Veracruz

In 2020, I scheduled a 3-month trip to Veracruz for January through March. We all know what happened in 2020. By March, not knowing how bad this would be and worrying about airport crowds and flights getting cancelled, I took advantage of Delta's Covid-era offer to cancel or change flights without penalty. 

Besides, from the minute I walked into my Airbnb, I felt at home and never wanted to leave. Staying past March sounded great to me.

Maybe it was this chair that looked so much like Bruce's office chair. I never sat in it. I sat on the bed and looked at it, sometimes talking to it (him.) It was not even two years since he had passed away, and I still had not figured out how to handle the grieving process.

Or this beautiful site as I walked toward the sea. I truly felt like I was someplace else, and I really, really wanted to be someplace else. Far away from hospitals and cold air-conditioning and cold winters and everything since 2018 that had chilled me to the bone. I had come to Veracruz to get warm.

And Veracruz, a tropical climate along the Gulf of Mexico, is indeed warm. The city center itself is beautiful with striking architecture, walkable streets, lovely parks.

From my Airbnb, all of this was within easy walking distance. Sunny skies and high 70s in January and February. A nice beach, interesting scenery, an Airbnb at $300 a month where they cleaned twice a week, changing towels and bedding. Is it any wonder I didn't want to leave all this and go back to the Covid mess in the US? 

Covid did come to Mexico later, a few months behind America, but by then we had more information and clarification about it. It was not as frightening as it had been at first. This is how my three-month stay in Veracruz turned into a year, then another year, then finding a rental home and signing a three-year contract. 

I furnished it myself and I loved that house, in the same neighborhood as my Airbnb.

Course I was happiest when it was filled with my people who came to visit.

Even when they came in July and got completely knocked out by the heat and humidity.

Peter is ready for the beach! As in any house, it is the ones you love who come and make it a home.

Until one thing led to another, and it came time to leave this house and this city and go back to Utah. I sold my furniture to local people. Apparently, good, used furniture for sale is difficult to find in Mexico.

I don't regret leaving that rental home. It was time. I will still return to Veracruz, though, and stay at the Airbnb that first welcomed me and my broken heart in 2020.