Mexico City is similar to Bogotá here on my website in that I hesitate to add additional entries since I visit regularly. My time here feels increasingly comfortable and routine and more like a typical life than in other, new, or exploratory places I pass through. You will find other entries on this website where I talk about why Mexico City is a comfortable and appealing place to live. Other ex-pats agree seemingly agree as the Covid pandemic has made living and working internationally more accessible, and more foreigners are relocating to Mexico City.
As much as I could live in Mexico City for an extended period of time — I don’t like the idea of sticking around for too long. I keep an open mind that I may change in the future because now it feels like a curse — that I need to continually explore, discover and experience new environments. I have seen too much to be content with a single something. That’s tragic in a way — if I like a place that meets my needs, why should I still desire to discover other, new places?
Years ago I remember deciding for myself that if the environment in which I lived did not actively inhibit my happiness, then really, I could live there because each place has advantages and disadvantages associated with it, as well as people; people can make any place feel like home. From this perspective, I thought, every place was similar. And I still feel like that — along with the need to understand and experience nuances, advantages, and disadvantages of being in other places, continually. I am totally nuts.
My brother has an excellent theory that I find to be generally true. He once said that old people are like raisins, the older they get, the more concentrated their personalities become, just like a plump grape drying in the sun and becoming a smaller, more dense, and wrinkly version of itself. Personality quirks may become pronounced, and preferences too. This is just to suggest that if my present trajectory continues unabated, I am likely to become a very odd raisin someday.
I stayed in Mexico City for three weeks this time around and was able to climb two volcanoes that had been on my list for a while: Orizaba (5,636 m) and Iztaccihuatl (5,230 m). Orizaba is the highest mountain in Mexico and the third highest in North America; “Izta” is Mexico’s third-highest mountain. You can click on each of those links, above to see photos from each trip. I always specify that I don’t really enjoy climbing mountains but I enjoy having climbed them. I think it is important to do difficult things — the process of attaining objectives is challenging and forces us to become stronger and in the process, grow. For me, being in new places and learning to adapt to them is also fulfilling.
