Linda, from the United States, has been traveling for 30+ years. She and her husband Ben began traveling for the first time to simply get away from the cold of their home in Alaska. They planned a 3-week trip to Cabo San Lucas for her first trip out of their home country and have never looked back. Linda has since taken numerous trips to either Mexico, Belize, or Hawaii. When asked what kind of traveler she considered herself to be she said “Oh, just vacationers. We had rock steady jobs and a house to take care of, so we were just vacations, but it was fun to see other places and go other places.”
Linda and Ben knew immediately after their first trip to Cabo San Lucas that they were going back next year. “And it took about 3 times before we decided we were going to Dive. Ben just got the bug to get his diving certificate and then after than I got mine and then that kind of took us to other places…” They started diving in Mexico and Hawaii and then Belize. “For the diving part, there wasn’t any comparison after Belize, we didn’t know where else you could go.”
We then asked Linda which location she would pick as her favorite travel destination. She said “For the vacation part… Mexico was more fun because there was lots more to see. You could walk down to the marina or go out and have a nice dinner or walk down the streets and see all the tourists and all the locals. One time in Cabo [San Lucas] we rented four wheelers and went over into the sand dunes on the other side of the peninsula. It was lots of fun, really a lot of fun.”
She later recounted more of her time in Mexico. “I loved Mexico, I just loved it. I loved to go out in the morning and all the shop keepers have their little brooms out and they’re all sweeping the sidewalks and the road and the gutters all out and everything was so clean and neat and tidy.” She laughed as she told us about the weather differences “It’s 85 degrees because it’s winter (we always went in February and March) and we’re in shorts and tank tops and they’re all in coats and hat.”
When asked how travel impacted the way Linda sees other people and her home country, she said “You don’t realize how well you have it until you go into other countries and see how they live. When we would go in the back roads in Cabo and see the houses that have no glass in the windows and they just have a hammock strung from side to side, and that was their bed, it makes you appreciate what you have. But also, you go into their poor, poor countries and the people are so kind and so nice. Anything they had they would give it to you and I just think it makes you look at people differently.”
“I think I appreciate living here and the freedom that we have, [we’d be] standing on the street in Mexico and this big truck full of federales comes down the street and everybody scatters to the shops and kinda hides behind the doors. They have bandoleros with bullets and guns and everybody’s afraid. You don’t see that in the United States, you don’t have that fear in the United States. You appreciate the things you take for granted, you know, all the medical services and all the groceries. You’d go into a grocery store and it’s always full. There is never just one loaf of bread on the shelf. And Sometimes when you go into those back places, there’s very few groceries on the shelves in the stores and there’s not things to buy all the time and there’s not the conveniences and stuff that we have. “
-From the United States, Traveling in Mexico and Belize
