Sex, Travel and The Pandemic

This Epilogue Doesn't Have A Mustache

July 17, 2021

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday re-opened its borders after a 16-month closure due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, with authorities reiterating that stringent measures and fines would be applied to persons seeking to beat the system put in place to curb the spread of the virus.

--- An excerpt from an article on The Jamaica Gleaner

I was in Aguascalientes, Mexico when I read this article. Aguascalientes is a city somewhere in the center of Mexico near Guadalajara. It has a population of around 1,900,000 people and is very well known for its beautiful Spanish colonial-style buildings.

I had gotten an Airbnb there and was spending most of my time alone to focus on my fitness and career. This isolation of mine wasn't forced upon me by any government or Mustache. It was a personal decision of mine. I had spent 6 months in Mexico, and I rarely took any time to be alone. The pandemic continued through 2021 and continues to this day to different extents. While the rest of the world was in ruins, still wrestling with the COVID-19 pandemic, Mexico was the center of the party. Everyone from everywhere escaped to Mexico.

I was never alone in Mexico. The streets were overfilled and the hostels and hotels were all booked out from Cancun to Sayulita. Erin was right. Everyone was coming to Mexico.

In Mexico I stuck to the overarching theme of this memoir; sex, travel and The Pandemic. Yes, the Pandemic was still very real in Mexico. People were dying, the virus was spreading and there were still restrictions in some cities. Mexico City, for most of the time was in lockdown, facing tough restrictions. However, the tourist hotspots like Cancun, Tulum, Puerto Escondido and Sayulita were open, wild and free. All the hedons came out to play.

Every so often the Mexican government would introduce new restrictions to these tourist hotspots to try to stop the spread. But they never lasted very long. After a week or two, things would return to normal, seamlessly timed to around the moment the tourism cash cow began to diminish.

I spent 6 months traveling around Mexico. I started in Cancun, and Tulum, then I settled for a bit in Playa Del Carmen. Then, when I got bored of Playa Del Carmen I flew on over to San Cristobal for a bit before settling in Puerto Escondido. I had come full circle, back to where my digital nomad journey had begun. This time I had no plans on going to Patagonia. The plan was simply to stay in Mexico till my country's borders were opened again and that mission proved successful.

I spent the longest time in Puerto Escondido. I got a yellow bumblebee scooter while I was there whipping between the beaches of La Punta and Zicatela.

I then went to Sayulita for a few weeks, then Guadalajara, and then Aguascalientes.

All caught up!

I had just come back from a morning jog through the streets of Aguascalientes and was scrolling through my Facebook feed when I saw the news that Trinidad's borders have finally reopened. I knew it was coming. Obviously, the country couldn't keep its borders closed forever. I had been barred from entering my country for 16 months and was now finally free to return. I had the option of booking a flight right there and then, but there were some rules that the Trinidadian government had set out that made waiting a bit more appealing.

There were now widely available vaccines on the market. These vaccines were BioNTech, Pfizer vaccine, Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Oxford, AstraZeneca vaccine and the Sinopharm BBIBP vaccine

The vaccine drive was going slowly, but smoothly. Millions of people were becoming vaccinated and my country reiterated the need to get vaccinated before entering the country. If you weren't vaccinated, like I was, you would have to spend thousands of dollars to quarantine in an expensive hotel for two weeks.