Tulum, Mexico (Flashback Series 2024)

Our first month abroad — where sunsets, cenotes, and a single owl taught us how to live

Tulum wasn’t a vacation.
It was a test.

Could we live abroad for a month? Could early retirement actually work?

We’d timed it with our Christmas year-end break from work. At first, it was just a holiday we extended. We even worked a bit from paradise — testing the digital nomad option before we knew whether retirement was real. Back then, both paths were still on the table.

At the time, Nigel hadn’t retired yet. I’d been planning it for a decade, but he didn’t quite believe me. Tulum was our trial balloon. If it popped, maybe the whole idea did.

We picked it for the wrong reasons — cheap flights, a good Airbnb deal. Ended up in a brand-new jungle complex. No paved roads. No shops nearby. A rooftop pool of our own, a community pool we never touched.

Every evening we climbed the stairs and watched the sun drop behind the palms. That rooftop ritual might’ve been the thing that carried us through.

Our little jungle neighbors helped too. A tree owl lived outside our window — we watched him doze all day, then slip into the night. The bugs weren’t as charming. Stinging flies became our targets, and we got good at hunting. Somewhere in there, I realized I was a birdwatcher.

Tulum itself was already shifting into Instagram paradise — signs charging extra if you brought a camera, beaches technically public but blocked by hotel clubs. To get the postcard turquoise, you had to pay. The local stretch was free but came with plastic chairs and BYO everything.

And the people? Once we found locals who weren’t hustling, we adored them. But Instagram had changed the rules. Guards went up before conversations began. Hustle was survival, and we respected it — but didn’t like what it did to connection.

Still, there were highlights:
Cenote Atik at dawn, empty but for us.
Azulik Experience, an art gallery like Dr. Seuss on acid.
Mystika, where sound and light bent reality.

Azulik: where the jungle taught us to dream differently.

We knew, even then, that we wanted something unique. Not the velvet-rope kind of beauty — but the kind you find at the end of a dirt road, or tucked into a jungle, or waiting in the silence of an empty cenote.

And yet the real test wasn’t Mexico.
It was us.

There were lows too. The federales stopped us one night after dinner. Guns on both sides of the car. Asked for Nigel’s wallet. He shook his head. I didn’t. The officer flipped through it, handed it back intact. Apparently we weren’t the kind of party they were looking for.

We found a rhythm — rooftop Pilates, quiet dinners we cooked ourselves, conversations about what it would mean to do this full-time. Could we live small? Turns out yes — the rooftop pool helped. Could we survive the holidays away from family? Barely. Two kids ended up in the hospital that December. We almost flew home, twice. But they had support systems. They were okay. And we realized something: they’re adults now.

We took short escapes, too. Bacalar’s Lagoon of Seven Colors, its water shifting with the depths of its cenotes, gave us silence. Cozumel gave us Christmas — commercial, yes, but full of families and easy seaside meals.

And that’s where we learned another lesson: we like breaking up a month with smaller trips. A reset button inside the rhythm of slow travel.

We learned something else too: language comes back. We’d been to Mexico before, and this time we dusted off our high school French to help pick up Spanish. It was clumsy, but it worked. Enough to connect. Enough to remind us we could adapt.

The food sealed it — huitlacoche, fresh fish, fruit that tasted like it had just been invented. We met retirees who could no longer afford it, and others who wouldn’t dream of leaving.

Tulum wasn’t forever.
But we succeeded.

We learned we love being alone — but in a place where community is still within reach. We learned we don’t want to be part of the Instagram scene — but we’ll always respect the hustle.

Azulik at dawn — blissfully ours, not Instagram’s.

We also learned what we really craved: art and unique experiences that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. That became our compass. Not the velvet-rope kind of beauty — but the kind waiting at the end of a dirt road, or in a gallery built like a dream, or in the quiet company of a single owl outside our window.

Mystika: signs were (literally) everywhere.

Most of all, we learned one month abroad wasn’t just possible.
It was the beginning.

We didn’t become digital nomads.
We retired instead — to travel slow, one month at a time.

A special thank-you to those who’ve already bought us a coffee (or a glass of wine) — you’re fueling both the miles and the words.