- PJManning ☕️🏄🏻♂️👨💻🍷✈️
- Posts
- August '24
Here's what's been going on...
Spent an unplanned 6 weeks in Mexico
Started from Mexico City → ended in Tulum
Fell back in love with riding horses
Probably had the wildest remote working experience of my life
ME-XI-CO 🇲🇽
I’m still in a bit of shock how wild this trip was 😆
This update is a bit late and I’m already on another adventure, but I thought it’d be better to wrap up Mexico into a single newsletter…
Mexico City, Puebla, Cholula, Oaxaca, Puerto Escondido, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Palenque, Valladolid, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Cancun and lots of small towns in between. Idk I could talk about this trip for weeks...
The stories, people, history, culture, art, food, colors, churches, towns, mezcal, mountains, buses, trains, taxis, tours, waterfalls, chocolate, coffee, canyons, crocodiles, cenotes, ruins, beaches, architecture. There was just so much 🤯
I realize you probably don’t wanna read some drawn out story of every adventure so here’s the TLDR…
The standouts - Oaxaca and Chiapas. Amazing people, food and culture. Both places had unreal terrain, perfect climates, and magical towns. Chiapas can be a bit dangerous, but stick to the tourist track and local suggestions and you’ll be safe.
The worst - Tulum and Cancun. Luckily, I only spent 3 nights here but not worth a visit IMO. Just overpriced, touristy, beach towns.
Aside from the physical adventures, personally, I feel like I grew a lot. It’s been so long since I roughed it a bit for the benefit of the adventure. No hostels like the younger days - but 2 overnight buses, a full-day train, plus lots of long shuttles and taxi rides trying to get around on brushed up Spanish made for a lot of good window-gazing and reflecting. I think over the past few years I stop following my intuition - something I had written down many years ago as one of the top values in my life (along with spontaneity). But from work, relationships and responsibilities it’s easy to get caught up in the monotony of making life easier - instead of pushing against the walls of curiosity and fear.
Here’s some pics from the past month+ of adventures…
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WAVES OF THE MONTH
WHERE TO GO IN SEPT: TASMANIA, AUSTRALIA
TRAVEL
REMOTE WORK
HEALTH
LISTENING
PRODUCT OF THE MONTH
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes—with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating. I eventually realized that direct experience is the most valuable experience I can have.
Western man is so surrounded by ideas, so bombarded with opinions, concepts, and information structures of all sorts, that it becomes difficult to experience anything without the intervening filter of these structures. And the natural world—our traditional source of direct insights—is rapidly disappearing. Modern city-dwellers cannot even see the stars at night. This humbling reminder of man’s place in the greater scheme of things, which human beings formerly saw once every twenty-four hours, is denied them. It’s no wonder that people lose their bearings, that they lose track of who they really are, and what their lives are really about.