Making The Decision to Drive Through Mexico, Contributed by @TangerineTravels

in #travel7 years ago (edited)

Learning a new language


I had wanted to learn another language for a long time, and the idea of traveling through or moving to another country appealed to me. Since I had taken some Spanish in high school and was living just to the north of Mexico in Phoenix, Arizona, I thought Spanish was a good place to start. “Who knows, maybe one day I’ll have a reason to go to Mexico,” I pondered.

My years in high school Spanish weren’t much help. I had only retained a handful of words, a few basic rules, and some societal lessons about Spanish-speaking cultures.

After purchasing some Spanish audio courses, I practiced the lessons pretty diligently for a couple of months. However, then I’d forget to do them for a while or get lazy, restart the lessons, and have to repeat quite a few. One month on, 2 weeks off. Three weeks on, 2 weeks off. One month on, four months off. This cycle kept repeating, and I was continually set back on my progress.

It wasn’t until my girlfriend decided she’d start learning as well that I began to be consistent.

One lesson per day, every day. It sounds easy, but without accountability, it proved to be difficult.

Once my girlfriend began doing the lessons, we were accountable to each other; we’d consistently ask one another if they did their lesson that day. This accountability helped us to continually progress with few setbacks.

What if we traveled through and explored Mexico?


We had both made tremendous progress in our Spanish-speaking abilities, and the possibility of exploring a Spanish-speaking country seemed increasingly plausible.

I was running a business that I hated, and which was giving me a constant stream of headaches. It was providing me with monotonous, laborious, and unsatisfying work.

My girlfriend was suffering from a long list of health problems that seemed to originate from environmental factors. As far as her job was concerned - well, let's just say it wasn't as fulfilling​ as it could have been.

When we thought about traveling through Mexico, we were able to come up with a long list of reasons why we wanted to do it. When it came to the cons - well, surprisingly, there weren’t many.

Traveling through an unfamiliar country can be a scary proposition


Almost every single person I’ve told about our plans to travel through Mexico has lectured me about how dangerous it is, trying to convince us to stay.

People from my generation seem to lecture a little less and be more on the 'excited for us' side. But from my parent’s generation...believe it or not, Every. Single. One. of them is a travel safety expert for an entire gigantic country to which they haven’t been in twenty years.

I read a book by Jim Rogers, "Investment Biker." It’s a non-fiction story about him and his girlfriend literally traveling around the world on motorcycles. He says that every place he went, the people would always say It’s perfectly safe here, but you can’t go to (enter the neighboring country), it’s too dangerous! People from the US would say that about Mexico. Mexicans would say that about Guatemala. Guatemalans would say that about El Salvador, and so on. Apparently, it’s human nature to be scared of the unknown.

Unmasking the unknown


As it turns out, Youtube is an excellent source of first-hand travel experience. My girlfriend and I began watching a lot of videos about US expats living in Mexico.

We found endless examples of people with personal experiences of traveling through, living in, or visiting Mexico, none of whom felt like they were in any danger. Following and watching videos of YouTubers​ who are a lot like us, has gotten us pretty excited to explore.

We came up with enough reasons on our own for why we wanted to travel, but ultimately, I think it was Youtube that pushed us over the edge. Seeing couples who were our age, doing what we wanted to be doing, and loving every minute of it. We wanted to be there!

If you want to follow along with our adventures as we drive through and explore Mexico, you can find us at @tangerinetravels.

Until next time, amigos!


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Enjoy your trip!Have a nice day!

Reminds me of when I moved to Germany in 2012 without knowing the language- it was super difficult. However, I made a friend (she is now my best friend) who started learning at the same time as me and we also held eachother accountable. It really helps :)

Are you still living in Germany? Having that accountability makes learning a language so much easier!

No I am not. I lived there for 4.5 years and now I am living in London. But yes, it does!

Travelling and living in a new country is the best way to learn a language. Better than every single Spanish academy you could find. You will learn their culture, some words only from there, etc. Hope you learn spanish fast!

Sí! Estamos aprendiendo mucho más rapido cuando estamos viviendo aquí.

It helps tremendously to be immersed in the culture and language all day, every day. With every place we go and every interaction we have, we learn a little more and understand the language a bit better.

Que grandioso! Ojala les guste muchisimo mi idioma materno. Sigan disfrutando en México y les dare follow para seguir leyendo sus aventuras, un saludo!

Muchas gracias! We're happy to have you following along with our adventures!

This was a lovely read! Thanks for sharing your travels... I’d love to see more!! We were just talking about Mexico this morning and the different experiences we’ve all had there, as well as the different parts we’ve been to. It truly changed my life for the better realizing how grateful we should all be for everything we have. Cheers! ☺️

Yes! my favorite place so far (Planning on going back! only been once! ;)) was 40 min outside of Puerto Vallarta in the jungle where this family lives and does horseback rides up the mountain through the jungle to the place where they filmed the movie "Predator"! It was an amazing experience while hearing his story about his family and their life during the ride. They lived in a little tiny house and didn't have much. They were so loving and happy tho... just to have new people to interact with and connect with. It truly makes you realize how many people who don't live in third world countries take things for granted. <3

That sounds pretty incredible! We're going to be in and around Puerto Vallarta within the next week. We hear there are some cool things you can do just outside of the city there like ziplining through the jungle. We're stoked to give that a try!

Thanks for the kind comment! We've been traveling down the Pacific Coast of Mexico for a little over two weeks now and have been documenting our travels along the way. We're currently in Mazatlán and are falling in love with it here. Do you have any favorite places that you've visited in Mexico?

Que gran post! No es por ser mexicano, pero de verdad que México es un país maravilloso.
Espero y tengas la oportunidad de visitar más estados. Yo soy de Zacatecas, México.
Have a nice day!

Muchas gracias! Solo hemos estado en Sonora y Sinaloa, pero vamos a Jalisco pronto y más estados después de eso. Estamos en Mazatlán ahora y nos gusta mucho aquí.

You defintely knows more Spanish language than I do in writing....good going.

Thanks. We still often have to look up spellings and where the accent goes on words. For example, I knew "hemos estado" means "we have been"but I thought it was one word before looking it up, nor did I know how to spell it.

Woooww... Beutiful nature, exotic, thanks for sharing,,,

Anyone have a suggestion??


It's time for my family vacay...and you just gave me an idea...
I'm really feeling the idea of going some place close, but unfamiliar. I live here in south florida, so the language won't be a problem. I just want to get the most bang for my buck...

very nice movie post.

Hi, I guess you'll enjoy the challenge I've just started: Where Is This challenge
guess the location and win 0.1 SBD.
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