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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

Mexico: Five Day Rule

A quiet beer overlooking the beach at the Fusion bar in Playa del Carmen
A quiet beer overlooking the beach at the Fusion bar in Playa del Carmen: we need more of this and less rushing around

To be honest, things haven't really been going to plan on this trip so far, and it's starting to get to us.

Fire juggling on the beach at Fusion
Fire juggling on the beach at Fusion in Playa del Carmen: watching the world go by while others do the hard work is not a bad philosophy

The Five Day Rule

Fire juggling on the beach at Fusion
Fire juggling on the beach at Fusion

Clearly, one way to try to solve these problems is to stop rushing around. When I look at the kind of travelling I did in my 20s and 30s, I see a madman on the loose; every day I'd be moving on, visiting this place, dashing off to that place, never staying anywhere for very long. This is what you do when you're young; heck, it's almost a metaphor for youth in the first place. But when you reach 40, things suddenly get harder, and rushing round in the oppressive heat and staying in hotels with concrete beds gets quite a bit harder. You get backache, you risk twisting yourself into oblivion if you pick up your backpack at the wrong angle, you take a lot longer to recover from illness, and you basically have no choice but to take it more slowly than those half your age.

Fire juggling on the beach at Fusion
Fire juggling on the beach at Fusion