We Are Not Supposed To Have Money For Another 10 Years - George
Leave the first-class seats and resorts for when we are older.
Somewhere near Tulum, three Brits and I, whom I had met a week before, were headed to what was supposed to be a relaxing day by the water in the Mexican Caribbean. It wasn’t relaxing, we had two or three near-death experiences, and we ate chocolate croissants that had been dipped in seawater. It’s safe to say we were living our best lives.
It had been a month since I had arrived at my new home. A home I didn’t know if I was going to leave in a year or five, but I knew I was there to learn something and meet special people. I had quit my job and decided to sell my drum set to buy a camera, I would then use this camera to earn money taking photographs at weddings. Long-term plan? I didn’t have one. I knew that if I wanted to find real clients, I would have to go somewhere where weddings happened every weekend, so I decided to move to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. After a 3-day (I don’t speak in miles) drive, I was in my new home.
The first weeks were calm. I had only met a couple of girls to hang out with, and as I previously guessed, my booking agenda was pretty clear. My highest paid job at the time was from a guy who asked me to go with him and his friends to go fishing in the open sea to take pictures of them. I picked them up, we chatted, we played music, and then I realized how cool this was, and it was just 7:12 am on a Monday morning. Long story short — we all got seasick except the Indiana Jones look-alike who fished. I, of course, wasn’t well enough to even grab the camera, so no pictures were taken that day. The guys were really nice and still paid me $500 pesos and covered the gas. Without sarcasm being implied, I can honestly say it was one of the best days of my life.
Back to the real adventure. A different weekday morning, I received a text from Olha, a fun, quirky girl from London whom I had friended the previous night. Olha, Jake, and George were planning to go to a cenote and asked if I wanted to join. I had already met Jake and George through other friends, so after a few minutes of debating if I should stay home and continue working on finding clients or go swimming in a cenote, I was rapidly on my way to pick them up.
The cenote was inside a private ecological park owned by the government, so we knew there was going to be a fee. Somewhere between driving to the spot and finding a place to park, someone said it would be more fun if we tried getting to the cenote without paying. This was probably Olha.
Before we knew it, the four of us were walking through the outside of someone’s beautiful, fancy beach house to get to the shore. We figured from Google maps that if we went through there, we just needed to swim in a small body of seawater surrounded by rocks and small trees to get to the cenote.
So we got in the water. None of us EVER doubted we were not going to be able to pull this off, but we certainly missed some of the logistics that needed to be considered to successfully arrive at the cenote. For instance, we first tried carrying our bags with our phones, food, and clothes to the end. Then we realized that once our feet are not touching the ground, it’s pretty hard to continue without getting the bags wet. So we needed to leave some stuff behind so that the four of us could carry the most valuable things we were bringing. After we left our backpacks with our phones, food, and clothes behind some trees, we were good to continue swimming with the cooler packed with beers and wine. With high hopes of finding our stuff still there when we got back, we continued the journey.
I had one job — to carry Jake’s box of cigarettes, but I got them damp somehow. Soon it didn’t matter because we arrived at the cenote. Beautiful, crystal clear water, rocks where we could rest, and look at a sunny blue sky. We swam, drank wine, and in all honesty, I have no remembrance of most of the conversations we had, not because of the alcohol, I don’t drink much, but what I’m sure were interesting, meaningful conversations, just feel like a blur. Even tho the four of us had completely opposite personalities, we bonded over being in the same chapter of our lives. George had been traveling for a while, and the only thing that seemed to give him pure happiness was writing. Jake, also a well-traveled guy, was teaching English to Japanese kids online while learning how to code. Olha had recently discovered the exciting nomad life and was a fresh Oxford alumnus. I, an aspiring photographer. So yeah, we were all broke as fuck.
We are not supposed to have money for another 10 years. This is how we are supposed to experience the world right now. Leave the first-class seats and resorts for when we are older.
Or something like that, George said, as we were walking back to the car with our luckily untouched (by who? we were in the middle of nowhere) backpacks.
Our souls were full, but our stomachs were not. We opened our bags to find four chocolate croissants with a light smell of seawater, and a bit humid. I can just say not a single piece of croissant came out of the wrong hole, and they were delicious. Somehow, and don’t remember why, it was dark and we were inside someone’s private property. Jake and George jumped in the pool while Olha and I were debating if this nice house was owned by the Mexican cartel.
We get to the car to head back home, but as we are about to leave, Jake realizes he didn’t have his phone, so while he looked in everyone’s bags and under the car seats, Olha and I went back to the potential narco house to find his phone by the pool. It was then that I realized how weird it is that when you are living life fully, you feel like nothing bad can happen to you. If someone had dared me to trespass a paid natural attraction or someone’s house I would have just said “no” or “what for?” — but it’s when you are already in the moment where your decisions start shifting from what you would usually decide on a more calm, known, and safe environment. Since then, I started saying yes more, especially if it’s on a weekday.
Cheers to cheap wine and damp croissants!