Now That the Hawaiian Blog is Finished - NOW WHAT?

A couple of months ago that question was pretty clear .

From July 6, 2008 to September 28, 2008 I took the ultimate road trip of 23,000 km as I drove across a good part of Canada and the United States.

During that time I took 50 hours of narrated video, including about 30 interviews. If you are going to travel by yourself this is the best way to have some social contact. With this video I was going to change from blogging to "vlogging" or video blogging.

I was looking forward to starting on this new venture as soon as my blogging of Hawaii was finished.

Well I finally finished Hawaii this week (December 12, 2008) but instead of starting my new video blog, Barbara and I are leaving for Mexico City tomorrow morning and we are scheduled to return on January 23, 2009.

So that leaves me with several options:

-    do not do any blogging until after January 23, 2009
-   try and do some blogging from Mexico with the emphasis on photos and not much blogging
-   forget about blogging Mexico
-   start my video blog of the 23,000 km road trip when I come back

At this point I really don't know how I will proceed. A lot will depend on Barbara and her willingness to be part of this.

So why are we going to Mexico?

My interest was piqued by a website called International Living (www.internationalliving.com) which touts Mexico as no. 1 in this year's ratings of places to retire.

The general framework for the trip was provided by an article written by Suzan Haskins
 - Latin America Insider, International Living - entitled: 16 Places in Mexico to Live Very Well on Very Little. You can find the article by going to the website and doing a search for the number "16".

That will be our task for the next six weeks: to check out many of these 16 places and more in order to ultimately make our own choices of where to spend the winter months in Mexico .

As usual, preparing for tomorrow morning's early departure is hectic and nerve wracking and it has been for almost a week. That includes trying to write this blog at the last minute. I often think, "Why am I going through this? I must be nuts!"  But once the ties with home are broken, it is a different world - a world that we find exciting.

Our travels by public buses will take us roughly from Mexico City north to San Miguel de Allende then west to Lago Chapala near Guadalajara, then along the Pacific Coast to Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, San Cristobal de las Casas (not too far from Guatemala) and then to Merida in the Yucatan and finally to fly out of Cancun (on the Caribbean Coast) on the 23rd of January 2009.

That is the story and I am sticking to it.