Next Stop: Cancun, Mexico | Jets Like Taxis

That’s right! While we still have a lot of articles to publish about our whirlwind road trip across the USA for our “Fabric of America” tour, our time there has come to an end and we’ve flown the coop once again.

We’re most certainly Professional Winter Avoiders™, so it was time to leave that nonsense behind and move along to warmer climes.

Our new home is in Cancun, Mexico. Land of beaches, palm trees, humidity, delicious food, invisibly-cordoned-off areas of resort visitors, and a very interesting combination of (Barely) Old World Mexico and 21st Century Tourism.

As we told people where we’d be going next, the overwhelming response was a look of confusion and vivid (or hazy) memories of spring break vacations. After all, Cancun is known as a mecca for college-age kids who like to get debaucherous and people who like to stay at all-inclusive resorts but tell everyone that they “vacation in Mexico.”

Well, as we’ve come to find most Americans do not know, Cancun is an actual city. Outside of the Zona Hotelera. After all, a tourist mecca cannot thrive without the people that keep it running. And those people, people, do not live in the resorts.

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We cannot hate on anyone too much, though. Even the Cancun page on Wikipedia calls the city “Mexican Cancun,” quotes and all.

What is very interesting, though, is that Cancun is barely older than us. It’s probably younger than many of you. It was only founded in 1970, which by most standards – especially in Mexico – makes it a complete and total baby.

The government decided to turn the area into a tourist hotspot, and started helping a few large hotel companies build resorts here. Before that, it was a smattering of Mayan villages and a whole ton of jungle. One thing it did – and does – have are amazing beaches. Most of these are now part of the Hotel Zone, but that’s what started it all and what made Cancun what it is today. Good or bad.

One of the main reasons we came here, though, is to spend some time with our friends. We have longtime friends who live in the area, such as MP (aka Devlin), who many of our longtime friends will know as being a born-and-bred Chicagoan who fled the Windy City earlier this year to start his own expat/travel adventure.

He’s like a brother to us, and we’re ecstatic to be near him once again. He runs Designs by MP and 1life2bags, while also working with Marginal Boundaries.

Yes, Marginal Boundaries. Also known as Tim and Cris, good friends of ours from afar, but people we wanted to spend some quality time working and playing with here in Mexico.

We’ll be here for at least a few months, taking in the city and all it has to offer. We’ll hopefully be reaching out to some smaller, nearby cities and sights as well.

We have no assumptions that Cancun is a historic, quaint place to spend our time. We know it’s young and we know it has its ups and downs. We know that a lot of the city is full of tourists for large swaths of the year.

But we also know that every city on Earth has its good traits, benefits, and draws. We are here for our friends. We are here for the food. We are here for the weather. We are here for Mexican culture (which does exist in massive quantities outside of the resort areas and even inside of them). We are here to improve our Spanish.

We are here. And we plan to make the most of it. Living is what we do. We now live in Cancun, Mexico, and we are happy to do so!

Keep tabs on us here, but also be sure to join us on one (or all) of our following social media pages, where we post daily updates and tons of photos that never make it to the blog. Also, if you’re coming to Cancun or already in Cancun, don’t hesitate to reach out!