Travel Towards being an Expat

In response to my first blog entry Question Everything, several people asked me to write about my travels and/or being an expat.  I believe that my travel experiences are what led me to become an expat.

I did not travel outside of my home state of Minnesota until I was 18, and the first several trips were to neighboring states for various reasons.  In each case, I was not really exposed to anything very different than what I was used to regarding culture or landscape.

I turned 23 during my first travel to a different region of the US.  Kevin (my then fiancé and current husband) and I took a road trip from Minnesota through South Dakota and then to Wyoming, ending in Yellowstone.  On this trip, I saw mountains for the first time.  I experienced outdoor non-picnic or -camping dining for the first time on my birthday, in mid-July, and it was pleasant to be outside with no mosquitos in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Outdoor dining is now commonplace just about everywhere, but I don’t think it was in Minnesota in 1988.  My mind was opened to the possibility of what it would be like to live in a different region of the country.

In 1989 Kevin’s family was kind enough to bless us with a family trip to Florida and a cruise to the Bahamas.  I took my first flight on that trip.  I enjoyed the entire trip, but the most intriguing parts, that made me want to travel more, were the Bahamas and Epcot.  In the Bahamas, our ship was greeted by an overwhelming number of people wanting to help us; while overwhelming, it was interesting and made me realize that the people there really relied on the tourists to make a living.  We went shopping in a market and I bought a hat (pictured) and a picnic basket that we used for many years.  At Epcot, I remember very clearly visiting several of the “countries” and particularly the food in “France,” “Germany,” “Italy,” and “China”.   I wanted to visit those countries in person.

In 1990 Kevin and I took another road trip, this time to Colorado.  We were visiting to see if we might want to live there.  We loved the Estes Park and Boulder areas but decided against living there because we had plans to do some major sailing, and land-locked Colorado did not mesh with that dream.

Our 1991 road trip took us to Seattle.  From the moment we arrived in the region and then in the city, we were hooked.  The combination of the scenic beauty, outdoor recreation in mountains and on the water, multicultural society (our first lunch was in the International District aka Chinatown), abundance of fabulous food (particularly seafood and produce), live music scene, and intriguing “feel” led us to decide to move there the following year.  Although technically not an expat in my own country, leaving your home state and region has some similarities: learning a new region and culture, leaving family and friends, and making new friends, some of whom become your local family.  We never looked back.

While in Seattle, we started traveling more extensively.

We took a memorable Caribbean cruise that may have sparked the expat idea in my mind.  One of the stops was in St. Croix.  While we were there, we were looking for somewhere to eat and ended up in a discussion with a couple that we learned lived there after assuming they were tourists.  They recommended a local restaurant; we accepted their recommendation and were the only tourists in there.  The food was fabulous, and many local business professionals came in while we were there to get takeout.  Every one of them asked us if we had tried the “orange sauce.”  This was an extremely hot habanero sauce.  I tried a little, Kevin tried a bit more and regretted it.  But it was fun visiting with everyone.  They seemed glad we were there instead of wherever all the other cruise-ship passengers were.  I remember very clearly thinking “I could live here.”  We thought we might someday take our boat to the Caribbean, so the possibility of visiting or even eventually relocating to St. Croix seemed like something we could do some day.

We visited Mexico for the first time in 1999 for our 10^th wedding anniversary.  We went to Zihuatenejo, primarily because we had acquaintances that had a vacation home in the area.  We didn’t stay in their home, but their description of the area and the concept that someone from the US could have a vacation home in another country was intriguing.  We were greeted at our open-air hotel lobby with Pina Coladas.  We swam in the ocean and wandered the streets looking at interesting shops and markets and eating in various restaurants.  We spent happy hour at our hotel bar watching bad movies and visiting with the friendly bartender every day, even though we didn’t speak the same language.  We both got the touristas but that didn’t prevent us from loving the trip and wanting to return.

We went on a cruise to Mexico in 2000 and confirmed that we loved the country in general.

The next time we visited Mexico, it was on our own boat.  In 2004, we left the Seattle area on our sailboat, the Tao Min, a trip documented here:  http://www.mytripjournal.com/taomin&p=1&m=0&a=Baja_California.  We sailed down the Pacific coast of the US to Mexico, where we spent 17 months.  We did not want to leave when we returned to the US in 2006, but we had run out of money and needed to go back to work.  We knew that the affordability of Mexico meant that if we were frugal, we could afford to retire there at some point.  We vowed to return as soon as possible.

Twelve years later, in 2018, we retired in Mexico and have no regrets.