Bus and travel southwest to the town of Palenque, famous for its Mayan archaeological complex (a UNESCO World Heritage site).
We’ll spend two days there exploring the site, and then continue on (by bus) southwest to our next long-term destination – San Cristobal de las Casas.
San Cristobal de las Casas is a quirky mountain town and is one of the more popular pueblos magicos acknowledged by the Mexican government. For those unaware, pueblos magicos are towns that have extreme cultural significance to the country of Mexico, and many are noted for their unique charm.
February 2024 – Oaxaca, Mexico
At the end of January, we’ll hop on another ADO bus and travel northwest to the city of Oaxaca, the culinary capital of Mexico.
Another UNESCO World Heritage site, the city will provide numerous opportunities for exploring the art and architecture of the area. Not to mention the foodie opportunities!
We’ll likely gain significant weight there.
And as an added bonus, we’ll be having friends from the USA stay with us. It is always a blast to share our experiences with others when we can!
The Mezcal will be flowing that month, for sure.
March 2024 – Puebla, Mexico (?)
Presuming our livers survive the previous month, we’ll hop on another bus and travel further north to the city of Puebla.
To be honest, we haven’t reserved our Airbnb here yet as we are making sure there isn’t another location between Oaxaca and Mexico City (our final Mexico destination) more worthy of visiting, but we are pretty sure Puebla will be where we end up.
If you have any suggestions, let us know. But be quick!
Puebla is only a couple of hours away from Mexico City but is way less congested. There are a number of pueblos magicos in the orbit of Puebla, which will make good day-trip opportunities. There are also natural areas and archaeological sites worth exploring, and the city itself has much to see.
And last, Puebla seems to be a hidden gem among the expat community, so it will be interesting to see what all the hubbub is about. Because you never know what the future might hold!
April 2024 – Mexico City
Mexico City really needs no introduction!
Famous for its size, traffic, altitude (not as bad as Cusco, Peru though), culture, and food, we are really looking forward to our stay. We scored an Airbnb in the Roma Sur neighborhood, with easy access by foot, bus, and metro to everything the city has to offer.
And yes, the neighborhood is very safe.
We’ll spend most of our time exploring the many museums, restaurants, parks, and archaeological sites in the area, and will likely need more time than we have to see it all.
And the icing on the cake is that we’ll be able to visit old international friends from our graduate school and early professional days, Patricia and Carmen!
It will be so much fun getting together with them!
May + June 2024 – Taboada, Spain
At the end of April, we will be flying across the Atlantic Ocean from Mexico City to Madrid, Spain on Iberia Airlines! The prospect of changing continents and cultures appeals to us, and will still allow us to use our developing Spanish language skills.
We scored two one-way direct flights (~11 hours!) for a total of 42,500 Avios points + ~$290 USD in fees. And like before, we accomplished this by transferring Chase Unlimited Rewards points to our Iberia account, the basic process we describe in our credit card travel hack post.
We’ll spend one night in Madrid, then travel by train or bus to the hamlet of Taboada in the Galicia region of Spain, where we have a two-month Workaway volunteer opportunity waiting for us. Taboada is in the green zone of Spain, with much cooler, temperate weather…which is just the way we like it!
The region is hilly and somewhat mountainous, with lots of hiking opportunities and historic medieval towns to explore. And although we won’t have a car, public buses are available for day trips to some of the more populated areas in the region. And thankfully we can obtain basic amenities by walking to Taboada, about 30 minutes away.
Our job will be to help maintain the houses and grounds on a small family homestead outside of Taboada, taken over by a British couple almost 20 years ago. The required tasks are really no different than the things we did while living in our former house in rural upstate New York, so it will be nice to return to that way of life for a spell.
July 2024 – Madrid, Spain
When our volunteer opportunity is over, we plan on heading back to Madrid to explore the capital of Spain for one month. Madrid is absolutely dripping with history, culture, art, and architecture…not to mention the food opportunities.
It will be an expensive stay, but the money we save by volunteering during May and June will greatly reduce our average cost of accommodation in Spain.
So we are covering a lot of ground over the next 9 months, both literally and figuratively!
Here is a summary map of our travels from November 2023 – July 2024, to provide perspective.
You can change the map position and zoom in/out to see things in more detail!
But Wait, There’s More!
So technically, our Year 2 travel will conclude at the end of our stay in Madrid. But for a variety of logistic, financial, and retirement planning issues, we will probably be staying in Europe for the remainder of 2024 and through Winter 2025.
August 2024 – March 2025 – Into the Great Unknown!
Who knows what we will do from August through March 2025!
Right now, our thinking is to head to Great Britain if we are able to secure Workaway volunteer opportunities in Scotland for a month or two. Afterward, we’d love to stay near London for 1 month, but rent is so crazy expensive that we may not be able to pull that off unless we stay in a connected distant suburb.
Perhaps Edinburg would be a good Plan B if London accommodation costs are insurmountable.
Ireland is also a possibility if Workaway opportunities present themselves, but to date, no opportunities we’ve seen so far fit our profile very well. We’ll see.
Presuming we are able to spend 3 months in Great Britain/Ireland, we then would like to slow-travel some of mainland Europe for 5 months during Fall/Winter. Albania, Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, and Portugal are all pretty high on our list of possibilities.
We’re not exactly sure what we will be able to fit in during those 5 months, both from a logistics and affordability standpoint.
But we have lots of time to plan and figure things out!
April + May 2025 – Back to the USA!
By April 2025, it will be well past time for us to come home and visit friends and family in Connecticut and Ohio, USA. So we’ll do our usual homecoming visitation routine like in 2022 and 2023.
And if everything back home is stable, we’ll be off to our next destination – Southeast Asia!
But that is very far in the future. Who knows what the future holds with global events and family emergencies.
It’s just nice to be able to adapt if life throws us any curveballs.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading about our Year 2 travel plan!
Until next time…
Thanks for reading!
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