Taco bout Mexico
On our time in Mexico, our interesting salsa teacher, and sustainable tourism
Greetings from Medellin, Colombia!
Medellin is the City of Eternal Spring, known for its great climate all year round. The temperature has indeed been pleasant, but it turns out no guarantees were made about the other aspects of the weather. This was our last week as well as the next:
We spent the previous month in Mexico and already miss it. Mexico City in particular has been one of our favorite destinations and we even considered buying some real estate there! More on that later.
In Mexico, we ate a ton of good food (see Ivy’s guide) and got in plenty of friendship time! Literally, whenever one set of friends was leaving, another came.
We also stayed in the most gorgeous Airbnb. Our hosts, Alex and JP, designed and built the place themselves. Alex is an architect and JP got into interior design after he retired from finance, and it really shows in the little details. It’s hard to capture all its glory in our photos, so you just gotta check out the listing and/or stay there yourself!
La Condesa, the area the Airbnb is in, in general is peak livability. Every street brimmed with lush greenery and had walkways for pedestrians. Within walking distance was everything we could ask for: cheap groceries, tasty restaurants, a gym we enjoyed going to, and a huge park to hang at.
The park, Parque Mexico, is where all the locals chill. There’s a tranquil audiorama that plays zen music with chairs to lounge at; an open space where people take dance, fitness, and skateboard lessons; and an off-leash dog park, which is where you’d find Ivy looking like a 🥺 emoji.
Every weekend, the fence outside the dog park is lined with rescue puppies and dogs up for adoption. You can cuddle with them if you want!
Even outside of the park there was no shortage of pets. Every third person we saw had one or more dogs, and many of them were off-leash even when walking down regular roads. Ivy’s heart may have burst from how much it gushed if we stayed any longer.
Throughout the month, Ivy took a Spanish immersion class and we took salsa lessons together
We were inspired by our friend Sally and how fast she had learned bachata, salsa and Spanish during the time she’d spent in Mexico and she introduced us to her salsa teacher friend, Kentaro.
We first tried a group lesson with Kentaro and Owen was completely ego crushed. In a group lesson, you rotate partners every few minutes, getting to practice with different people. What this meant for Owen was he couldn’t ever figure out what he did wrong before swapping partners and made the same mistakes over and over again. Ivy hated it too because every rotation was another sweaty guy who couldn’t do the steps right.
After that one lesson, we switched to doing private lessons 3 times a week. Ivy was held back from her full potential by Owen’s pace of learning, but at least progress was made!
With all those lessons, we got to know Kentaro and he’s a super interesting guy! Kentaro was a salaryman in Japan but moved to Germany because he wanted to see what else was out there. A year ago he moved to Mexico, and in that time he’d established himself as a local influencer with 11k followers on Instagram, 190k on TikTok, and built a reputation as a salsa instructor in the international community full of expats/nomads and locals who want to meet them.
A local Japanese school is sponsoring his work visa. But unlike the US, the Mexican work visa allows you to do whatever you want.
So Kentaro has practically become a polymath in business. He rented a food stall in a theater/market building for $900 USD/month to open an okonomiyaki restaurant. Renting from a local that already rents the building avoids a lot of complications. From some conversations with other business owners, starting a coffee shop or store can take up to two years for internationals! He pays one employee $350 USD/month to man the stall most of the time.
In the food market, he runs group dance classes as well as other social events like Asian Wednesdays and Board Game Sundays. He doesn’t pay for the space for dance classes as it brings in business for the other vendors too - but of course, it particularly draws crowds to his own stall.
During the day he teaches private dance lessons and once a month, he organizes a weekend trip out of the city. Now he’s looking at spaces for teaching bigger classes elsewhere.
What. A. Hustler.
In the span of the month, Ivy and Kentaro talked a lot about growing businesses, leveraging his growing social platforms, and outsourcing so he can do more. Kentaro is now building a media kit, launched an Airbnb experience, and is working on hiring a virtual assistant. Owen also helped him streamline processes in his restaurant a bit and now wears his gifted okonomiyaki staff shirt with pride.
After Mexico City, we went to San Cristobal and Oaxaca
In Oaxaca, we met up with more friends!
Christie and Josh are staying in Oaxaca for 3 months, and going forward plan to spend about half of every year there. They were drawn to Oaxaca because of the community focused on art and connection with the land.
One afternoon we spent hours talking about food sovereignty (a topic for another time or else this will become a tome) and what sustainable tourism means, what we can do as full-time travellers to minimize our impact or even make it positive.
We gain so much from our travels: perspective, cultural experiences, jaw dropping views, and so much more. But we give so little back to the communities we pass through, thinking that by exchanging our dollars, we deserve to take what we take.
A Twitter post popped up on Ivy’s feed sharing a photo of a beautiful cafe in La Condesa with the text “Do yourself a favor and work from Mexico City.” The tweet has since been taken down, likely because of how much hate it received from locals.
Digital nomads come in earning a stronger dollar, causing gentrification because it’s more profitable for businesses to cater to expats, tourists, and nomads. Nomads don’t pay taxes or contribute to society. We even buy (or consider buying) property because it’s so underpriced for us, but that means locals get priced out.
Being able to come in, buy land, and expect local businesses and services to cater to our needs, and even build businesses off of arbitrage - how is that different from colonization?
So why isn’t contributing your tourism dollars enough? Aren’t we contributing to the economy? Creating higher paying jobs?
Because entire cities and cultures are changing to cater to tourism. Christie gave a great example: tour companies may see that learning about mezcal is in demand and create more tours focused on visiting distilleries or crawling bars that offer tastings. Those places may curate their experiences to appeal to western tastes and areas that aren’t as appealing to tourists may get lost. Places start building for what the tourists want to see instead of what is actually there. Why should we get to dictate the direction a society moves when we are just guests?
Tourism can also be exploitative. Tour companies that have the language and marketing skills to attract the most guests have the power to decide the percentage cut the locals operating the “culture” that tourists are there for get. In Oaxaca, most mezcal distilleries offer tours for free just to make a sale on the mezcal while the tour companies eat the full cut of the tourism dollars.
We are still learning more about our impact and how we can find a balance between enjoying ourselves, positively impacting the local communities we pass through, and meaningfully connecting with people here to hear their voices.
One way to travel more sustainably is to find tour companies that work with local companies and split the profit equitably, those that are using tourism to help local businesses thrive. Christie and Josh introduced us to Lily in Oaxaca and we found Palenque tours in Medellin.
Slow traveling also helps with relationship building and therefore more integration. Meet and connect with locals to hear their true stories instead of only hiding in the expat areas no matter how uncomfortable local life is. Time and presence is something we can give back.
Ivy will be digging deeper into this space. So for the time being, even though we love Mexico City and even toured a few properties with a real estate agent, we won’t be buying overseas until we can fully understand and be okay with our impact.
Onwards,
Owen & Ivy
Can't wait to continue discussing down the road and love hearing how you are evolving and thinking!