Monday’s drive to the Riviera Maya was uneventful, even the bit going through the outskirts of Tulum. I am disappointed that I didn’t think to stop to see the ruins, but it’s not like I had to see everything on this trip.

Akumal is nothing like any beach community I’ve visited in Mexico. Think of Banff — a rich enclave in a national park, highly developed, with a lot of rules and high expenses. Totally worth visiting, but definitely not the kind of place I’d want to stay for more than a few days. I opted to stay in the pueblo rather than right at the beach (where there really were no affordable options anyway). Thanks to yet another great deal, I stayed at El Último Maya, a hostel-like hotel above a restaurant where you have a private room but there’s a shared outdoor space. This was the perfect location for my brief stay in Akumal. My lovely host got me settled and the first thing she did was book a snorkelling tour with Sergio for me the next day. I haven’t found any social media for Sergio, but if you’re in Akumal, everyone will know who you mean, or you can email me for his Whatsapp number. His nickname of the Turtle Whisperer is well earned!

That done, I headed to the beach.  Google Maps makes it look like a straight shot, but you actually have to detour to use a pedestrian overpass (more about that below).

It took me too long to understand that the only way to get to the water was to pay for a day pass. I thought I could just wander and eventually hit water and beachfront restaurants, but that’s not the case. Before buying a pass ($150!) I decided to check out the Akumal Dive Shop to see if they had an activity I could do late Tuesday afternoon, after snorkelling with Sergio, and which might involve more snorkelling. I don’t know what kind of service I was expecting, but the fellow proposing the exact perfect thing right out of the gate was not it. It wasn’t something I had even thought of as an option. I paid a deposit, and after that asked about access to the beach as it was late in the day and I didn’t need any services. As a paying customer, I was given a bracelet to access the beach.

The beach was lovely.

The only restaurant I could see right on the beach was Lol-Ha, so I went in for lunch and a drink.

My tamarind mezcalita was amazing (and it better have been for nearly $300!).

My shrimp tacos with chipotle and pineapple salsa were dreadful, but I blame the local shrimp, not the restaurant. Thank goodness I had plenty of pico de gallo and habanero as well to dress them up.

I stayed for a good long while nursing my mezcalita and just enjoying the salt spray.

To drive from the pueblo to the beach, there is an overpass, along the side of which is a fabulous mural (and also a shaded walking path).

The pedestrian overpass was terrifying. I thought I was going to have a panic attack coming across it on my way to the beach, but was much calmer on the walk back.

I mean, this looks SO SAFE, right?

I had a nap when I came in. By the time I was ready for dinner, it was pouring rain, so I did not head out in search of food until past 8:30, not realising that everything in the pueblo closes early! The Último Maya restaurant below the hotel was closing up, but graciously made me some quesadillas with al pastor, giving me four instead of three when I asked for corn rather than wheat tortillas. They really hit the spot with a cold beer!

The next morning was chilly, so I was glad not to be heading back to the beach until midday.

The host provided me a simple breakfast both mornings — fruit, buttered toast with jam, weak coffee — at a reasonable price, but I needed stronger coffee, so I decided to head out and see if such a thing was available in Akumal. The village is pedestrian friendly and has something I’m not used to anymore, HILLS.

Turns out excellent coffee was just kitty-corner from the hotel!

Sergio came to pick me up late morning and suggested we take my car, which was parked on the street in front of the hotel. He said that parking and my day pass were all included in his shockingly low rate of only $600 for an hour of snorkelling. I wasn’t super keen on taking my car to the beach because my evening activity involved alcohol, but I didn’t argue since it wasn’t like I’m a heavy drinker and driving the short distance sure sounded easier than dragging our gear on a combi.

Before getting on a lancha to go to the dive site, I was taken through the list of rules (which included no flippers for guests!) and also the underwater signs for various sea creatures. Sergio explained how turtles would come up from the bottom and rise above the water. I paid attention but did not believe I would see anything of what he was describe. HA.

He surprised me with a video of my snorkelling adventure. You can check it out on Instagram, but here are a few stills.

I was told to stay rigid like a board, with my legs absolutely not allowed to dangle down. I’m so buoyant I can keep this pose indefinitely even without a life jacket. I’d learned from the Puerto Morelos trip to have a UV-resistant diving top, but hadn’t found a matching bottom, so I did end up cooking the back of thighs. I’ll definitely be looking for a pair before my next adventure. This is my own snorkel, but Sergio insisted I use one of his masks, saying that mine would fog up because it’s plastic. I used mine later in the day and, to be honest, I didn’t find much of a difference.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw my first turtle, a small youngster, and that it did exactly what Sergio said it would do, feed, then go up for air. It was amazing!

At one point, I felt something brush by my foot and thought it was another snorkeller. I looked behind me only to discover that my entire big toe was in the mouth of a fish about two feet long! I must have not tasted very good because he promptly spat me out, LOL!

And then came this magnificent fellow, right at the very end, and I cannot believe he was captured so clearly.

I was trying to be respectful and keep my distance, but he came right at me and very deliberately pet me with his flipper. Again, I cannot believe that I have that on video.

Even though we’d come out on a lancha, we swam back to shore.

I got some restaurant recommendations and ended up at the Turtle Bay Bakery. There, I briefly spotted a woman who looked very vaguely familiar, but she was quickly gone and out of my mind.

I ordered  what ended up being a truly fabulous jalapeño, habanero, and avocado burger with a watermelon and pineapple juice, which really hit the spot after all that exercise after a small breakfast. I was shocked when I asked for the bill that a mystery woman had paid it!!! Had to be the woman I’d spotted coming in. Who was she? The mystery stayed with me until I headed home on Saturday and I realised that she was a French woman I’d assisted at the car rental on Friday who was having cash flow issues! I’d given her a tip of buying extra insurance to have less deductible frozen, which must have solved her problem. I had completely forgotten about the exchange but must have made an impression. What were the odds we’d wind up at the same restaurant in Akumal five days later?! The universe works in mysterious ways!

We’d gotten a late start snorkelling, so by the time I finished lunch, it was time for my next activity, a sunset cruise on a catamaran!

We were offered beer or palomas. Since I was only going to have one drink, a paloma felt like the more special option. Yum! We also got chips, guacamole, and fruit.

We stopped at a bay to swim and snorkel. There is outlet here for a cenote, so there is a mix of warm salty seawater and cold fresh water!

I really enjoyed my swim even if I didn’t see more than some small fish.

What a very special day!

For dinner, I ended up having mediocre pizza with yet another paloma.

I love how you can just open up a restaurant from your kitchen in Mexico.

I was hoping for ice cream or chocolate after dinner but there was nothing open except a small beer store, so I had to settle for this.

The next morning, Wednesday, I headed back to the café for coffee and debated my next move. Returning to the beach wasn’t appealing and I had to check out by noon anyway, but I also couldn’t check in at the hotel in Cancún until 3PM.

The answer finally came to me, and I’m glad it did so very quickly, allowing for an earlier departure than planned from Akumal because, spoiler alert, the one-hour drive back to Puerto Morelos would end up taking twice that long.

My quick stop in Akumal was exactly what I was hoping it would be. Again, it’s not an area I’d want to come back to for an extended period of time, but snorkelling with the turtles is truly something to put on your bucket list, especially when so much care is taken to keep them and their nests safe and undisturbed.

The last week of February, I finally got my first proper, zero work, full-week vacation in nearly a decade! Building and running a successful business is hard graft, but there’s nothing I’d rather do!

The vacation I planned had three parts:

-city break in Valladolid
-snorkeling adventures in Akumal
-social time in Cancún with my bestie flying in from Illinois

I really wanted to stop in Valladolid as it was getting to be more than a tad embarrassing that I’d never been there in my nearly eight years of living in Yucatán. That’s like living in Montreal and having never visited Ottawa or Quebec City!

The most exciting part of the trip had to be that I could rent a car. I picked it up Friday afternoon before I was set to leave. I get absolutely insane deals as a long-time user of Booking.com, and there was no exception with a car rental. No one could come close to price matching me for the nine days I wanted to rent, not even folks renting their own personal cars. The only disadvantage of using the third-party site was that insurance was also with a third party. So while I had full coverage, there’d be more hoops to make a claim and I had to have $14,000 frozen on my credit card versus the $2,000 if I’d booked directly through Alamo, none of which was a big deal considering the savings I got. I booked a manual transmission Chevy Spark and got an automatic Nissan Versa as Alamo doesn’t do small cars or manual transmissions, never mind that they were offered on the website. It’s surprising how hard it is to get a manual transmission now when renting in Mexico when it was the norm the last time I rented, pre-pandemic. My biggest concern with the Versa was fuel economy, but it ended up being surprisingly fuel efficient.

Having a car, I packed up nearly everything I owned and considered getting a trailer. 😉 The yoga mat was to supplement the hard Mexican beds.

I worked so hard that week and wasn’t sure I’d be able to take off after my Saturday morning HIIT class, but somehow, I did.  I decided to take the more back roads/non toll route way to Valladolid, just to enjoy being on the road under a bright blue sky. This ended up being a great choice, except for a super rough section coming out of Tizimín where the potholes were the size of Canada.

I’d been lead to believe that Valladolid is small and sleepy, but the amount of traffic in centro when I arrived rivaled traffic in Mérida. The free municipal parking lot in front of my hotel was full, but, thankfully, I found paid parking around the block. I stayed at Casa Rico, again a booking.com deal. All the reviews had told me to prepare for a noisy stay, but surprise, it was super quiet the two nights I was there. I had a plain room at the back second floor, with a great view coming up the stairs.

I went for a walk in search of dinner. The amount of people in centro, through the whole stay, was disproportionate to the amount of things to see and do in Valladolid proper and thoroughly unpleasant. I don’t think I’ve ever seen crowds like that in the touristy part of a historic centro before, and probably because it’s so small, just two blocks in either direction from the main square.

The cathedral was lit up and looking very pretty as I stood in the central plaza being deafened by the squawking of hundreds of birds.

I wanted Yucatecan gastronomy for dinner, so I selected the restaurant at the Mesón del Marques.

I really wanted queso relleno, but they make it with eggs, so I settled for zac ko’ol, or pebre, shredded chicken with an assortment of odd ingredients in a corn-thickened chicken stock. Only in Yucatán can you sit in a darkened restaurant not knowing if your next bite will have raisins, capers, or olives! It was really, really delicious, especially with a local artisanal beer, but way too much for me to finish. The only disappointment was that the tortillas were your stock commercial yellow ones, not handmade, as I would have expected in an establishment like this. When I ordered, the server said, “OH, you’re local!” after I pronounced my meal name correctly (sack kohl, more or less)! Not pictured is the big bowl of creamy habanero sauce that was brought to me after that was established, which finished the dish off perfectly.

I wandered around some more after and found a great gelato spot where I was served in French! He had almost no options left at that late hour, but a scoop of grapefruit was just what I needed after that rich dinner.

I had a surprisingly good first night in Valladolid, sleeping all the way through, and for nearly 10 hours! I’d really been at it hard in the weeks prior and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to end up doing much in Valladolid, despite having plans to hit up some cenotes.

First thing I did Sunday was move my car from the paid parking to the city parking, where I was directed to spot by a police officer, which was to be an important detail.

Then, I decided to try the restaurant across from my hotel that had a breakfast buffet, where I had a fabulous meal with the fishes. The buffet had my favourites like panuchos, chilaquiles, and enchiladas, plus egg options, waffles, pastries, and more. The only disappointment was that the only coffee they had was weak cafe de olla with way too much sugar.

I was just finishing up when my phone rang multiple times. I was very confused and put the number through Google, and it was my hotel! It was way too loud in the restaurant to call them, so I tried WhatsApp, and they were very responsive.

Do you have a Nissan Versa, they asked me?

Oh no.

You’re badly parked and they are about to tow you if you don’t get there right now to sort it out.

WTAF

Thankfully, I had requested the bill, so I was able to pay and get out of there right away. Went next door to the parking lot and there was a whole bunch of police around a white Nissan Versa just like mine except it wasn’t my car. 😂

The cop said you’re parked absolutely fine, unlike this dumbass (pendejo). I better be after all that parking practice! 🤣

I ended up doing pretty much nothing on my lazy Sunday in Valladolid. I think I ended up taking three, if not four, naps! I was so glad to have this break before the real vacation started, so I could take full advantage of it.

I stopped at tourist information to see if there was anything in the city that I didn’t know about (mostly a couple of small private art museums) and there really wasn’t, so that cemented my plan to just enjoy a lazy city break and recharge my batteries.

My one stop on Sunday was the chocolate history museum, which is a bunch of life-size dioramas with narration in several languages. It was disjointed, but still very interesting and made me realise that I take chocolate for granted as cultivation and preparation is really labour-intensive and done on a shockingly small scale. I also didn’t realise that chocolate as a food is as recent as it is — it was a beverage for most of its history, and a bitter spicy one at that until the Europeans started adding sugar.

It was interesting to see how cocoa beans were once used as currency.

I didn’t realise there are so many varieties of cacao pods:

I saw a video about a Yucatecan chocolate farmer who has to meet very strict Belgian standards, later explained by this graphic showing that Belgians are the largest chocolate consumers in the world!

I had to buy a bar of chocolate after all that, even if they’re made in Mérida!

Not sure how I ended up at a Chinese restaurant for lunch, Dragon House, but there I was, and, SURPRISE, it was the best Chinese food I’ve ever had in Mexico. They even had the correct noodles rather than using spaghetti like most places do. I had a special with one egg roll, one side, and two mains. I picked almond chicken and curried pork. Both dishes were well flavoured with tender meat and plenty of vegetables. Valladolid’s culinary scene was so far nothing like I’d been told to expect.

Valladolid has a cenote right in centro, around the corner from my hotel, but I ended up not going because it was chilly all weekend and cenotes are COLD.

The one thing the tourist info lady had told me not to miss on Sunday was the nightlife on La Calzada de los Frailes (Friars Causeway), Valladolid centro’s pedestrian street. This pretty pink building stands across from its entrance.

Traditional Mayan home that was restored during a refresh of the street in, I believe, the 1990s.

As is normal for me on these kinds of city breaks, I walked so much all day that I found my appetite and needed pizza. I ended up at Finisterre.

I ordered a margherita pizza with a Bohemia oscura and was shocked that this was without question the best pizza I’ve had since returning from Europe. I’m still dreaming of it nearly two weeks later.

Monday morning was cool and drizzly, with most of the city shut down, which was expected as Monday tends to be descanso, especially in more touristy areas that stay open on Sundays. There weren’t many options for breakfast, but I found myself in yet another beautiful courtyard enjoying chilaquiles with really good seasoned chicken. Ha ha to everyone who told me to expect to eat poorly in Valladolid!

I’ll finish off with a couple of shots of my pink room at Casa Rico. How pretty! The bed was a bit better than average.

I had no reason to hang out in Valladolid, plus I was about to lose an hour as I crossed into Quinatana Roo, so, refreshed, I packed up the car and hit the road again, bound for the bucket-list-worthy adventure that lay two hours southeast of me.

I have been an internet customer of Izzi since I moved to this house in the autumn of 2017. At that time I picked Izzi because it was much less expensive than its major competitor TotalPlay. For the next several years, I was a very happy customer of Izzi — they kept giving me higher speeds than I was paying for, the service was infallible, and customer service was a dream. I had no reason to look elsewhere.

But in the last year or so, I started to have daily micro outages that culminated in a 36-hour national outage that told me it was time to reexamine my loyalty to Izzi. This major outage was only the third in nearly eight years, but the lack of comment and updates from Izzi about this major interruption was unlike the company I’d known to this point. A little research told me that a change of modem would likely fix the intermittent short outages, so I contacted them to schedule this service. I was shocked when I was told “Oh, there’s been an issue with our cabling in your area for a while and we’re working on fixing that, so we’re not addressing individual client concerns at this time.” Excuse me? What was with this new Canadian-telco-like lassitude?!

I did some research and discovered that TotalPlay was now a better deal than Izzi. I could get the same type of package — phone, cable, internet — for the same price, but with five times the download speeds and twenty-five times the upload speeds! I promptly scheduled TotalPlay for the next day… and they were a no-show.

This left me with two other providers to consider, TelMex and Starlink. This was the first time in my life that I had meaningful competition within the same country’s telecom providers. I’d left Telus for Verizon once, but the switch from Bell Mobility to SaskTel was like changing the proverbial quatre trente sous pour une piastre as Bell Mobility used SaskTel’s network.

Starlink was immediately rejected as I didn’t move to an urban area to have spotty satellite service, so that left TelMex as the third real choice. I went on an expat forum as well as my neighbourhood Facebook group and asked others for their recent experiences. The majority of the stories were the same, TotalPlay installation can be difficult to schedule, but after that, the service is great. TelMex will set you up quickly, but leave you without service for weeks, similar to Canadian telco service levels. So I rescheduled TotalPlay, and this second time, they showed up.

The tech was pretty friendly. I explained my current setup and asked if we could just reuse Izzi’s cabling. He said yes and no, that he had to bring in his own cables to the TotalPlay equipment, but if after I left I wanted to disconnect additional cabling from the Izzi modem and plug it into the TotalPlay modem, I could, but that couldn’t happen when he was there for Reasons. With Izzi, I had “entradas” in the living room for the TV and the master Deco of my mesh system, one in the guest room for guests to hardwire, and then the main line leading to the modem in my office. He was replacing two of those, office and living room, so that just left the guest room that I could hopefully still use with Izzi’s cabling plugged into TotalPlay’s modem. I was also only allowed two entradas, so that eliminated my request for him to add a third upstairs. I asked him to run the office entrada where I have my current mess of wires but requested that he change the location of the entrada in the living room so I could flip my furniture! Side note here that I am going to have to do a post about that because, wow, the change was so impactful as to be almost equivalent to moving!

Satisfied that we had a plan and that my mesh network would continue to serve me, I let him work… for six hours. When he came to my office, I went to the living room and moved furniture around. By the time that was done, he was ready to set up the TV and the new cable box. I use an Apple TV device, and like with Izzi, there are conflicts between the cable box and the Apple TV, so I can’t have both plugged in at the same time. My Apple TV is ancient and on the fritz, so a project in the near-term is to reexamine if I even need an Apple TV or if I can get all my streaming apps (including Apple TV+) through the Izzi cable box. If so, then that’ll simplify things greatly. But in the meantime, he set up a switch for me to make it easier to go between both services. What I like about the cable box is that it came with a bonus speaker. My Samsung TV audio is really not great and the speaker really makes a difference, so I’m motivated to switch to the cable box.

The switch also enabled us to hard wire my Apple TV and main Deco (with my own ethernet cords). To our immense surprise, the Deco just switched to the new service without my having to set up my mesh network again! So I still have the main house network name and password that, while secure, is MUCH easier to type in than the TotalPlay password. That just left my Ring doorbell to set up, which is a whole Thing that involves a repeater and yet another network… but that network also did not need to be set up again! The switchover ended up being so much easier than I expected, even if I have a lot of excess cabling to deal with.

The surprises kept coming, though. Not satisfied with just giving me a bonus speaker and switch, the tech pulled out a phone as well, which was most certainly not included in the installation. It’s identical to the phone Izzi gave me, but I knew they’d want theirs back as it was part of the installation package. I thought we were done at this point, but the tech had a final surprise. I’m not sure how he did this without my noticing, but… he had installed a third entrada upstairs, with a Wi-Fi repeater! I now have excellent service upstairs for the first time. Before, I could just barely connect to my mesh system. I ended the day giving the tech twice the tip I’d initially planned to give him.

I lived with the new service for a few weeks and it worked great, so it was time to cancel Izzi, and I wanted to do that before my next bill. I kept putting it off because it involved a phone call and going to the office in person, but today being the day before the next bill was set to be issued, I had to get on this task! I called and got through the phone tree easily thanks to all the steps being printed on the website. There was a 10-minute wait to speak to a rep, so I took the option to have them call me back, which they did within the promised 10 minutes.

The rep I finally got ahold of spoke very quickly, but I only had to ask him to repeat himself twice in the whole call, so it wasn’t too difficult of a task to deal with him. He tried to do the retention spiel on me, and I cut him off saying that tech support didn’t want to retain me as a client and I already have new service installed, so it’s too late. To his credit, he stopped talking and said he was going to put me on hold while he generated a folio number for me to take to a branch in person to return my equipment. That was a quick wait, and he slowed down enough for me to catch the very long folio number in one try. He then told me I had to go to the office today, confirming that my new invoice will be generated tonight so I’d have to pay $1,000 when today my account balance was zero. So that was very kind of him, more like the Izzi customer service I’m used to.

I then quickly packed up the modem, phone, cable box, and remote control, then headed to the nearest Izzi office, which is at Gran Plaza. I did not have to wait to see someone there, but I did have to wait for a manager to go through my last technical support chat. She was Not Happy. I hope the tech doesn’t lose her job! I knew that day that I should have probably escalated the call and Izzi would have given me the moon, but I’d already made the decision to switch and TotalPlay was just better value at that point, so it is what it is.

As I was heading upstairs from the Izzi office to get tacos in the food court, I was stopped by a TotalPlay rep wanting to sign me up for service! I told her I’m already a customer, and she told me to remember the booth is there if I ever have any issues. Really, other than that blip with Izzi tech support, telecom service in this country has been a dream after the absolute nightmare that was dealing with telecom in Canada!

2025 started off very slowly after 2024 ended like a lion. It was great to be able to reset and work on personal projects, even if I ended up making 3 weeks of income in just the final 10 days!

The first project I took on, redoing the dining room, was really an impulsive thing. I was just fed up with the dining room set that came with the house. It was the last major bit of the original furniture that I didn’t like (the sofas are still just fine!) and I was just over the smelly water-damaged china cabinet and broken chairs. I posted the set on MarketPlace with a very honest description of all the issues and was surprised to not only have a ton of interest but to sell it within 24 hours! A gentleman asked to come see it and he bought it on the spot! I encountered a great flete (moving) service last summer, so we called them up and they were available and nearby, so the transaction was painless. I was shocked. I then spent the next day shopping for a new dining room set and not being happy with any of the new offerings but also not sure I wanted to have anything made for me. I wanted something warm, with purple, maybe a bit of a tropical vibe (like caning or rattan), and a glass top to protect a wooden table. Oh, and it had to fit my usual spur-of-the-moment-I-did-not-budget-for-this budget.

Something like this, that was posted the day after I sold my set and delivered within a few hours. Some things are meant to be!

I found that china cabinet the same day. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but it would fit in that corner, freeing up a lot of space in the room for another I idea I had, the colour was similar to the table and chairs, and the price was right. This too came very quickly and I am very pleased with it.

The girls approve of the new set. Close up of the sweet pattern on the chair fabric, which has a stain-resistant treatment on it. What are the odds I’d find chairs with purple seats to match the curtains?!

The last two bits to finish off the dining room came later in the month. A bargain version (pine) of my dream dresser for this space — this was new and such a deal I had to jump on it. The drawers have metal rails. The colour isn’t as dark as the rest of the room, but it still pulls a bit of the red of the cedar.

The gentleman who sold me the china cabinet pulled off a miracle and found me a wardrobe suitable to use as a broom and vacuum cupboard! I’ve been looking for one for years, but the hanging area is never tall enough for a broom. This is something the house really needs, a central space to store cleaning and home maintenance tools, and it doesn’t look like a utility cupboard. It’s in good shape, does not smell musty (a question I got), and has great patina. I’m slowly realising my goal of mostly filling the house with high quality used furniture rather than cheap new disposable pieces.

This cupboard will be for the vacuum cleaner. I’m going to make a hole in the back to pass a power cord so I can mount my Dyson charger in it.

The other side has plenty of room for mops, brooms, squeegees, dusters, and more. I’ll mount hooks once I know what I need.

The middle section is already full of cleaning products and tools, offering one drawer and plenty of shelf space.

Simultaneously to the dining room, I set to work mostly finishing up the kitchen after seeing my dream second island on Marketplace. Well, kind of. It was white and too narrow and not tall enough, but it was the design of drawers and shelves behind a door that I wanted. I decided to see if I could break my carpenter curse and contacted the company to see if they could make me one to my specifications and colours. Yep, and the price was right, so I ordered it. The next day, after much thought and number crunching, I sent them these two rough sketches to get their thoughts on a second piece. Drawing over a photo on the iPad is the design tool I did not know I needed! They suggested combining my designs and gave me another great quote, so I ordered it as well! This photo has a HUGE hint for another major improvement to the kitchen thanks to my amazing clients, but you’ll have to wait for the kitchen tour to hear about that!

A couple of weeks after I got the quote, they messaged to ask if they could come take their own measurements for that second, built-in piece. They arrived with the first piece done, and I hadn’t even paid a deposit, much less knew they were working on it! It was such a healing moment after the nightmare of two years before. I was beyond thrilled with the result and pulled off another MarketPlace miracle that very day… finding the perfect almost matching piece of granite for the top and having it delivered quickly. Yep, the kitchen curse was broken.

I spent hours of my impromptu weeks off working on my bag that I mentioned in the December post.

To say that I’m happy with this bag is an understatement. It’s gorgeous, and I’m so proud of the work I did putting it together.

I found a new ramen place in January and despite telling them no eggs and no mushrooms, I got eggs and mushrooms. Jammy duck eggs had been such a hit in September that I decided I had the perfect opportunity to try chicken eggs again as I knew I love this method of preparation and would not have an ick factor. The egg was marinated in soy sauce, so it did not smell badly at all. I took one bite and… nope, nope, nope. It tasted rotten. So my egg intolerance thing really isn’t just in my head. 🙁 At least I know that for sure now.

January was mostly freezing cold, as evidenced by the fact that I wore real jeans during most of it.

Finally, January 2025 was extra special because it’s the month I finally got my Yucatán driver’s license!

Getting a driver’s license in the Yucatán is notoriously not for the faint of heart. It’s a cumbersome and daunting process, even for locals. I put this off for a long time, until the point where not being able to drive locally started to feel really restrictive. Even if I wasn’t ready to buy a car, I at least wanted the freedom to be able to rent one for weekend getaways, errand days, and vacations.

The procedure to get a license keeps evolving with the rules changing quickly, which happened to me, so I’m not going to go into all the details of the process as that won’t help anyone reading this post. I don’t know how many super detailed recaps I read before starting the process only to discover that most of the advice was obsolete.

One of my hurdles was that the SSP (state police) require a practical parallel parking test and I didn’t have access to a car. The solution was so obvious that I was embarrassed it had to be pointed out to me — take a course at a driving school and use their car for the exam. At the time I was told this, the school did both the theoretical and practical testing, which sounded so much easier and less stressful than doing the exam with the police.

But when I finally started the process in early December 2024, the police had changed their mind about schools doing testing, which was really frustrating as I was nervous about a timed theoretical test, never mind the parallel parking with very exacting criteria.

The first step was to gather all the documents that I needed. Residents have an extra hoop to get their license that actually feels punitive and ridiculous, not something I usually say about procedures here. There’s this law that you can’t drive on your country’s license when you become a resident here, fair enough, but then making people do three trips to immigration to get a license feels like it’s causing the problem they are trying to avoid, leading many expats I know to drive on quasi-legal out-of-state licenses or with no license at all.

Once I had gathered originals of the following documents, I had to make a trip to the SSP to get a letter to take to immigration:

• residency card
• passport
• water or power bill
• birth certificate (no need to have to have it translated)

The letter to immigration basically says “This person came to us wanting a license. Before we can consider giving her a license, we want to confirm her legal status and address in Yucatán.”

If I was a citizen, I could have shown up with a utility or bank statement showing my name and address, but as a permanent resident, even if I had such a thing, it wasn’t good enough, they needed immigration to confirm it. Which is laughable because all immigration did was check that I had a utility bill that matches the address I have on file. I could have moved ten times and just gone back to that original address and asked the current resident for the most recent bill.

At any rate, the first visit to SSP went quickly. Government processes run really smoothly in Yucatán; it’s very impressive. You arrive somewhere with throngs of people and it looks positively chaotic, but once you get in the right queue, getting things done is efficient. I went to a uniformed officer standing guard and told him I needed a letter from them to take to immigration so I could get my license. He told me to go right in through the gate and speak to a woman at a desk set up outside. There was no line to speak with her. I reiterated what I wanted and all she wanted was a copy of my residency card, not even the original. She then told me to sit on a bench, not the relatively comfy chairs that form the long queues for various services. I sat there for at most 15 minutes catching up on client emails when another lady came up to me, confirmed my name, and gave me the letter. She had me check that the information was correct and discussed next steps and how long I had to complete the process.

The next day I went to immigration. I went up to an attendant and said what I wanted, then was directed to a chair in the queue for folks without appointments, which they called the information queue. I waited about 30 minutes and was let inside, where I had to register and get into another brief queue. When it was finally my turn, the agent didn’t want to see any documents, just gave me a fill-in-the-blanks document to complete that would become my request for the letter (“constancia de domicilio”) and also a form to take to the bank to pay. He told me that they close this part of the office at 1PM, so since it was just past noon, I was best to come back the next business day to continue the process.

The following week, I returned to immigration with the proof of payment and it was much of the same process, but this time my documents got a very cursory review to make sure I had everything, then I was sent to yet another queue for a desk deeper into the building. This next agent did the complete review of my documents and to my relief said, “Muy bien,” signalling that she was satisfied and would issue the letter, which I was told to pick up in about 10 calendar days.

On the date in question, I returned a third time to immigration, this time earlier in the day, and the line was huge and not moving. After perhaps 30 minutes and calculating that I was going to be there at least three hours I heard “Can the lady who is here picking up her constancia de domicilio please come inside.” That was me! I went in, got to skip the inside queue, and was handed my letter and told to review it to make sure everything was accurate. This was a good example of how government offices are keeping track of who is present and get the quick and easy transactions out of the way ahead of potentially lengthier ones. They’re not making people wait just to make people wait.

Next up was driving school, but we were firmly into the Christmas season at this point and work is always heavy that this time. I’d been told driving school was two hours a day for a week, then half a weekend for theoretical, so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of free time.

January 8th of this year, I went to the driving school near my house, Escuela de Manejo del Sureste (which happens to be the top-rated driving school in the city) to ask about the process. Once they knew I have 30 years of extensive driving experience, I was told I did not need to take a full course. They suggested I do an intensive weekend class that consisted of 2.5 hours of theory on a Saturday morning, followed by 2.5 hours of driving, then 2.5 more hours of driving the Sunday. Then I could schedule the school to take me to the police to do my exams, but this could take months! I was bummed as I have vacation at the end of February and was hoping to rent a car, but at least I’d be getting the ball rolling. I enrolled in class for the following weekend so as to not interfere with my Pilates schedule that week.

Driving school weekend finally rolled around. I couldn’t believe how stressed I was about it. The theory class went well and I understood the instructor, but I felt a little slow. We did a practice theory exam at the end that convinced me I would not pass the theory exam at the police since it was timed and you couldn’t go back and review your answers. My Spanish comprehension is good, but I need enough time. But I didn’t want to do the exam in English because I would still be translating. The tests were graded right then and I had two mistakes, with a pass being no more than five. Phew!

(I’ll do a parenthetical here to say that I wrote about the process on a local expats Facebook group and was met with a lot of derision about going back to driving school when I am so experienced. I wanted to make sure I knew local laws. Expats frequently express frustration that “locals can’t drive” and I wanted to see if some of the common scenarios were just a case of the expats not knowing local laws. Yep. The big one is the roundabouts. Here, the interior lane can exit straight, effectively cutting off the middle lane. It’s the single biggest complaint I see from expats and proof of their superiority over locals. But it’s right there in black and white that it’s okay to exit straight from a roundabout interior lane in Yucatán. This discussion was the only time I found the courage to speak up in class and ask for clarification, saying I’ve driven in several countries where that’s not permitted. The instructor said the same was true for him and this is truly a Yucatán quirk.)

I relaxed a bit once I knew I wouldn’t have to redo the theoretical part of the class since they don’t take you to the police unless you pass. I was paired up with my driving instructor, a lovely lady who immediately put me in the driver’s seat once she knew that I was not a brand-new driver. I hadn’t driven a standard transmission vehicle in three years, but since that is the more natural choice for me, I didn’t have any trouble. I got a few notes on my shifting in the immediate moments following departure, and then the instructor realised that this was just me getting used to a new vehicle as I had it down pat within three blocks. She had me drive most of the way to Progreso, allowing me to do both city and highway driving, then let me drive the entire periférico counter-clockwise before taking me to a remote neighbourhood northwest of Mérida to start on the parallel parking practice. At the end of the day I was shocked when she said that she would have never guessed that I hadn’t driven in three years and that I’m an excellent driver with no bad habits! She said we would just focus on parking the next day.

Sunday morning, she insisted on picking me up at home, something I wanted to avoid so that the neighbours wouldn’t see the driving school car parked in front of my house (gossip, LOL!), but she was persistent. She had me head south to an area with a huge empty parking lot. I then parallel parked for two hours straight. OMG. I used to parallel park Miranda without blinking, but a tiny car without sharp corners? It was not happening. I had the theory down pat, but I just could not get it done perfectly, often “failing” because I wasn’t perfectly centred back to front in the parking spot despite being the perfect and straight distance from the curb.

By the time we were done, I was dejected. There was no way I was going to pass my test with the police, especially in a few months with no opportunity to practice. It felt so moronic when I had repeatedly proven I could get in and out of a tight parking spot without hitting anything, which is all that would matter in the real world. I couldn’t understand how upbeat my teacher was when she’d wasted all that time with a student who wasn’t going to get her license. She got back in the car with me to head back to my house.

I was exhausted and not in the mood for a pep talk when she said “Congrats, you passed driving school! And guess what? We got an update from the SSP yesterday that they are overwhelmed with license applications and so have reversed their decision on not accepting a pass from a driving school for experienced drivers. Come back to school tomorrow to get your certificate, then get on to the SSP to get your license!”

WHAT?!

I was in SHOCK. I didn’t even want to tell anyone or even think too hard about it for worry about jinxing my opportunity to finish this process without more effort.

The next morning, I headed straight to a photo place when they opened at 10:00 as I needed two “infantil”-format photos for my school certificate. An Uber picked me up at 10:01. He asked if he should wait for me at the studio. Last time I got photos it took an hour to receive them, so I told him no, and was planning to get some breakfast. Well, the studio upgraded their equipment and had me out the door in 10 minutes! And guess who was waiting for me outside?! “I had a feeling it was going to be fast and I wanted to continue our conversation, so I decided to give it 15 minutes.” I’ve had some kind Uber drivers, but he was the best. He had me at driving school by 10:30. It was really quick there as well, but I’d firmly dismissed the Uber driver because of the chance that I would not get the certificate immediately, in which case I would just walk home. Another Uber showed up quickly, and I was at the SSP at 11:01 on the dot. I could not believe I’d done all that in an hour!

At the SSP I again went to a uniformed agent to ask where I needed to go. He put me in a standing queue outside the main waiting area. A lady did a cursory check of my documents and then told me to go to the same lady at the table I’d been to on the previous visit. That lady did yet another review of my documents, just to make sure I had everything and all my copies, had me sign in, and then waved in the general direction of some chairs and to follow the instructions of the standing lady in black and white.

What followed can only be described as an hour of playing musical chairs. Every five or ten minutes, we’d all have to stand and move five seats down. I’d brought my iPad to work on a job, but eventually gave up and just scrolled Instagram. The time flew by, and I was finally let into the licensing building. Inside, it was set up a lot like the smaller border checkpoints where there were a bunch of kiosks for different tasks all arranged in chronological order around the room. The first step was document reception, and there were about six people doing that. It was a very short wait here, maybe two minutes.

I presented all my documents and discovered I was missing a copy! I don’t even remember of which one, probably the driving school certificate, but the lady said “No worries. We can complete the process, then you can get the copy and continue without losing your place in line.” I’ve had that happen a few times over the years and have never had the horror story scenario of being turned around to start all over for missing a copy. In fact when I was at immigration in the inner office, I discovered I’d left the original of the fill-in-the-blank form in my printer, and the agent said, “Oh, we only care about an original signature, so just sign this copy in blue ink and it’ll be fine.”

Part of completing the process at the document reception kiosk was that you have to give an emergency contact name and phone number that would be printed on the license. I was not ready for that and the only thing I could think to offer was the name of my insurance broker since I’d end up calling her in such a situation! I let her know that night that I’d done that, and she said that was just fine, exactly for the reason I had thought.

All of that sorted, I was sent outside to get my copy. I asked a lady where I could get copies, and she directed me around the circular core of the building, close by but out of sight. Copies were 2 pesos each, going rate at a neighbourhood place 1.5 pesos, perfectly fair for the convenience! I went back inside, gave the agent the document, and was directed to a chair out of the queue.

This is where I felt uncomfortable for the first time as I was now out of the line and not sure what to expect next. After a few minutes, a man came to get me for my “pruebas” (tests)! but before I could even process that, the agent at the counter called out, “No, no, she’s got a certificate from driving school.” THANK GOODNESS. I still wasn’t sure at this point that I was leaving with a license, but it was becoming more and more likely. After a few more minutes, a different lady approached me with my packet of paperwork and told me to go to the end of the room to the medical unit.

There was no wait there. First stop was to get the eye test. Next stop was to give them my blood type. They are set up to do blood typing, but I knew mine. I also had to fill out for the third time the same brief medical questionnaire.

That completed, I was told to get in line to pay. This is when it hit me for the first time that I was through this arduous task and was going to walk out with a license. J’étais abasourdie.

At payment, I was told that as a new driver I could only get a two-year, not five-year, license. The cost was just under $800!

There were two more queues after payment! Next stop was picture and biometrics (digital fingerprints and retina scan, which I’d already gone through at the tax office a few years back), with a final document check that I understood after the fact was to make sure that information printed onto your license (pretty much your entire life story) was accurate.

Then there was maybe a 30-second wait to have the license delivered. I forget exactly what that last agent said to me, but I remember his tone. He was doing something so banal to him, but his tone along with something like “Felicidades” spoke volumes that he understood that to me, this was not routine, that I’d come through something huge that needed acknowledgement and that I was being praised for making it to the other side. What kindness!

I headed outside in absolute shock that I was finally a legally licensed driver in Yucatán.

I promptly texted my instructor to let her know, and her reply made her seem more excited than even I was. LOL I am so grateful for how enthusiastic she was in making sure I succeeded and then celebrating that success.

What a journey, but now, a new, freer, phase of my life in Yucatán can begin! Road trip ahead!!!!!